Commonwealth Chronicle

A 2009 anonymous health survey given to Washington and Lee undergraduates shows that about 18 percent of female respondents have experienced rape or attempted rape. That’s two times the national college average for sexual assault, says Dr. Jane Horton, Washington and Lee’s director of student health. The report shows that 39 percent of undergraduate women attending Washington and Lee responded to the survey- 341 women in total.

“We feel comfortable that our survey is representative of our students’ experience here,” said Horton.

Commonwealth Chronicle reporter Cameron Steele takes an in-depth look at sexual assault at Washington and Lee as part of an on-going investigation about gender relations on local college campuses. To watch the package and hear Steele speak on the Rockbridge Report broadcast about her in-depth series about gender relations and sexual assault at local colleges, click the video below.

Cameron and I will have exclusive access to all of the Institute sessions, not only to Jayson Blair’s public address.

For up-to-the-minute updates, follow us on Twitter.

Follow Becky Bratu here. Follow Cameron Steele here.

Jayson Blair (Photo: Washington and Lee University)

By Becky Bratu and Cameron Steele

To the dismay of some online media outlets, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair is the keynote speaker for Washington and Lee University’s upcoming 48th Journalism Ethics Institute.

Mediaite and The Wall Street Journal are only two of the media organizations that found the news hard to believe. (Click titles for links to stories.)

In 2003, Blair resigned in shame from the Times after an investigation uncovered he had fabricated and plagiarized major elements of his stories. But, while most journalists see lies, scandal and compromised journalistic integrity when they see Blair’s name, W&L’s Knight Professor of journalism ethics sees a learning opportunity for his students.

Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor of journalism ethics (Photo: Washington and Lee University)

In August, Edward Wasserman read a profile of  Blair in The Washington Post.

“He sounded interesting [in the Washington Post profile], like he might have some perspective on the scandal,” Wasserman said. “And he lives right up the road.”

Wasserman e-mailed Blair later that week to invite him to the Journalism Ethics Institute, a two-day event during which journalism students, professors and more than a dozen journalism professionals discuss ethical dilemmas facing the news media.

As the keynote speaker, Blair will give a 20-minute public talk entitled “Lessons Learned.”

“The idea seems absurd of Jayson Blair keynoting an ethics institute, but it’s an opportunity for students to confront a key figure in a major ethical scandal,” Wasserman said.

Like past institute keynoters, Blair was paid $3,000, a sum that’s well below what other W&L public speakers earn, according to Wasserman.

The news about Blair’s keynote address at an ethics institute was met with some support and a lot of criticism by local and national media professionals. Mediate writer Philip Bump calls Blair “one of this decade’s biggest disgraces,” while National Public Radio ombudsman Alicia Shepard believes Blair is enjoying the attention.

In an email, Shepard said she didn’t see the educational value in having Blair speak to students about the temptations a young journalist may face.

“There may be some temptations, but that’s not the issue,” Shepard said. “He was lazy, deceitful and didn’t do the job.”

But Wasserman doesn’t believe Blair is as attention-hungry as his detractors portray him.

“[Blair] did not seek this out and, by his account, he hasn’t done this [spoken publically about the scandal] before,” Wasserman said.

Shepard, who attended the Ethics Institute last year, hopes panelists and participants “come down hard” on Blair, otherwise his presence “might just be entertaining, not educational.” But Wasserman is confident his students are not going to sit back and let Blair place blame on others or avoid the issue of deceit altogether.

Rosemary Armao, assistant professor of journalism and communication at State University of New York at Albany, says Blair will speak to her students in December.

“I cannot imagine a more illustrative lesson for my students than to talk to the person whom we have painted as the biggest bogeyman of journalism ethics of all time,” Armao said in an email. “I want them to think about, to quiz him, to press him on how he could go so wrong.”

McGregor McCance, managing editor of Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, agrees that students have a lot to learn from Blair. “He is exhibit A for how to screw up a journalism career and diminish the credibility of an industry that can’t afford to lose credibility,” he said in an email. “The Ethics Institute deserves praise for doing something unpredictable with its forum this year.”

But Wasserman says the Blair case has been an ongoing study for the institute. “This is not our first rodeo,” he said. “Over the years we’ve done a lot with and had a sustained, considerable interest in this affair.”

Gerald Boyd, the Times managing editor who lost his job following the Blair scandal, attended the Ethics Institute in the past. Last year, Lorne Manly, Times‘ media editor while Blair worked there spoke at the institute. Manly was in charge of developing a project about the long and painful post-mortem at the Times after Blair resigned.

Cable network C-SPAN, non-profit media watchdog Accuracy In Media, and documentary filmmaker Samantha Grant will be among those present at Washington and Lee University on Friday, Nov. 6 to cover Blair’s speech.

It has almost been five months since I graduated from Washington and Lee University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communications. And as that anniversary is fast approaching, I ask myself the question I once thought of as redundant. Why did I major in journalism? It’s hardly the first time I’ve faced this question. More or less distant relatives would often make snarky comments under their breath about my chosen career path at various family gatherings. I always chose to welcome their snark with a confident smile and a speech about my love for writing and traveling, my tiresome curiosity and my desire to tell stories that would otherwise remain untold. But how much of that passionate speech is nothing but my romanticized perspective on a career that, to me, is becoming increasingly inaccessible every day?

Not everyone who majors in journalism wishes to become a journalist, and that’s O.K. But I did. And so did Cameron. Yet our future in journalism – as employed media professionals -  remains uncertain.

“Does anyone care enough to do any of these things?” Cameron asked me in an email she sent this week. The subject of that email was what I later decided to use as a title for this post. The “things” she referred to were public sources of support enumerated in an article in The Washington Post. According to this article and a report commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, a new model for news reporting could be established with support from various public sources, including philanthropists, local governments, local communities and Internal Revenue Service tax regulations. An excerpt from the Washington Post article:

American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reporting — as society has, at much greater expense, for public education, health care, scientific advancement and cultural preservation, through varying combinations of philanthropy, subsidy and government policy. It may not be essential to save or promote any particular news medium, including print newspapers. What is paramount is preserving independent, original, credible reporting, whether or not it is profitable, and regardless of the medium in which it appears.

So, will anyone care to do any of these things?

It turns out Virginia Voice is the registered name for Central Virginia’s audio reading and information service, a non-profit organization celebrating 30 years of service to the visually and physically disabled.

Cameron and I are grateful to Virginia Voice Program Director Becky Emmet, who informed us about this situation.

“We’ll certainly be starting a blog of our own very soon, and things could get more confusing,” Emmet said in an email. “Searching for Virginia Voice on Twitter was how I found you.” It looks like our little blog is growing up.

To all our readers, we hope you continue enjoying our stories.

Stephen Lloyd (Copyright 2009 Rockbridge County Jail)

By Cameron Steele

A former Virginia Military Institute cadet who faced a jury trial on felony rape and sodomy charges pleaded guilty Tuesday to a lesser charge of sexual battery.

Stephen Lloyd, 22, won’t face sentencing on the misdemeanor conviction for three years. If he stays out of trouble, he most likely won’t serve any jail time, said Commonwealth’s Attorney Bucky Joyce.

The misdemeanor sexual battery charge and delayed sentencing are part of a plea agreement that Rockbridge County Circuit Judge Michael Irvine accepted at a hearing on the eve of Lloyd’s jury trial, which was supposed to start Wednesday.

“We all feel [the plea agreement] is a good conclusion to the case because no one is completely happy with it,” Joyce told the judge.

Lloyd’s guilty plea was a so-called “Alford” plea, meaning that he did not admit guilt for all aspects of the crime. Instead, the plea means that Lloyd accepts that there is enough evidence to convict him if the case went to trial.

The case began last March when a female cadet at VMI accused Lloyd of raping and sodomizing her. At the time, Lloyd was a cadet at VMI.

Plea negotiations between Joyce and Lloyd’s defense attorneys began late Monday night and resumed Tuesday morning, continuing until almost 4 p.m., when the two sides told Irvine they had reached an agreement.

Joyce said the female cadet was consulted throughout the negotiation process. She decided to accept a plea agreement because she realized “what a tough case it would be,” he said in an interview.

On the morning of March 29, the female cadet, 21, reported to the VMI infirmary that she had been sexually assaulted by Lloyd. She later repeated her accusations to VMI police and was taken to Carilion Stonewall Jackson Hospital for a physical examination. As part of its protocol, VMI alerted Project Horizon, a Lexington-based agency that counsels cadets and others who report assaults.

Joyce told the judge that the female cadet took a few days to consider whether to press charges against Lloyd. She decided to pursue the charges, and Lloyd was arrested on April 1. A grand jury indicted Lloyd on rape and sodomy charges in July.

In an interview after Tuesday’s hearing, Joyce said he was torn about whether the evidence was strong enough to prosecute the case.

“This has been the most difficult case I’ve been involved in,” he said. “She maintained all along she’d been assaulted, but the corroborating evidence all along was weak.”

Joyce said that while scientific analysis of a swab taken from the female cadet’s neck suggested the presence of Lloyd’s DNA, no other swabs taken from anywhere on her body matched Lloyd.

Before the assault, she also had had an intimate relationship with Lloyd and had been drinking alcohol on that night — key facts that weakened the prosecution’s case, Joyce said.

“Basically, it all comes down to her testimony,” the prosecutor said during the hearing.

Joyce said his evidence would have shown:

On the night of March 28, the female cadet went to bed at about 10:30 p.m. in her barracks room, which she shared with two other cadets. A couple of hours later, Lloyd came into the room and woke her. He also sent two text messages to her cell phone, but the female cadet didn’t get the messages until later.

Lloyd asked her to smoke a cigarette with him outside the barracks, and she agreed. On their way back inside, Lloyd kissed her outside the trunk room, a basement area where cadets store their luggage. She kissed him back.

Joyce said it was unclear whether the female cadet entered the trunk room willingly.

For the next 45 minutes, the prosecutor said, Lloyd performed various “sex acts” on the female cadet against her will.

As Joyce summarized what she would have testified, the female cadet began to cry. The court bailiff handed her a box of tissues. Two of her friends, a woman and the male cadet who first convinced her to go to the infirmary after the assault, sat on either side of her and patted her shoulders.

Lloyd kept his eyes on the judge throughout the hearing. He wore a navy suit and spoke only when the judge asked him questions, answering “yes sir.”

When Joyce finished summarizing the evidence, he said the misdemeanor sexual battery charge and three-year sentencing delay were a sufficient compromise in the case.

Cary Bowen, one of Lloyd’s defense attorneys, said in court that they were ready for trial.

“We had many witnesses,” he said. “It would be hotly contested whether it [the sexual acts] was consensual or not.”

Joyce said Lloyd was dismissed from VMI after the charges were filed and did not graduate. In an interview, Lloyd said he lives in Mason Neck. He said he plans to move to Richmond to work as a helicopter mechanic and take flight lessons to become a pilot.

The female cadet returned to VMI this fall to finish her senior year. After the hearing, she rushed out of the courtroom with her two friends and could not be stopped to comment.

We are Cameron Steele and Becky Bratu. The madness began in the spring of 2009 with the In-depth Reporting class we took at Washington and Lee University. During the six-week term we reported on a series of  issues concerning Interstate 81, including excessive truck traffic and high crash rates.

At 325 miles, I-81 is the longest interstate in Virginia. It is one of the top eight trucking routes in the United States, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation. I-81 links southern economic hubs to northeast markets. But what was a state-of-the-art expressway in the 1960s became a clogged and perilous roadway. Now the Virginia corridor of I-81 has almost reached its capacity, with an average of 20,000 trucks traveling on the road every day. Originally designed to handle 15 percent truck traffic, I-81 sees up to 45 percent at peak times in busy hubs such as the Roanoke and Winchester areas.

Intrepidness and curiosity took us up and down the Virginia corridor of I-81, from truck stops to research centers, and from a VDOT traffic control room to, well, a morgue. We heard some amazing and, at times, shocking stories about the many ways in which the interstate has affected people’s lives. We told those stories in writing, to the best of our ability. And then the school year ended.

Bratu graduated with a degree in German and Journalism and Mass Communications and moved to Charlottesville. She couldn’t find a job in journalism. Steele, who still has one more year to go before she graduates, scored a summer internship at the Charlotte Observer. But we soon realized we missed our intrepid journeys, reporting for the Rockbridge Report and just writing the stories we cared about.

Enter Virginia Voice. With Bratu in Charlottesville and Steele in Lexington, we found a way to report on the issues we care about the most, such as transportation, business and education. But we’ll keep our eyes open for any other amazing stories waiting to be told.