An hour south from our newsroom, Loyola University is trying to punish a student journalist for doing her job.
We at the Reveille are no strangers to administrative pushback to our coverage, and we’re appalled to see another university attempting to discipline a student reporter for providing coverage to her community.
Kloe Witt, a journalist for The Maroon, the Loyola student newspaper, went to the university police station in March to report on a student arrested for stalking. She made the trip after a station official told an editor at The Maroon to send a reporter. Witt rang the doorbell and was greeted by an officer and promptly identified herself as a reporter, according to The Maroon.
The police officers seemed more than willing to help Witt with her story – they even offered to make copies of the arrest record for her and briefed her and an administrator on the arrest.
Witt “visibly began recording” during this briefing, The Maroon reported. Shortly after the meeting, the Loyola administrator who also attended the briefing, Marquita Morgan-Jones, demanded that Witt hand over the documents she had been given and told her to leave immediately.
Eleven days later, Witt was notified by Loyola that she was facing disciplinary charges for an unauthorized recording and falsification or misuse of university records, according to The Maroon.
Witt went to a disciplinary hearing to face three violations; she was found responsible for one, unauthorized recording, and the other two were dismissed. Witt is appealing the finding of responsibility.
What exactly do university officials think Witt did wrong here? What do they think she should have done differently? It’s unclear, given that officials have denied opportunities to comment on the matter, according to The Maroon.
Even if it wasn’t clear to the officers in the police station that Witt was recording, there should be no reasonable expectation of privacy in this setting and context. Witt was invited by police officers to a police station to gather information about a crime that took place that night. The notion that the conversation was private is ridiculous.
“I followed every rule and was just doing my job as a journalist,” Witt said in an article by The Maroon. “I was doing that job and doing it right, and I’m still being punished.”
In a statement to the Reveille, The Maroon editors-in-chief, Macie Batson and Jackie Galli, said that Witt is required to write a 1,000-word reflection paper about what she did wrong for the student conduct board.
“If student journalists are allowed to unjustly be punished for ethically doing their job, we are afraid of what that means for the fate of a free student press, which the university promises,” the statement read. “We are afraid of what that means for the Jesuit value of the pursuit of justice at Loyola. We are afraid of what kind of institution we may then become. And we are afraid of what impact this precedent here could mean for the fate of similar universities.”
It seems that Loyola administrators are less concerned about the legal underpinnings of this case and more concerned about flexing their control over the student newspaper. The circumstances suggest that an administrator showed up to the police station, felt threatened by the reporter’s presence and reached for any policy they could use to discipline Witt and send a message to other student reporters.
Loyola’s mission statement is to “pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work for a more just world,” according to its website. These are worthy goals, but they’re impossible to achieve if school’s leaders are focused on preventing reporters from doing basic news gathering and keeping the community informed.
Loyola administrators should be embarrassed for their blatant disregard of press freedom.