The decision last week to print a student's name who was accused of attacking another student because of his sexual orientation was the hardest decision I have ever had to make as editor-in-chief.
I have received two letters so far on the matter, one of which was from the accused assailant's roommate stating that the Daily did not have the right to print the name, and another stating that on a campus as small as Tufts', the Daily has an obligation to protect the student's
privacy.
In case there are other students who have similar feelings, I want to address why the Daily printed the name, and why it would do so again.
To ensure that the accusation by the student was not frivolous, the Daily's news editors hunted down sources who witnessed the events chronicled in the article. Some spoke on the record, and some did not.
But with each source, the details of the night were nearly identical, and all independently said they recognized the alleged assailant from previous
encounters.
Those same news editors made repeated attempts to contact the student accused with the crime. Eventually getting through, the student declined to be interviewed.
Knowing that witnesses all agreed on what happened, and with the student not providing any alternative version of events, the second hurdle was to decide if printing the name was necessary; if it provided facts which added to the
article.
The Daily is the campus' only newspaper. Its purpose is to provide Tufts with everything it can discover about the campus, and any time it withholds information, it is not doing its job as well as it should. We have an obligation to tell the campus who they live with.
It is not responsible journalism to try to hide things from the thousands of students, professors, and staff in order to protect the privacy of one person whose actions affected other members of the community.
Up to this point I have sounded pretty set on printing names. So why do I call it the hardest position I have had to make? Because all of the above is simply the theory.
We are students, too, and knowing that we are publicly writing about one of our own is a tough decision to make sometimes.
The Daily is not an organization which ignores the voices of fellow students and professors. But there is a higher standard that news media needs to follow. And the Daily is not ready to abdicate its responsibility as this campus' source for news.
