Archives: February 19-25, 2006

February 19, 2006

“Let me ask you something,” I say, standing, watching the hallway by Sam's side, as he kneels at SA President Alan Chilling's dorm room door.

Sam twists a contorted paper clip in the keyhole. “What's that?”

“Have you ever done this before?”

“What, breaking and entering?”

“Yeah.”

“Not for the newspaper.” Sam straightens, and with perfect nonchalance, opens the door.

Chilling doesn't have a roommate, and meets with the SA Executive Board from 7-9 every Sunday night. We waited until 7:15 before heading to his room.

“So saying that Chilling does have the Beats Alive contract here,” I say, “Where are we supposed to find it?”

Sam stand, his hands on his hips, looking around. The cinderblock walls are bare, but Chilling's desk is a clutter of hundreds, if not thousands of papers. The contract could be somewhere in the mess, but it's a daunting task to go through all that.

“Chilling is the kind of guy who keeps everything—as you can see,” Sam says, walking toward the desk and peering down at the photocopies and pages ripped from legal pads. “This is something special, though. It's going to be in a special place.” He lifts one sheet and casts it down haphazardly.

I pace around the room, as Sam opens and closes desk drawers. I open Chilling's closet and hit the jackpot. “What about a locked filing cabinet?” I ask tugging on one of two metal drawers.

Sam is there in a flash, and plugs his paper clip into the key hole here too. This one isn't even a challenge, and he has it open in under a minute. It's wild what this guy has—file folders just like the SA office. But here he holds his personal files. One with his Social Security card, passport and birth certificate, another with medical insurance information.

The contract may, in fact, be here. But after another minute, Sam stops looking.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Get a load of this,” Sam says, all of the smugness and humor gone from his voice. Sam's a smart, experienced guy. I've never really seen him surprised before, but in this moment, he's shocked.

I take a 4” x 6” black and white photograph from his hands. There's a blond girl, shown from the shoulders up, no signs of clothing. She looks half unconscious. Sam hands me two more and it grows clearer what I'm looking at.

“Well this is a side of Alan I never thought I'd see—or wanted to see.”

“Burns, do you have any clue what you're looking at?”

I'm looking at borderline pornographic pictures of the SA president, and don't really want to dwell on it any more than that. Even the girl—though pretty—doesn't look right. She's got that same out of it look in every shot.

“It's Amber Mitchell,” Sam goes on. Eyes wide, looking at other photographs. “I was right, this son of bitch doesn't throw anything away.”

 

February 20, 2006

I hardly slept last night, but as I sit across the table from Emma for lunch at the Student Center café, I can't stop moving. Yesterday, the biggest story I've had to cover the paper turned into one of the biggest stories in the history of the paper.

“But why would he have pictures?” Emma asks, before taking a bite from her egg salad on whole wheat.

“Sam says the guy keeps everything. And maybe it was a souvenir. I mean, for all know, Chilling could have done this more than once.”

The this to which I'm referring is rape.

When we broke into Chilling's dorm, and found the photographs locked away in his filing cabinet, Sam recognized the girl in them. Her name is Amber Mitchell, and she's a sophomore who, the previous year, said she was drugged and raped at a frat party. She was an acquaintance with a staff member of The Window who has since graduated, and he made sure that her story was in the headlines. The police didn't make much headway in the investigation, and a couple weeks later, she withdrew the claim, saying there had been a misunderstanding, and ending the search for the perpetrator.

Chilling had photos of himself and Amber, mostly naked, and her with that half-conscious look on her face. The implications don't get much clearer.

“But how does a guy as high profile as Alan Chilling get away with something like this? I mean, he's at every big event the school has, and he runs the SA meetings—I mean this girl would have had to have recognized him by now. Or at the least, he's an idiot for risking it.”

I down a spoonful of minestrone soup. “Sam and I are working on tracking her down now. She lives off campus, and we couldn't find a listed number. But we've been asking around, and trying to figure out what classes she's in.”

“Do you really think she'll want to talk to you about this?”

“If we can deliver the solution to her mystery to her, I'd say that's a good way to get our foot in the door.”

“But I'm just saying that it's kind of a sensitive issue,” Emma says, poking at her break with the nail of her index finger. “And if she dropped the case with the police, maybe there isn't a mystery.”

“Even that's a story, though. If she'll admit she was involved with chilling—admittedly, it's not quite as groundbreaking—a little more tabloidish even. But it would still be news if the girl from a high profile rape case had been mixed up with the president.”

“So you're willing to raise up a dead, personal issue for this story, even if both of the people involved want to put it behind them.”

I feel my momentum slipping away. “I guess I didn't look at it that way.”

“I'm just saying that it sounded like you were starting on something big with the concert and the contract discrepancy. And I'm worried that the real story is going to get lost in this.”

She has a point, and as I sip soup from my spoon, I recall how half-hearted Same and I became in our search for the contract after we saw the photos. I begin to wonder if we are on the right track at all.

Still, I want to meet Amber Mitchell.

February 21, 2006

At first, Amber Mitchell doesn't want to cooperate.

Sam tracked her down through some chain—a classmate of a friend of someone who shares an off-campus apartment with her. I knocked on her door and when we were fortunate enough to have Amber herself answer, Sam told her each of our names, and announced that we were from The Window .

She slammed the door in our faces.

We knock on the door for a couple minutes, calling in to her. At last she calls back, “I'm going to call the police if you don't leave.”

As my thoughts turn to walking away, the wheels in Sam's mind are just beginning to turn. “Good, it'll save us some time,” he hollers.

“What?”

“Amber, we came to tell you that we figured out who took advantage of you at that party two years. We figured it out.”

After a moment's pause we hear the lock turn and Amber pulls open the door a little bit—just enough to peek her head out. She's really a pretty girl, if a little tired looking, her blond hair a bit out of place in its ponytail. “What are you talking about?”

“We know who did it, Amber. And we wanted to bring this to you first.”

“I dropped the claim. There wasn't any rape.”

“There are pictures,” I chime in, and she turns to face me, eyes wide. “We found pictures of what he did to you.”

As Amber swallows, Sam puts a hand on the edge, opening it a little wider, and, I suspect, positioning himself for it will be harder for her to close it again. “It was Alan Chilling, the SA president.”

Her eyes open a little wider at the name. “Let me see the pictures.”

“He's got them at his place,” Sam says. “And we weren't in a position to leave with them. Do you mind if we come in?”

Amber steps back and Sam nudges me inside before following himself.

Amber's apartment is a stand alone little brick building among other, identical buildings in the Everwood complex, about a fifteen minute walk from campus. The place is as small from the inside as it appeared, and dimly lit. Not waiting for Amber, Sam moves past us, taking a seat on a worn couch, half covered by checker-patterned blanket. I sit next to him while Amber fidgets with her hands for a minute, before sitting on a wooden chair on the other side of a coffee table.

“Alan didn't rape me,” she says, looking down. “I've never even met him.”

“But when the story first came out—” Sam begins. “Forgive me, I'm only familiar with you situation through the stories they printed in The Window . But from what I can recall, you said somebody drugged you. And Preston and I can both attest that you looked like you were drugged in those pictures—and you're with Alan Chilling.”

“He never said there were pictures,” she mutters, then looks up at us, as if shocked by the words that escaped her own mouth.

“What was that?” I can't help asking.

“Nothing—”

“You said that Alan never told you about the pictures,” Sam cuts her off. “Which leads me to think that you've not only met Alan, but you've spoken to him more than once.”

“He didn't rape me.”

“Let's take it one step at a time,” Sam says. “What is your relationship with Alan Chilling?”

“There is no relationship,” Amber says, leaning forward, her hands on the top of her head.

“I know it hurts to talk—”

“Fuck you! Who the hell do you think you are coming in here asking me about these things? Fuck you!” She starts to cry.

We're quiet for a minute, as Amber breathes pretty heavily. “I apologize if we're intruding here,” I say at last, softly. “But we came here to help you. I mean, when we saw these pictures—and—and when Sam here told me the story of what happened to you, I wanted to help. We both came here to help you. But if you're saying you don't want our help, we'll go.”

I turn to Sam, who's glaring at me. He opens his mouth to say something, just Amber replies, “It's just—he never—” she stops, running her forearm over her face. “What do the pictures show?”

“It's nothing too graphic,” Sam says. “Mostly head shots of you—some with Alan kissing you. Then there are a couple of him holding you—touching you.” Amber shudders. “We want to set the record straight here. This guy is going around campus, acting like he's the cleanest guy on the planet. Meanwhile, he's keeping these pictures of you. We just want to set the record straight.”

Amber looks up, shifting her eyes between the two of us. “I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone from the paper. He said no one from the paper would come looking for me anymore, but that if they did, I shouldn't say anything.”

“Amber, after what this guy did,” Sam begins, locking her eyes. “After the way he violated you, why would you want to be loyal to him.”

She sniffs. “Because he paid me.” She looks back down. “He offered me five thousand dollars to stay quiet. It took him until the end of the year to get me the money, but he paid me.”

I turn to Sam, as the five grand and the missing contract from the Beats Alive show come into focus. He holds up a hand to me, so I'll leave it for now.

“He didn't rape me, though—that's something the media came up with. The test results didn't indicate he had, and he told me he didn't.”

“But he did take advantage of you,” Sam says. “And he never told you about the photographs.”

Amber shakes her head as Sam flips open his notebook and clicks the end of his pen. A touch more reluctantly, I remove a mini-notebook from the pocket of my jeans, and prepare to collect the quotes.

February 22, 2006

“Yeah, that's good,” Sam says, peering over my shoulder, as I sit in my dorm room, tapping on a keyboard.

This is unlike other stories, where all I would have to do is report what I've found out. Sam and I work together to decide what to include in the story and what to leave out. We include what our Editor in Chief censored the week before—the Beats Alive representative claiming that, rather than overcharging for the show, the group put it on for free. We include the fact that The Beats Alive contract is no where to be found. We quote Amber, saying Chilling drugged and sexually assaulted her, then paid her $5,000 to stay quiet. We don't say that the $5,000 missing from the Student Association (which led to freezing the Multicultural Theater Organization's budget) went to Amber, but let the implications speak for themselves. We quote her selectively, to indicate that she knows photos do exist, without saying how, or explaining our role in it. We leave out that we broke into Chilling's room to try to find the contract, and so we have to leave out that we saw the photographs, and how we thought to seek out Amber. We hope Amber's quote will be enough to fill the void left by the absence of the photos—photos that we know would be enough to win over our Editor in Chief, Larry, a photo journalism major who's scared to print what can't be confirmed on film.

We have agreed that we will not share the story with Larry until the last possible minute, when the paper reaches the final editing stage. We don't want him cutting our legs out from under us again, playing the overly cautious angle. We trust that when he sees it all out there on the page, the facts will speak for themselves.

We decide not to approach Chilling. First of all, we don't expect we would have any more luck getting a quote on his incriminating situation this time around. Secondly, we don't want him to tip off Larry, as we suspect he may have last week. Third, there's the fact that our newspaper is funded by the Student Association. While he would only bring down more shit on himself, Chilling does have the authority to keep us from printing this week, and in so doing, could delay our process. We want to blow this story wide open for the whole campus to see.

“Wait, go back and add the quote from the MTO guy before you start that paragraph,” Sam says. And so we write on.

February 23, 2006

As I walk down the hallway of the Student Center , nearing The Window office, I find Sam waiting for me. “I've got some bad news, Presto.” Without another word, Sam lays a copy of today's newspaper in my hand. I take it and fling it open.

Our story isn't on the front page. Nor is it on the second, third or fourth. This week, Larry didn't take the time to edit the substance out of the story. He axed it altogether. “This is bull shit,” I say, closing the paper. “Why wouldn't he run it this time.”

“He said it was all hearsay,” Sam says, rolling his eyes. “He said Chilling could sue us if we went to press with this.”

“But we got the victim to come out and say that Chilling did this. That's got to count for something.”

“Larry said there was no proof, and that Amber probably just wanted attention. After all, that's what most folks chalked the whole thing up to when she dropped the charges in the first place—that the whole thing was made up.”

I catch a glare from Larry on my way in the office, and, for the bulk of the meeting, alternate between fuming over his chicken shit response to our story, and trying to piece together what it would take, short of Chilling's confession, to legitimize this story in his eyes.

Each week, there's a part of the meeting when we vote to decide what the next week's editorial will be. The editorial is an opinion piece, on behalf of the editorial board. Anyone is free to suggest an idea, but only the editors can vote to determine which issue the paper will take on. In addition, because the editorial is supposed to be representative of the staff, any editor can veto a topic if he or she doesn't agree with it.

It's slim pickings for editorial topics this week, when Sam raises his hand. “How about a piece on the ethics of journalism, and the public's right to stay informed of issues on campus.”

Larry clears his throat. “Kind of vague, Sam.” He turns to the rest of the staff. “Any other ideas?”

“How about if write about the Student Association,” Sam goes on, not bothering to raise his hand this time. “It's funded by the students—so how about an article about the importance of monitoring what that money is spent on.”

“All right,” Larry says, scrawling a note on his legal pad. “Any others?”

“Actually,” Sam continues, “To add on to that last one, and make it a little more exact, maybe we can write about how it's a little sketchy when there's a contract dispute that leads to a major organization losing its funding, and the contract in question goes missing.”

Larry smirks and looks around the room. I doubt anyone in the room knows much about what's going on here, and I wonder how much further this will go. I can't imagine Sam giving up until he at least has our story out to the forty people in the room.

The managing editor, Carrie, is second in command at the paper. She chimes in, “What are you guys talking about?”

“Oh, Larry didn't tell you?” Sam starts in.

“This is not the time and place for this,” Larry cuts him off. “If you would like to discuss it after the meeting, we'll arrange a meeting—”

“But I don't see what it hurts for the staff to know the story,” Sam fires back. “I mean, Chilling can't sue us for a conversation at a staff meeting. And besides, when Amber Mitchell goes to the police, we're going to have news any way you slice it.”

“Wait, Amber Mitchell?” one of the writers chimes in. “The girl in the rape case?”

The room breaks into chatter. Larry isn't amused.

“Amber seems to have concocted a new story,” Larry says. “And was trying to get Sam to run with it.”

“Well what did she say?”

“She said Chilling drugged her and took advantage of her,” Sam says. “Then paid her off to keep her quiet. There are photos, to back it up.”

“Right, she has so much evidence on her side,” Larry says, dripping with sarcasm. “She's got some photos of herself and Chilling that she probably took two years to doctor up so it looks like they're naked together—”

“And it just so happens that she claims Chilling paid her $5,000 when five grand is missing from the SA accounts?” Sam asks.

Something clicks in my mind.

“That money isn't missing,” Larry answers. “You said it yourself, the contract was missing. That doesn't mean that the guy from Beats Alive was right. I mean who the hell puts on a free concert like that at a college like this?”

“But that's not the only five grand that went missing,” I say, almost unconscious of the words leaving my mouth, as my mind races. “The Directionals show—there's a $5,000 discrepancy there too—I saw the contract. Remember Sam? The numbers didn't add up.”

“So now you want to accusing Alan of embezzling regularly?” Larry sneers.

“Let me ask you something, Larry,” I stand up. “How did you know the photos were of Chilling and Amber naked together? All we wrote was that there were photos from that night.”

“Well what else would the photos show?”

“Amber naked by herself? The two of them clothed? How would you know?”

“This is ridic—”

“Unless you were there,” Sam breaks in, catching up to my train of thought. “Because you and Alan used to be tight, and you're a goddamn photographer. And—and there had to be someone there to take the photos.”

Larry swallows hard. “So now you want to accuse me—”

“Why else would you be so dead set against running this story?” Sam asks, on the attack. “And how else would you know about the photos?”

“And why else would another five grand have gone missing?” I ask. “Chilling stole the money to shut up Amber. And then you wanted your cut.”

February 24, 2006

I don't get up for my Friday morning class. After unraveling the mystery surrounding Alan Chilling and Larry Schmidt, I've slept well for the first time all week.

Larry didn't admit to anything outright. However, he grew increasingly emotional as the argument wore on, and then Carrie chimed in that she had seen Larry arguing with Alan the previous night after he first read the article. It wasn't long before he stood up and walked out on the meeting. After a few minutes of confusion, Carrie awkwardly took over to tie up what was left of the meeting. Few if any of the people in the room paid her much attention. These were newspaper people whose curiosity and interest had been aroused.

Sam headed over to the college police after the meeting and called me afterward to tell me that they at least seemed receptive to what he had to tell them.

And so, I took Thursday night off. Ignoring homework, I had Emma over to watch TV and spend the night. In the morning she went off to her class, and though I was sad to see her go, I hardly put up a fight, slipping back off to sleep. I don't wake until I hear music from Dave's computer.

“Sorry, bro,” he says when I sit up. “Headphones were loose.”

“Na, it's all right.” I glance at the clock and it's already noon . “I should get up.”

“Sweet, then you can tell me details on this big meeting last night.”

I chuckle. I told him the basics of the story before, but there's much more to share now.

February 25, 2006

Tonight, Emma's a cappella group, The Off Beats, are hosting a concert alongside two groups from another college. I feel like a bit of a celebrity, sitting with the girls, holding Emma's hand as we wait for their turn to perform. The other groups are all right, but a little amateur—getting out of sync or looking self-conscious about their choreography.

I'm not a musician by any stretch. But I like to think that after watching Emma and the girls, and the groups they've performed alongside, I have developed some understanding of what makes for a good performance. Alongside these less advanced groups, the Off Beats shine.

For their first song, the girls strike a chord and hold it for a few seconds, standing in an arch, heads down. Veronica raises her head, and steps forward. They're all in black, Veronica in a stunning cocktail dress as she begins her solo.

It's a slow, sexy song, and the girls behind her begin to sway. Then all at once, Emma claps her hands, and in the motion, its as if she rouses the crowd from a trance. Another girls mouth roars into motion, as she begins the vocal percussion. The song speeds up and Veronica waves her head from side to side, shining hair reflecting the stage lights as she grows louder. The girls dance and sing in perfect unison and harmony. Someone in the front row begins to clap along, and it spreads through the crowd like wildfire.

After four minutes, the song is done. As the audience cheers, Veronica smiles, straightening her hair with her hands and mouthing thank you, before she takes the mic. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming out tonight. We are The Off Beats and if it's all right with you, we have a few more songs we'd like to sing.”

There aren't any complaints. They've just sung the best song of the night so far, and they're only getting started.