In light of the shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute last spring, campus safety has become a concern throughout schools, colleges and universities across the United States.
In an effort to present the past, present and future of Miami University's campus safety, students of Advanced Electronic Journalism Video Forum (COM/JRN 314) are creating a documentary titled, "Bursting the Bubble: How Safe Are We?"
The class, led by instructor Joe Sampson, is in the process of completing an approximately 30-minute long-form documentary that will be shown at 6 p.m. Dec. 6 in the Williams Hall Television Studio at Miami. The screening is free and open to the public.
The documentary opens with the Virginia Tech shootings and the deaths of five Miami students-Joey Eger, Beth Speidel, Steven J. Smith, Julie Turnbull and Kate Welling-that classmates have had to face over the past two years. The film then moves to the present state of Miami's campus safety, covering the Campus Crime Alerts, Miami's metal health awareness, e2campus text messaging and the Nighttime Door-to-Door Service. It then shifts into the university's future of making safety a student's personal responsibility and reflecting on Miami's Office of Ethics and Student Conflict Resolution guidelines.
"A lot of stories in television news are given 90 seconds to two minutes to be told and you can't tell this kind of story in two minutes," Sampson said.
According to Sampson, the COM/JRN 314 class is doing exactly what the journalism program is aspiring to-long-form narrative, thoughtful journalism.
The documentary is outlined in three segments-the past, present and future.
The past
The students of the COM/JRN 314 class interviewed family and friends of the Miami students who died in the off-campus house fire in 2005 in addition to attending the memorial service of Joey Eger, who recently died on the train tracks near Miami's campus.
"I think that when you're dealing with people who have experienced tragedy you have to make them feel comfortable enough with you with things that are difficult to share," COM/JRN 314 class member and senior Laura Bentz said.
According to the students of COM/JRN 314, instead of covering just the deaths of the five students at Miami, the class wanted to focus on the people, giving the documentary a more personal feel.
"It's told in journalism that a story works best when it focuses around personalities and people," Tristan Chan, junior and COM/JRN 314 class member said. "So we really wanted to get to know who those students were instead of just saying, 'Oh they died.' We wanted to hear from their friends and their families of who they were and what they were about and just showcase their lives in that kind of form."
Students making the documentary all had to learn how to approach people on difficult topics, according to senior and COM/JRN 314 class member Jen House, who attended Joey Eger's memorial service.
"I could just see the emotion in the room and I just wanted to cry," she said.
Junior Katelin Stark traveled to Virginia Tech and interviewed students about the shootings that claimed 33 lives.
"The Virginia Tech (video clip) hit me hard because a majority of my family went there and if it hadn't been out of state I would have gone there," Stark said. "Going there and talking with students about it was very nerve racking."
According to senior and class member Christine Brady, the students of COM/JRN 314 had to find a way to portray the documentary in a serious tone, while maintaining a focus on people.
"One of the most difficult things we dealt with was kind of striking a balance with a solemn tone to the piece and it being too somber and too sad," she said. "We wanted it to be about people and not tragedy."
Through the production on the documentary, the students of COM/JRN 314 found how resilient college students can be and that they can move into an atmosphere of hope instead of tragedy, according to Brady.
The present
The portion of the documentary focusing on the present state of campus safety at Miami touches upon current efforts being made in furthering safety, in addition to confronting problems with Miami's campus safety.
For instance, according to senior Lindsay Milhoan, who is working on the present portion of the documentary, Miami does not have enough mental health services available to students.
"We wanted to do something that really shocked-like we uncovered this big secret, like not enough staff to deal with mental health," Milhoan said.
According to Milhoan, COM/JRN 314 students also wanted to show efforts are being made to solve problems at Miami but some situations will still exist no matter what a university does.
The future
After presenting Miami's past and present campus safety triumphs and defeats, the documentary moves into the future setting of Miami.
Through travelling to Virginia Tech, Stark said she was able to witness the hopeful mindset students there were able to have and relate it to tragedies Miami students have also experienced.
"If students at Virginia Tech can be hopeful about something like this, then so can we," Stark said in regards to Miami.
The COM/JRN 314 class members wanted to push Miami students to taking matters of safety into their own hands and learning from Miami's past experiences.
"There's so many little things students can do," Stark said. "But it's not going to change if students don't start doing things."
According to class members, Miami is doing a good job at least in pushing the need for campus safety, but students need to be alert and not rely simply on the authorities of the university.
"(The documentary) is not going to completely change safety on Miami's campus but it's a step in letting students know and it's a small reminder … We just want students to remember that, 'Hey real stuff does happen and maybe I should be a little more careful when choosing to do something or another,'" Chan said.
