Word: blankenship
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Drugs on campus. We all know that drugs do exist at Harvard. Every day, they are bought, sold and used by some of the nation's finest college students. This reality was confirmed on April 10 when two Currier House seniors, Stephen V. David '96 and William A. Blankenship '96, were arrested for allegedly possessing marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD and "ecstasy" with intent to distribute. The Crimson gave the arrests top-story coverage in both the April 12 and April 16 editions of the paper. Both stories were written by Laura C. Semerjian...
...stories were covered. One reader argued that The Crimson's stories were sensationalist. She argued that running the pictures of the two students with the April 12 article showed poor taste, only eclipsed by the cruel decision to call the parents of the accused for the April 16 story. Blankenship's father was not even aware his son had been arrested until The Crimson contacted him five days after the arrest...
...aware of the arrests when questioned for the April 12 article, yet four days later, The Crimson titled its article "Currier Shocked by Drug Arrests." Of course, the students would not have been shocked at all if The Crimson had not itself created the reaction to the arrests of Blankenship and David. Given that Blankenship and David had not yet been convicted of any crimes, she argued, these two stories were insensitive to the two students and their families...
Similar arguments could be made in the wake of Blankenship's and David's arrest. Still, there is a vital difference in coverage between suicide and alleged drug dealing. Suicide necessarily calls for a sympathetic story. Although most would agree that suicide is not the answer to life's problems, most would also agree that one who commits suicide deserves sympathy. In my opinion, drug dealers do not deserve sympathy...
After reading the charges leveled against Blankenship and David, my first reaction was to pity them. Currier House is within 1,000 feet of the Peabody Elementary School on Linnaean St., and, as a result, the two students were charged with intention to distribute within a school zone. Surely, I thought, these students were victims of circumstance. They were selling drugs, but they weren't selling drugs to children. They just happened to be near an elementary school...