The Issue: Some questions have been raised regarding the Herald’s reporting on the death of freshman Dylan C. Prott.

Our view: The Herald used the best information available to help the community understand what happened.

The campus community is still recovering from the death of Dylan C. Prott at Pearce-Ford Tower early Thursday morning. Yesterday, a memorial service for the freshman took place in his hometown of Louisville.

In the days since Prott’s death, I have heard and read remarks that the Herald was insensitive, sensational or inaccurate in its coverage. I would like to take the opportunity to address some of those issues and explain how we covered the event.

None of the decisions about covering Prott’s life and death have been made without discussion, planning and decision-making. Those conversations began at about 12:45 Thursday morning when we learned of Prott’s death. From that point, we discussed how to report this story with accuracy and sensitivity to those involved.

From the moment reporters reached the scene, we had to decide what information should and should not be put into the story. Many of the witness accounts that Herald reporters received were hearsay, which is not reliable enough for a story on such a sensitive topic, so we omitted those comments until we could verify the information.

We did not put Prott’s name in the original story – though we had witnesses who told us his name – because his parents had not been notified by the time we sent the paper to be printed.

We continued to add information to the story with Web site updates throughout the next few days. Our first official report from Bob Edwards, assistant vice president of university relations, said that Prott apparently had jumped, which is why we used the word ‘jump’ in the headline and put that statement in the story. In the next updated online story, we used a quote from Edwards saying that the incident hadn’t been ruled a suicide or anything else.

We haven’t been making assumptions about what happened – we are obtaining as much official information as we can to accurately tell this story. This is a situation different from anything we have ever covered, and the circumstances around such a public incident called for us to provide as much information as possible.

We realize that Prott’s life was more than his death. He was a student, a friend, a son and a lot more to many people. That is why there is a story about his life in today’s paper. We also will continue to cover the issues surrounding this event in upcoming editions of the paper, such as the safety of the windows in PFT and the results of toxicology tests that are set to be released in about a month. There are many more concerns that go beyond Prott’s death, and we will continue to report on them.

Dealing with a student’s death is difficult for our campus community. Students, faculty and staff should take the opportunity to visit counseling and testing services if they need to discuss Prott’s death. Counselors can be contacted at (270) 745-3159.

Readers might not agree with all the choices that we have made on covering this issue. I encourage feedback from everyone reading this letter. Please e-mail me at editor@wkuherald.com, call us at (270) 745-6011 or come to the office in the Garrett Center. Our paper is an open forum, and I welcome everyone to participate.

Ashlee Clark
Herald editor in chief

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