A Rape On Campus By Sabrina Rubin Erdely

Konika Kamal

Professor. Jozsef Orosz

CMN 3152

April 3, 2017

Analysis of “A rape on Campus” By Sabrina Rubin Erdely

On November 19, 2014, rolling stone published an article called “A rape on campus” written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The Article was based on an alleged gang rape that happened at a college fraternity party at the University of Virginia. However, the article was retracted from rolling stone’s website on April 5, 2015, but they replaced the article with full text of the Columbia School of Journalism's findings the same day they removed the original article.

The article was retracted from the website because the story about the gang rape was false. Steve Coll the dean of the Columbia school of Journalism describes it as a piece of

journalism, about a failure of journalism. The article was about Jackie who was a first-year student at the University of Virginia. She was invited to dinner and a fraternity party by a third-year student called Drew who she knew as a fellow lifeguard at the university’s aquatic center. The alleged gang rape happened on September 27, 2012. After midnight, Drew asked her if she wanted to go upstairs where it was more quieter and she agreed to go with him. He took her to a darkened bedroom and she remembered looking at the clock and it was 12:52 am. Then as her eyes were adjusting to the dark room, she blindly turned towards Drew and at the same moment, she said she detected movement in the room and she felt someone bump into her. “Jackie began to scream. "Shut up," she heard a man's voice say as a body barreled into her, tripping her backward and sending them both crashing through a low glass table. There was a heavy person on top of her, spreading open her thighs, and another person kneeling on her hair, hands pinning down her arms, sharp shards digging into her back, and excited male voices rising all around her. When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. The men surrounding her began to laugh… Jackie fell into a stupor, mentally untethering from the brutal tableau, her mind leaving behind the bleeding body under assault on the floor.” (Erdely, A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA). The men who raped were from the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. When she woke up she ran outside and dialed a friend screaming “Something bad happened. I need you to come and find me!” (Erdely, A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA). Minutes later her three best friends (2 boys and a girl their names were changed) arrived on campus to find Jackie at the street corner shaking. Randall suggested that they should take her to the hospital but her other two best friends didn’t agree with the idea of taking her to that hospital. Cindy said that her reputation in the university will be shot for four years, Andy agreed with her. They kept on arguing whether they should take her to the hospital or not but the end they took her back to her Dorm and that’s what Jackie really wanted.
After reading the summary of this article, you will obviously feel remorse for Jackie but sadly the story about the gang rape was false. When the article got, published people started getting suspicious about the article, Questions were raised.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely was based in Philadelphia and she has been working with Rolling stone since 2008.

She is specialized in writing true-crime stories. Will Dana the magazine’s managing editor considered Erdely to be "a very thorough and persnickety reporter who's able to navigate extremely difficult stories with a lot of different points of view."(Coronel et al. Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report). Erdely met Jackie through Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. When Erdely first met Jackie, she felt that she “had this stamp of credibility” because a university employee connected them. On July 14, 2014, Erdely phoned Jackie and she gave her a vivid account of the incident. Erdely was shaking when Jackie told her about the incident. Between July and October 2014, Erdely interviewed Jackie seven more times before the article got published. Erdely, she said that Jackie proved to be challenging at times, she failed to respond to her emails or calls. At two points, she thought Jackie wanted to withdraw from being part of the article. Also, Jackie failed to give Erdely the name of the lifeguard who had organized the attack on her because she said that she was still afraid of him. This led to tense exchanges between Jackie and Erdely but Rolling Stone’s editors decided to go without knowing the lifeguard’s name or his existence. Even though they knew that he

committed a crime which he needed to be held accountable for they failed to clarify if he really existed. After Rolling stone’s editors agreed to ahead with the article without finding out who the lifeguard is, Jackie cooperated fully until publication. However, after the article was published Erdely decided to ask Jackie again for the lifeguard’s name because she felt that he was dangerous and it bothered her that Jackie was unwilling to provide his name. Erdely told Jackie that she wasn’t going to publish his name. “Jackie gave Erdely a name. But as the reporter typed, her fingers stopped. Jackie was unsure how to spell the lifeguard's last name. Jackie speculated aloud about possible variations.” (Coronel et al. Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report). Erdely was wondering how Jackie could not recall the exact name of someone who committed such a horrible crime against her and who she even fears a lot. I believe that Erdely was trying to protect Jackie which in the Code of Ethics in Journalism it's known as ‘Minimizing harm’.
Over the next few days Erdely started to question her work, she investigated the name that Jackie gave her but she was unable to confirm that he worked as a lifeguard or he was part of the fraternity.

She contacted her editors about her concerns. On December 4th, 2014 Erdely contacted her principal Editor Sean Woods and told him that she had now lost confidence in the accuracy of her published description of Jackie’s assault”. Woods was stunned when he heard this, he raced out of his office to decide what to do next. Later that day the magazine published an editor’s note that officially retracted Rolling stone’s reporting on Jackie’s allegation of gang rape at the University of Virginia. Per woods that was the worst day of his professional life (Coronel et

al)
Erdely believed that Jackie was reliable so did her editors and her fact-checker who spent more than 4 hours verifying all that Jackie told Erdely, Jackie even corrected the fact checker at times but the after the article was published there was no evidence to support the article. “Once you violate your professional standards of verification you are dead” (Jozsef Orosz) The fact checker for the article was said to be a junior employee for Rolling stone without ultimate decision-making authority. Rolling stone requested that name of the fact checker shouldn’t be revealed.
Also, Erdely failed to contact the three important people of the story, that is the three friends that were with Jackie that night. The Washington Post interviewed the three friends but they told a different story compared to the article. They said that when they saw her they believed that she suffered from trauma but she did not appear physically wounded as the article described in the article. The Washington post also found out that the fraternity members clarified that there was no party on the alleged date and they said that they don’t have the name of the alleged attacker to be a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
In addition, the Charlottesville police said that they didn’t find any evidence of the gang rape Rolling stone described. However, the police Chief Timothy Longo said that “doesn’t mean that something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie that night.
The rolling stone lost their credibility because of this article and Erdely who also failed to be accurate in her article. As a Journalist, you should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering and reporting news. As a journalist, you should be Credible, Accurate, Impartial and Objective in your work because if you don’t follow these principles your works would hold no value again.