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Number of sections reduced due to a drop in hiring for TAs/TFs: 450Target class size for sections this year, up from last year’s average...
Northwestern University is dealing with a class project that may have become too successful. From 2003 to 2006, students at the university's Medill School of Journalism investigated the evidence surrounding the murder conviction of Anthony McKinney, who was sentenced to life in prison for the 1978 murder of a security guard outside of Chicago. They eventually posted their findings online, including key witnesses recanting their statements during the trial, allegations of police intimidation and two potential suspects named by a man who says he was present during the murder. In response to the student investigation, the state attorney...
...producing a persuasive argument for reopening the case is not the only result of the Medill project. The office of Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has subpoenaed a broad range of materials from Northwestern, from off-the-record interview notes and student memos to class grades and syllabi for the school's Investigative Journalism class, which worked on the project. (See a gallery of exonerated prisoners...
...Chicago Tribune on Oct. 20 as calling the students "investigators" instead of reporters. And Alvarez's chief of staff, Dan Kirk, is quoted as saying the purpose of the subpoena is to ensure that students did not approach the case with a bias and that grades in the class weren't tied to the results of the investigation. Kirk said this could undermine the information's legitimacy in the event of a retrial. Lavine calls the notion "insulting." "The prosecutor's job is not to cast stones against the work the students did," Lavine says. "It's their...
...whether the class's website could be considered a news outlet, Ugland says that while it isn't necessarily a "slam dunk," the students published their conclusions and much of their evidence on a publicly accessible website. "Certainly in spirit, the work that they're doing is the kind that the legislature no doubt had in mind when they extended these protections to journalists," he says. Additionally, the project is part of the Medill Innocence Project, which has had an impressive record since it started in 1999; student reporters have helped exonerate 11 convicts, including five inmates on death...