A Hypothetical to Ponder:

You’ve reached your mid-20s, a good five years removed from your bachelor’s at Northwestern. As a savvy individual with a degree from a celebrated institution, you’re naturally what the business world would call “upwardly mobile.” Determined not to stay in the same consulting job you and everyone else in your fraternity took after graduation, you’re eyeing a job in management.

You’ve sweated out two rounds of interviews, in the middle of a third, when you realize the twinkle is gone from John Q. Interviewer’s eye. Thrown for a loop, you wonder what could be wrong: You didn’t lie on your resume this time; and besides, in four years with the firm, your record has been impeccable.

John Q. breaks the suspense for you, swiveling the computer monitor on his desk around. “We found something during your background check. Could you explain this?”

Muh. Ther. Fuck.. You at least kept your lips closed while you thought that, but meanwhile it’s becoming harder and harder to stop from shitting in your suit pants. On the screen is a news article, on a Web page you never knew existed. The date: 2001. The headline: EPD nabs NU soph with dime bag. The source: The Daily Northwestern. The subject: Isn’t that obvious by now? It’s you.

To John Q. Interviewer, it’s irrelevant that the charges were dropped a month after the incident. It was an illegal seizure, and it won’t stay on your permanent record, you remember the judge saying. Yet six years later, you’re getting indirectly screwed – by the student newspaper of your alma mater, no less.

So What's the Point?

The Daily prints a police blotter detailing mostly trivial criminal activity both on campus and in Evanston. Names and addresses of those involved – including NU students – are often included, because as Editor-in-Chief Matt Palmquist points out, it’s “public information.”

What Palmquist says is true, and he has justice on his side: It’s legal to publish a police blotter. After all, the Daily doesn’t create the incidents; students who use poor judgment and screw up do. However, it’s interesting -– and to this writer, alarming – to note that when lunch ends and the Dailies hit the trash can, the negative publicity for those involved isn’t over: It’s permanently archived on the Internet for the whole world to see, and see over and over again, whenever they please.

When we look back at our college years, we’ll no doubt have a lot of positive, lasting memories. And we’ll no doubt want to forget our lapses in judgment, our worst moments of debauchery and for some, a trivial run-in with John Q. Law of the Evanston PD. But courtesy of the electronic microscope of an aspiring campus newspaper, the miscues of NU’s student body are forever etched in time, instantly retrievable by the type-and-click ease of a search on Google.

It’s unlikely that the Daily will cease archiving its police blotter on the Internet.
After all, any high-minded collegiate editor wouldn’t want to compromise his “journalistic integrity,” and any aspiring Medillian knows that police blotters make excellent resume fodder for summer internships. One must be ready for the real world, right, where Metro reporters hover around police scanners like buzzards, waiting for their big break?

The problem is, college isn’t anything like the real world. It’s a place where we learn, grow, and often make a lot of stupid, regrettable decisions in the process. There’s almost an accepted “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about the whole thing: How many times has an interviewer looked at you sternly and said, “Son, I hope you didn’t spend your college years running around and getting wasted”? Regardless, a five-year old story on the Internet about an underage drinking festival at your college apartment, much less a small marijuana bust, will score major negative points with any background checker.

Yet, for the Daily, the simple, legal power to publish “public” information has seemingly blinded them from considering the lasting effects of their actions on the student body to which they belong. A right to publish petty student run-ins with the law doesn’t equal a responsibility to publish petty student run-ins with the law.

If someone is shaken down with a pound of herb under his bed in Bobb, by all means, print it. But in trivial, non-felonious matters, have a heart for those who fucked up in a time and place where fucking up is pretty close to the norm. You embarrass the fallen for a day in print; is it really necessary to kick them in the ass for a lifetime on the Internet?

There will be ample opportunity to slander people later in life, but for now, have a conscience. Even Woodward and Bernstein went to college.