Dartblog

The Valley News weighed in yesterday with a well scrubbed article on the hazing scandal at the College. Regrettably, the article is not on-line. It begins as follows:

Another public relations headache for Dartmouth College is making waves around the Internet this week after a scathing editorial in the student newspaper alleged that one student’s “dehumanizing” hazing experience is the norm, not the exception at Dartmouth fraternities.

How curious that a reference to PR makes the story’s lead. One would think that the physical and mental health of students would figure somewhere in the paper’s take on hazing. Later on, the paper noted SAE President Brendan Mahoney’s view of the situation.

Brendan Mahoney, student president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, has roundly denied all allegations against his fraternity, and the college administration says that while they take Lohse’s claims seriously, there is no evidence or corroborating witnesses to back them up.

To my mind, even though we are only in January, Mahoney wins Dartblog’s Pinocchio Award for 2012 and the Kim Administration walks off with the Ostrich Prize. Geez, even yesterday’s D has an editorial entitled “The Importance of Accuracy,” in which it roundly states that it corroborated the information in Andrew Lohse’s column (as Dartblog did before printing the initial version of Lohse’s piece):

To publish a column that levels such serious allegations against any institution without taking the time to corroborate such accusations is an affront to the principles of integrity widely cherished by responsible journalists. We did our utmost to confirm that The Dartmouth would not, in publishing this column, be giving voice to patently false claims against both a campus fraternity and the administration. Ultimately, a number of changes had to be made to the original draft after new information came to light.

It was not a desire to shelter Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity or the College administration, but rather our responsibility to corroborate facts that led to a delay of several days between our receipt of the column and its publication.

Nobody is coming out of this whole thing looking good. That’s for sure.

Note: There was no reference again yesterday to the hazing scandal in the Dartmouth in the News digest from Public Affairs. This omission marks the first time in my memory that the digest has omitted a story about the College that appeared in the Valley News.