In separate sections, staff writer Patrick Malee briefly brings the reader into the minds of three female mid-distance runners mad-dashing toward the finish line of one of the biggest races of the season– exhausted but intermittently wondering if a full Ducks trifecta might actually be possible.

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As the lede shares, “Coming down the final 100-meter stretch of Sunday’s 800-meter final, Becca Friday had one thought ringing through her head over and over again. Not even a thought, really– more a simple, exhausted chant that kept her pumping to the finish line.  ’1-2-3. 1-2-3.’”

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My highest praise: For a split second while reading, I felt like I was in the race. This could have easily been a run-of-the-mill, stock-quote-filled event recap. Instead, Malee came up with a creative ‘in,’ carried out the legwork and talked to the principals, and had the news sense to recognize the human element that would enable the story to leap off the webpage.

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The piece is a perfect example of the quality journalism that is possible when you go the extra mile in your reporting and writing– even for a half-mile race.

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I’m always interested in quality student press work.  Send me links at dreimold@gmail.com.

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As I previously posted, Shaun Green, head coach of the CCSU men’s soccer team, recently stole and trashed roughly 150 copies of The Recorder in response to an article he didn’t like.  He subsequently apologized to campus security, but not to Recorder staff.  According to the paper, Green’s motivation for the theft was an article appearing in the issue focused on “the soccer team’s disqualification from next year’s postseason due to NCAA academic sanctions.”

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As the Student Press Law Center now confirms, “CCSU President Jack Miller announced that [Green] will be suspended for 60 days without pay, suspended from coaching four games next season, is required to issue a written apology to the Recorder and financially compensate the paper for destroying the copies.  The athletic department will also face a $100,000 penalty and one of Green’s assistant coaches [who helped him pull off the small-time grab-and-toss] will not return next season.”

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In addition, Green must pay the Recorder to compensate for the loss in printing and ad revenue from the stolen papers, and a letter will be placed in his file.

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CCSU president: “Make no mistake, this matter goes to the heart of our educational mission. I believe our response sends a clear signal that acts which contradict our educational mission will bring serious consequences.”

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Outgoing Recorder editor-in-chief Nicholas Proch: “I’m happy with what they’ve done, and on behalf of my staff I can say that. They did everything that they could do, I’m assuming, inside of the university.  I’m happy that they took it seriously and it wasn’t just a slap on the wrist. It was a true sanction, in my opinion.”

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My Take: I agree.  Wowzer.  Go CCSU.  On spec, it’s an appropriately harsh symbolic and actual punishment that shows the school acknowledges the severity of this sort of censorious behavior (and knows a little something about crisis management).

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The $100,000 athletic department fine is the most fascinating out-of-left-field penalty.  Questions that came to mind immediately after reading about it: What’s it for exactly– not exerting better control over one of its high-profile employees?  How does this in-house punishment compare to the school’s response to the soccer team’s NCAA sanctions?  Is it really the best course of action– doesn’t it hurt student-athletes and programs that could use that money and have nothing to do with the theft?  And what will the money be used for?  The creation of a new CCSU Press Freedom Center, perhaps? :)

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The term, first coined by Seventeen magazine, involves life happenings so embarrassing they “make even the most dignified college student’s skin crawl.”

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The Edge feature, by Kyra Gemberling, is headlined “Elon’s Own Traumarama.”  It shares first-person accounts from students about their especially cringe-inducing accidental cleavage exposures, urinary faux pas, walks of shame, black eyes, and missed kisses.

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A portion of one traumarama: “My roommate last year had an unfortunate problem when she gets really drunk– she tends to wet the bed after she gets back from partying. One weekend we were out having fun at a party when we decided we wanted to go home. Since no one was capable of driving at that point, I called a guy friend to come pick us up, and we decided to just sleep over at his house. After giving my roommate and I his bed while he slept on the couch, I woke up first the next morning– and discovered that my roomie had peed herself all over his bed!“

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The column is a time-honored part of the college media experience, like skipping classes to work on a story, random awards from state press associations, and InDesign freezing up just before you save the most beautiful page you’ve ever laid out and will never be able to replicate.  (Sorry, it’s been years, but I’m still bitter.)

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Below is a slightly-snarky-nay-awesome infographic I’ve created aimed at capturing the essence of these columns.  It is also my first attempt at easel.ly, the hot storytelling 2.0 tool of the moment.  It enables those with limited design chops to put together a ready-to-roll infographic in minutes.  Please enjoy, and let me know what keys I’ve left out!

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Related

College Memes, Final Exams Edition: Guest Starring Effie Trinket, The Rock, Polar Bears & Pawn Stars Guy

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My favorite snippet about it, meanwhile, comes from Deadspin: “OK, so this song has been out for eight months, and the 12-30 Harvard baseball team decided to drum up some viral video stardom by choreographing a few moves and lip-synching? Well done, then. Personally, we’re more impressed with sophomore outfielder Jack Colton, who appeared to sleep through the whole thing in the backseat. We salute you, Jack. We officially endorse your captaincy for next season.”

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Related

Student Photo of Bear Falling from a Tree in Colorado Crashes CU Independent Site, May Trigger Lawsuit

College Viral Video: The Zorro Lecture Prank

University of Rochester Admissions Hip-Hop Video Goes Viral

The Shocking True Story of How a New Hampshire Student Became a Meme

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More than a month after the much-publicized April Fool’s issue fall-out with Boston University’s Daily Free Press, The Connector at the University of Massachusetts Lowell has published an end-of-year satirical paper dubbed “deeply offensive,” “immature, careless, and callous.”

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A local paper’s description of the issue, which was published under the name The DisConnector: “Rife with profanity, it features a grotesque string of ribald tweets supposedly ripped from the actual Twitterverse, jokey items about gays, immigrants and race, a guide to the best brands of college booze, as well as an entire article filled with the excessive repetition of a derogatory term for a woman’s anatomy, and many other words and phrases that cannot be reprinted here.”

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A UML official: “To not have those sensors go off that they were doing something that was so hurtful to others, that’s really what was disappointing.  They’re not bad people; they just allowed immaturity and their own personal fun to really inhibit any boundaries of decency and responsibility as journalists.”

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In an apology note posted on Facebook (the paper’s website has apparently been down for months), the Connector‘s editor-in-chief writes, “The DisConnector was meant to be a satire. It was meant to generate discussion on our culture and our language. Everything that people have cited as offensive in the DisConnector are all things based around the type of college humor that we have heard repeatedly on television, the internet, and by our very own peers. However, we made a terrible mistake in our judgment. In creating the paper, we did not think of the repercussion it may have on our fellow peers. Even though we did not mean to hurt people, we have, and we want to answer for it.”

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Related

Boston’s Daily Free Press Publishes April Fools’ Day Stories on Cinderella Prostitution, Dwarf Gang Rape

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The section features four main elements: a set of reviews spotlighting the big news and trends on and off campus over the past four years; a photo slideshow displaying images from past Duke graduations racing back more than 100 years; the basic schedule of events for the weekend; and a pair of pieces profiling the student commencement speaker and the distinguished keynote speaker.

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As McBride wrote in the piece, headlined “The Real Me”: “For my entire life, I’ve wrestled with my gender identity.  It was only after the experiences of this year that I was able to come to terms with what had been my deepest secret: I’m transgender. . . . As SG President, I realized that as great as it is to work on issues of fairness, it only highlighted my own struggles. It didn’t bring the completeness that I sought. By mid-fall, it had gotten to the point where I was living in my own head.  With everything I did, from the mundane to the exciting, the only way I was able to enjoy it was if I re-imagined doing it as a girl.  My life was passing me by, and I was done wasting it as someone I wasn’t.”

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Since its publication and posting at the start of the month, the op-ed has earned quite a bit of buzz– social media virility, news media attention, and “plenty of support from students . . . and LGBT activists,” including a tweet from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation.

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McBride, about the response: “I always knew that I went to an inclusive and accepting school.  But the outpouring of love and support was so far beyond my expectations. I’ve never been prouder to go to A.U. . . . And I really do hope this experience for our campus is not a blip on the gossip mill.  I hope it’s an opportunity to raise awareness for a sustained inclusion and awareness of trans students.”

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