Talk travels fast around campus. Employees in the Admissions Office may not have realized just how fast, however, when they chose not to make copies of The Daily Free Press bearing headlines about Philip Markoff, a second-year Boston University School of Medicine student accused of murder, available to prospective students and their families in the Admissions Reception Center at 121 Bay State Road.
Facebook posts made by students employed by the Admissions Office have proven not only to be further confirmation of the office’s attempts to stifle information about the case and keep prospective students in the dark, but the posts also show that the trend of hiding papers is nothing new for the office.
The alleged ‘Craigslist killer’s’ BU connection is no secret. The case has made national headlines since Markoff’s April 20 arrest. Markoff, 23, stands accused of the April 14 murder of Julissa Brisman, a 25-year-old masseuse from New York, and the April 10 kidnapping and armed robbery of Trisha Leffler, 29, a Las Vegas prostitute. Markoff met both women through online classifieds site Craigslist, and attacked both in downtown Boston hotels. Markoff’s fingerprints have also been found at the scene of another attack, this one an April 16 attempt to hold up a prostitute in a Warwick, R.I. hotel room, according to The Boston Globe.
In an April 23 article in The Daily Free Press (‘BU’s comment on Markoff: No comment’), an anonymous Admissions Office student employee who works at the front desk of the reception area is cited as telling a reporter that those newspapers boasting front page stories of the case were only available by specific request. Fifty papers a day are delivered to 121 Bay State Road. Another Daily Free Press reporter, who did not identify herself as such, independently confirmed the same thing. A third reporter attempted to interview prospective students at the center and was escorted from the building.
President’s Host and Admissions Office staff member Christopher Wilcox posted a status Sunday afternoon on his public profile on the social networking site Facebook: ‘Christopher Wilcox HATES THE FREEP.’ The post prompted a comment thread among Wilcox and fellow Admissions staffers Daniel Berg and Jason George. Wilcox modified his profile’s privacy settings after being contacted by The Daily Free Press about the posts, which were accessible Sunday evening.
In the thread, which is reproduced here with all grammar and punctuation intact, George said that ‘the freep is out sometimes, but [admission staffer’s name removed]’s been screening it to make sure that med student’s story is not in it before they put it out.’ He continues in saying that there is a ‘huge pile’ of newspapers in the back room for this reason.
Wilcox replies that ‘everytime ive been there its been in the back even when it wasn’t talking about the med student. the last time i remember the paper being out when there was a story on the hockey team winning the national championship.’
Berg accuses the newspaper of printing ‘our staff’s quote without permission’ and says that the reporters ‘tricked her into talking,’ when, in fact, the article did not use the employee’s exact quote or name, as she had requested, and the reporter had identified herself before asking any questions.
Berg, George and Wilcox were all contacted via email for a chance to comment for this article. Berg did not reply, and George and Wilcox declined to be interviewed for further comment or clarification.
It’s hardly unheard of for online comments to come into play in the news. In fact, this phenomenon was anticipated. In an April 21 email to MED students, MED Dean Karen Antman urged students to ‘use caution and discretion in discussing this case on [social networking] sites as anything you post could become part of the media coverage.’
Student Press Law Center Attorney Advocate Adam Goldstein said although it is difficult to determine whether the Admissions Office is legally wrong in hiding the newspapers, since BU is a private university and under no legal obligation to distribute the paper, these actions were certainly ‘educationally wrong, and don’t demonstrate a great commitment to free expression.’
Hiding a newspaper is equivalent to hiding information, Goldstein said.
He also said that attempting to stop prospective students from noticing the link between Markoff and BU could be a violation of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security and Campus Crime Statistics Act.
The Clery Act is named in memory of Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old student at LeHigh University who was raped and murdered in her dorm room. Clery’s murderer accessed her room because she propped her door open, a practice that had been a gateway to other crimes on campus. Had the school disclosed this pattern to its students, Clery’s murder could arguably have been prevented. In 1990 the federal law requiring schools to disclose such recurring crime patterns to students passed, and after the 2007 shooting on Virginia Tech’s campus, the law was amended to require schools to inform students of immediate danger as well.
‘The Clery Act, and why it exists, is so that students will be safer when they know how to protect themselves,’ Goldstein said. ‘I think a student newspaper reporting the crime helps remind them that crime happens, and that they need to protect themselves.’
College of Communication Dean Tom Fielder said the Admissions staff probably ultimately created more problems for itself by withholding the paper than by keeping it in plain sight.
Although the decision is regretful, Fiedler said he did not see it as a violation of the Clery Act. He pointed out that BU Today, BU’s official newsletter, ran the story of Markoff’s arrest prominently on April 21.
‘I don’t think that moving [the newspapers] would in any way be seen as a failure to notify the student body,’ he said.
Fiedler’s past as a working journalist, however, gave him another perspective on the matter.
‘If something like that had happened at my former newspaper, if I found that officials had started picking up copies of the paper or destroying or hiding them, I’d say that would be newsworthy,’ he said. ‘If, when you do a story like that and you find that you’ve struck a nerve, you know it’s worth following up.’
The Daily Free Press is hardly the first college newspaper to clash with administrative powers over distribution. The Tech, an independent student paper at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ran a front page article about a month ago about an MIT police officer arrested for purchasing and reselling large amounts of OxyContin. The next day, the staff received a tip that copies of the paper were lying in a recycling bin on campus, Contributing Editor Nick Semenkovich said. All in all, the staff discovered, about 300 copies of the newspaper had been stolen and recycled by campus police. After an administrative investigation into the matter, two of the officers were suspended. One was later fired; the other is now back on duty.
MIT also has multiple news outlets, some independent, like The Tech, and others school-run, like Tech Talk. Semenkovich said both have an important place on campus, because of the different coverage each publication provides.
‘It’s clear that the school’s newspaper exists for [public relations] purposes,’ he said. ‘They sell what the school does best . . . You really need the student newspaper to dig into things that are politically costlier, or that the school may not necessarily want to advertise . . . [with the student paper] you get more of a feel for the intellectual feel of the community and what people are talking about on campus.’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
My friends back on the west coast heard about the craigslist killer without me having to tell them anything- which means that, because it IS such common news, there really is no need to broadcast it to prospective students. Everyone knows, so why keep going on about it? It’s a business decision. Maybe It’s an overreaction for them to hide papers, but it’s not exactly shocking. And as for your sources, pretty sure Jason George is not an employee. He is an admissions hosts- a volunteer. Get the facts right, and for a story (admissions office concerned with image- shocker!) of such little importance/interest, facebook stalking is pretty low. As for the media using facebook for stories, we all know the media has been warped by sensationalism. This is why people have to be careful about what they post on facebook. I think it’s awesome that you’re continuing this cycle of sensationalism over actual journalism, and saying “other people do it” is probably the best defense of all time. High five.
My friends back on the west coast heard about the craigslist killer without me having to tell them anything- which means that, because it IS such common news, there really is no need to broadcast it to prospective students. Everyone knows, so why keep going on about it? It’s a business decision. Maybe It’s an overreaction for them to hide papers, but it’s not exactly shocking. And as for your sources, pretty sure Jason George is not an employee. He is an admissions hosts- a volunteer. Get the facts right, and for a story (admissions office concerned with image- shocker!) of such little importance/interest, facebook stalking is pretty low. As for the media using facebook for stories, we all know the media has been warped by sensationalism. This is why people have to be careful about what they post on facebook. I think it’s awesome that you’re continuing this cycle of sensationalism over actual journalism, and saying “other people do it” is probably the best defense of all time. High five.
Great article, Kase, and excellent rebut/rejoinder in the comments, Adam.
Perhaps BU has “no comment” because of the respect for the controversy and complexity that making “any comment” would likely encourage. I believe “no comment” is sometimes the appropriate response, especially in a situation like this.
Clearly neither of you read the article. As to Ms. Koenigsknecht, the article refers to administration run newspapers like MIT’s Tech Talk and BU Today as public relations papers, not the FREEP, which, as a reminder, is student run. As to your comment about who should and should not be attending BU, I will agree that most, if not all domestic students should know what’s going on. I would doubt, however, that all of their Parents (who give that final “OK”) know about the situation. I would also doubt that the countless international students who pass through that building all know about the Craigslist Killer. Oh but they’re idiots who need to read a book right? Clearly, therefore, there are a number of people who would benefit by the display of this news at the admissions center.<p/>As to Ms. Lanin, the online conversations used by the FREEP were between students in their capacity as Boston University employees. Posting a message on facebook is exactly the same as going out in the street and holding up a large sign with flashing lights. There was no expectation of privacy in that conversation, just as if the conversants had stood in the middle of Comm. Ave. shouting at eachother with bullhorns. The reporting of public information is well within the scope of the responsibilities of any diligent and respected student newspaper. If you think you live in a world where conversations posted on the internet for literally millions to view are “private” conversations then you are sorely mistaken. The FREEP contacted the parties so that they might clarify their online statements. Those parties declined, leaving the FREEP only with the information obtained on the internet, which it has printed here so that you may review it and decide what you think about what was said. As for your comment that the FREEP’s credibility is thusly diminished, I pose to you that the finding and publishing of these comments demonstrates an extremely dilligent level of investigatory reporting that better informs students (to use your words), thus raising the reputation of the FREEP.
As progressive as BU students can be, it often seems that the institution lags behind. BU, like many other private universities, is obsessed with image (how much did our new logo cost?). It seems like whenever something comes up that is mildly controversial, BU has a “no comment” attitude toward it. Howard Stern is a wildly successful COM graduate and they act like he doesn’t exist. According to the actions of the admissions office, only some of what BU students report on is acceptable. That is a great message to send to the prospective communications student. Creating a barrier between the institution and its students is extremely harmful. The new generation of college students is more connected to media than ever before and unethical censorship is only creating more of a divide.
I agree that University censorship of the FREEP is wrong. However, this article made me lose whatever respect I had left for this paper. Although it may be common practice to use online conversations in journalism, it does not put you in the right. As a the only student newspaper you should be our voice and informer, not our enemy. You should have enough respect for your fellow students not to use backward ways to get a quote. Using facebook to get your information only lowers your credibility in the reader’s eyes.
You have got to be kidding me – hiding newspapers? Anyone applying to BU who hasn’t heard about the Craiglist killer shouldn’t be attending BU. They should start by reading a book or a newspaper and then consider applying. Second….. to say that the purpose of the Freep is public relations is an insult to the students who publish it and whom aspire to be good journalists. When I gave my son the OK to attend BU it was based on a history of liberal and open minded thinking, great faculty and facilities, challenging academics and an opportunity for personal growth. To hear that the University is so worried about its image to “hide newspapers” is scary. When the Craigslist Killer’s book comes out (which it no doubt will), will BU ban it?