One year after the accidental death of Emerson College student Victoria Snelgrove during baseball playoff riots, Emerson students and faculty said at a memorial on Friday that they were still grieving Snelgrove’s death but have forgiven the media for what they called insensitive coverage.
Snelgrove, a 21-year-old broadcast journalism major, was fatally injured when police fired pepper pellets into an unruly crowd gathered outside Fenway Park to celebrate the Red Sox American League Pennant victory on Oct. 21, 2004.
In May, the city paid the Snelgrove family $5.1 million in a wrongful-death settlement, and in September, the family filed a $10 million lawsuit against the gun manufacturer. The police officers involved have since been suspended and some demoted, but cleared of criminal charges.
Rachel Gabrielsen, a 21-year-old Emerson senior and Snelgrove’s former news director, gave personal reflections of Snelgrove at the memorial inside the college’s newsroom, which was crammed with flat-screened monitors and televisions. Gabrielson said the Emerson community still thinks about Snelgrove daily but there was a different feeling on campus this year.
“Everyone is still sad,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “That’s not going to go away. But the anger has gone away.”
Gabrielsen added that she was pleased with media’s behavior at the memorial.
“It was refreshing how the media acted today,” she said at the post-memorial reception. “They presented themselves in the best possible way.”
The newsroom was full mostly of reporters. Student volunteers smiled warmly at reporters hurrying inside the room, toting video cameras and chatting rapidly on their cell phones.
Bob Clinkscale, an adjunct professor of journalism at Emerson, told The Daily Free Press that last year, the media acted inappropriately and that he was surprised reporters still wanted to attend the service a year after Snelgrove’s death.
“After the initial response to the shock, cameras were all over campus with pushy, arrogant reporters,” he said. “There’s a way to cover a story and a way not to cover a story.”
Clinkscale, who has worked at Emerson since 1978 and taught Snelgrove in two classes, said this year’s memorial would probably get just enough coverage to remind people of the “fragility of life” and the “humanitarian” side of news.
Speakers and students wore pins of Snelgrove’s smiling portrait on their lapels, and the mood was relatively light-hearted in between on-air segments.
Janet Kolodzy, assistant professor of journalism at Emerson and Victoria’s former academic advisor, said it was “heartening” that the media attended the memorial. Referring to the Boston Herald’s graphic coverage of Snelgrove’s death last year, Kolodzy said she hoped the media would “act better” this year.
The morning after Snelgrove’s death, the Herald published front-page color photos between the headlines “Go Sox!” and “Triumph and Tragedy” of her bleeding after a pepper pellet struck her face. After a sudden backlash of appalled readers, the Herald quickly issued a public apology, saying their intention had been to illustrate how graphic the tragedy was and prevent it from happening again. Other media outlets chose not to print the explicit photos and chastised the Herald for its decision.
“The news media has a short memory,” Kolodzy said. “But I would hope that they have learned that we are dealing with people here. I have faith in them.”
This year, the situation was not stressful, which probably influenced the media’s “dignified” coverage and behavior, she said.
The Snelgrove family has created a scholarship in their daughter’s name. Student volunteers at the service sold $3 wristbands to support the fund.
The Snelgrove family did not attend the memorial.
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