To the Editor:
I wanted to express my extreme disappointment at The Dartmouth's handling of the "Breaking News" of the deaths of Professors Susanne and Half Zantop.
I feel that it was extremely inappropriate for The D to send an e-mail to the entire school at 12:15 on a Saturday night. There are a lot of reasons why I feel like Saturday night was a horrible time to send that e-mail, beginning with the fact that counseling services had not yet been set up to deal with students' reaction to this tragedy.
Had it been the case that there was a concern for people's safety and so it was important to have this information quickly disseminated, then it would have been the place of the Dean to both make that decision and send a school-wide blitz. I have faith in the College's administration to consider various implications in how it distributes information, and to choose to do so in a way which takes into account the emotional and physical well-being of the Dartmouth community.
When I think about The D's sending Saturday night's e-mail I can approach it from two different perspectives, both of which make me feel like there is a complete lack of any sense of integrity and morality with The D's decision to send that e-mail.
Viewing The D from a strictly journalistic point of view, it seeks to competitively give its subscribers all of the news as soon as possible. It makes some sense to get the story out as soon as possible -- however, it seems to me that that would be to get it in the forum of your newspaper and website, not by immediately e-mailing everyone in the school, D-subscriber or not, with the little pieces of information that you happened to have.
Furthermore, a friend of mine who does subscribe to The eDartmouth, received an extremely brief blitz at 11:30 p.m. saying little more than two professors had been found dead in Etna, NH, "just miles from campus" and it was a possible murder, it then referred readers to the webpage for more information.
Freaked out and scared for her own safety, my friend then attempted to sign onto the webpage but was unable to because of the high volume of traffic. That e-mail seemed to me to be me little more than sensationalist and cruel journalism, much closer to the realm of advertising and entertainment than anything bordering on compassion in the face of a tragic event. I am not quite sure what The D is attempting to emulate, but such prose in journalism sounds a great deal more like "Star Tabloid" to me, than it does the New York Times.
This brings me to the second perspective of looking at The D. The D can think of themselves as a venue which seeks to competitively give its subscribers up to the minute news, however, it seems that in so doing, you would be forgetting who you are.
You are not just the only major newspaper for Dartmouth College, you are also the newspaper which serves a small and specific community.
I cringe to think about those of my peers who were sitting alone in their rooms writing a paper last night, or who had been drinking, and returned alone to their rooms to find that e-mail from The D. As I said above, that first e-mail gave no information to students as to how they might be able to receive counseling or any sort of outlet for the emotions and shock which people felt at finding out this news.
Furthermore, in choosing to send that e-mail at 12:15 on a Saturday night, The D chose a time at which people were likely to have difficulty even finding a friend to talk about it with. I myself was at a party, and while I found it jarring to hear about such tragic news there, in hindsight I am glad I was there when I found it, if only because I could be of help and comfort to those of my friends who were there and knew of the Zantops personally.
As I am sure the staff of The D knows on any given Saturday night at Dartmouth some students are already asleep, some are alone in their rooms studying, some are in various states of intoxication, and many are out, at parties or visiting friends. At such a time, if a person finds out this horrible news while they are alone, they may have trouble locating a friend to help them deal with this because people are so scattered.
Anytime Sunday morning, or Sunday afternoon seems to me to be a much more appropriate time to have let people know about this event. People getting up and reading their e-mail would be much more likely to be able to locate their friends to speak to about this, or even to turn on the local news or go into town to get some confirmation of this story's reality.
I think that the recent events of this past November's election certainly served its part in demonstrating the enormous power that the press yields when it chooses to distribute information.
In part this is a good thing, as when there is an aggressive press watching things, it makes it more difficult to have rigging going on, but at the same time, we might have had a different president now if the press hadn't called Florida early.
This is only one example which highlights the recent establishment of a sense of journalistic morality, and a need to further develop it.
All newspapers should feel the need to establish a set of morals and integrity in their publications, but The Dartmouth, as the major news-provider of a small college, should especially take into account the well-being of the community it serves by responsibly distributing information.
I really hope that in the future, the staff at The Dartmouth will consider creating a sense of morality and integrity in its decisions as to how they choose to "publish the news."
