I have been the campus crime reporter for the past year, and I find it exhilarating.
Each day, I check the blotter and see if anyone got arrested for a DWI or some other offense. I have spent countless hours with LSU police officers talking about police reports and what actually happened.
But with the job of covering campus crime comes some things I just don’t want to do.
I, like most people, do not like death or anything associated with it, but as you all know, this is what any crime reporter has been faced with during the past year.
Last semester, I came back from Alabama to the news Baton Rouge had a serial killer, and he had murdered three people — Gina Wilson Green, Charlotte Murray Pace and Pam Kinamore.
I immediately began attending daily Multi-Agency Task Force briefings. I received the information and experienced it all firsthand, and I probably even talked to some of you about how you felt.
In December, police linked another murder in Lafayette — Trinesha Dene Colomb — to the serial killer. Once again, I came back to school this semester to write an update for the first day of classes.
Yet, I was not affected personally. Yes, I felt deeply for the families, and I still do, but I was able to keep a sense of professionalism. My professors teach me every day that journalists are supposed to keep their feelings out of the events they cover and present all sides of a story.
On March 5, things changed.
As most of you know, this was the day biological sciences graduate student Carrie Lynn Yoder a went missing. Co-workers informed me of her disappearance as I left church, and I immediately came to The Reveille to get the information.
I went into professional mode, and I knew what had to be done. I went to her house, talked to the police and her neighbors, while watching an official investigation take place.
I proceeded to work on this story to give you all the information police released. But as I did this, my student feelings of fear and uncertainty began to fight with my professional feelings.
As the days passed and officials offered no information as to her whereabouts, I became nervous.
I attended the Vigil of Hope for Carrie as a reporter, but I found it difficult to be the objective, unbiased journalist you hear so much about. As a student, I did not know what to do because one of my fellow students was missing, and I could do nothing. I left the vigil and came back to The Reveille to ask my adviser, who covered crime for 10 years, one question — how did she deal with this feeling of fear and sadness and still be a reporter? Though she said it was difficult and she understood, she let me just talk. The newsroom also took the same approach to me and let me be. Though other reporters in the office had to cover crime at one point, they never found themselves faced with this problem.
The day police found Carrie’s body in Whiskey Bay, I was in class finishing a project.
Everyone in my class knew I was a reporter for The Reveille, but they had no clue what made me frantic and begin looking for information and answers.
The following day, I attended the family’s press conference as a professional. My colleagues watched the news conference on television in the newsroom, and they waited for me to ask a question. They didn’t know I felt that if I talked I wouldn’t be able to finish my thought. At that moment, I was faced with having to be a student grieving for another victim, while being obligated to be a professional.
Today, I am dealing with things I never thought would happen, while trying to define the line between student and professional. Being a student gives me an edge because I know what it feels like to be worried about the person walking toward me when I get out of class at night.
As a student, I am worried for my safety and for the safety of fellow students, and as a professional, I am worried we will forget the victims and go back to our daily lives. I want to encourage everyone not to forget what happened and to stay aware of their surroundings and what is happening within the community.