Re: 3/20/00 - Yale will clarify offensive ABC remarks
Yale will clarify offensive ABC remarks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY MICHAEL BARBARO AND MICHAEL HORN
YDN Staff Reporters
Published 3/20/00
Disappointed with its portrayal on ABC's 20/20 special report on the murder of Suzanne Jovin '99, Yale plans to release a statement to clarify some of its official broadcasted remarks about the case.
The impending announcement comes on the heels of sharp criticism by community members that the University's comments were careless and insensitive to Jovin's family and friends.
University Secretary Linda Lorimer is expected to release a statement this week that will directly address both the comments and Yale's concern about the unsolved murder.
Jovin, a 21-year-old political science major from Goettingen, Germany, was found suffering from 17 stab wounds about a mile north of campus Dec. 4, 1998.
A University spokesman told ABC producers that bringing more attention to the murder can "only hurt Yale" and that Yale wants to put the Jovin murder behind them.
"I was offended and embarrassed by the comments," said political science Professor David Cameron in an e-mail last night. "I thought they displayed a profound insensitivity on the part of the University toward the Jovin family and their continuing anguish."
Cameron said he complained directly about Yale's comments on the show to President Richard Levin, Lorimer, Deputy Secretary Martha Highsmith and Director of Public Affairs Larry Haas soon after the program ran.
Neither Haas nor University spokesman Tom Conroy was available for comment last night.
Michael Blum '99, Jovin's classmate and friend, wrote in an e-mail to the same administrators and Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead that after watching the ABC broadcast his faith in Yale had been shaken.
"The statement that 20/20 put out for the University cannot possibly have been an official one. How can it possibly be better for anyone to simply forget what happened?" Blum wrote in the March 6 e-mail obtained by the Yale Daily News.
"I can't forget that my friend is dead," he said. "I don't want people to not pay attention to what happened. I want people to speak about it. The villain is still free."
In a March 13 response, Lorimer said, "Rick [Levin] and I were as disappointed as you with ABC's presentation. We expected the network to rely on the statements by senior University administrators including Dean Brodhead, Rick Levin and me in which we worked hard to capture, in the aftermath of the tragedy, the University's true feelings."
yaledailynews.com |
