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When two student reporters and a photographer were witnesses to a police shooting of a murder suspect on Sept. 24, Maggie Balough Hillery, publisher of the The Sagamore (the student-operated news organization of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis), reacted quickly.
She arranged for the young journalists to meet with a campus crisis counselor soon after they returned from the death scene on that Friday.
"It was clear to me that the students had experienced a traumatic event in several ways," said Hillery. "Clearly those who were at the scene had witnessed something they never will forget and had realized they were in a dangerous situation.
"The editors in the office had listened through the cell phones the reporters carried to what happened. They too were shaken. I needed to find people who could help them deal with what had just happened."
The following Monday, counselors from campus police and from the student counseling office met with The Sagamore staff to talk again. That session included two of the students who had witnessed the shooting as well as editors who were in telephone communication with the team when the shooting occurred. The session was open and other student journalists attended.
» Click here to read student journalist Keith Kinder's account of the incident.
» Click here to read student editor Ginny LaRoe's reflections.
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