Blogs written by NKU students, for NKU students

For background see: Student groups plan second Pro-Choice Day and Minister Bails on Ceremony

The same-sex marriage ceremony planned to occur on campus and organized as part of the Second Annual Pro-Choice Day was cancelled. This is the third cancellation since the event was first planned. The event was planned by , Northern Kentucky University’s gay-straight alliance, and the Kentucky Equality Federation, a state-wide gay rights advocacy group. According to Mike Volmer, Common Ground’s president, the minister backed out of the ceremony.

This is the second time a minister has backed out of performing the ceremony on campus. In February, Sam Lapin, a Universal Life Church minister, backed out of the ceremony under Unviersity pressure. Lapin also is an instructor at the and his supervisors and University administrators had contacted him about the event expressing concern it could impact proposed legislation that would not allow NKU to extend benefits to domesitc partners of gay employees.

The KEF did not respond to requests for comment.

The Northerner’s Cassie Stone, assistant news editor, contributed to this report.

A reader e-mailed me the following in recent reports about sexual assaults occurring on the campus of Northern Kentucky University:

“I find it ironic that almost 10 years after I graduated from NKU, the police and the school are still trying to cover up sexual assaults on campus or sweep them under the rug. When I was a sophomore here, living on campus almost 12 years ago, my best friend was raped by a popular basketball player. The police and the powers that be “checked the claim out,” told the victim they would take care of it and to be quiet. To them, this meant that the accused went on the injured list and then left school, the victim dropped out of school, unable to face her fellow peers. These days, in two different incidents, the victim has either been ignored by putting the case on the back burner, or told she was lying about what happened and threatened with prosecution for falsely reporting a crime. Sound familiar? It does to me! NKU wants to maintain the perfect image of a university in this area. [The University of Cincinnati] and [Xavier University] are in high crime areas, their basketball players commit crimes, so therefore they are not “good” schools. Nothing happens at NKU, or so we are made to think. It’s time that the police the university, and the students stand up for the victims. Punish the perpetrators, threaten them with prosecution. Make security on this campus a top priority, not just driving around the perimeter of the campus. Most important, help the victims and don’t make them victims again”

-Anonymous NKU Alum

(The views expressed in the quote reflect soley those of the reader. The Northerner cannot guarantee the accuracy of the comments.)

Please feel free to e-mail me your responses to this comment or the article at callj1@nku.edu, or leave a comment on the original story, here.

Readers,

So, it’s 2:30 a.m. and everyone else in the office is gone. The website just went live not too long ago, and so in a moment of boredom, I decided to breeze through the web edition. That’s when I read my story about minimum wage increases and realized there was huge error in it that occurred when we were editing the story. All of a sudden, a sentence in my article ends with “Asalon said.” ‘Who’s Asalon?’ you ask. Good question.

That’s right. In the editing process, an important part was unintentionally removed, that part indicating that”Asalon” is Penny Asalon, the associate director of financial aid.

After calling and waking up a few editors, we came to the conclusion that this error cannot be fixed prior to print. So, the print edition will have this mistake in it.

This is a very easy mistake to make, but inexcusable. Naturally, when you are adding in and taking out, things have the potential to fall through the cracks.

I apologize for this error, and I also sent an e-mail to Ms. Asalon personally apologizing to her.

What’s even worse is there was another error last week in the headline for my article. When the headline was written in the layout process, The Northerner mistakenly called the incident in University Suites a “robbery” and not a “burglary.” For those of you who are like ‘what’s the difference?’ well, it’s actually a pretty big one. Robbery is a violent crime that involves force being used in a theft. Meanwhile, burglary is a nonviolent crime involving no force. Seeing as how no one was present when the alleged burglary occurred in University Suites, and no force was used, there was no reason for us to characterize it as a robbery. While the article made it clear that it was a burglary, the mistake in the headline was unacceptable, and we apologize to each of you for it. I also apologized personally to the NKU Police and Housing offices.

Sorry.

Sam Lapin may have ultimately chose not, under University pressure, to officiate same-sex marriages on NKU’s campus last month, but in 2006, he ran for a political office that’s only remaining function is to officiate weddings. As part of that campaign in Boone County, Lapin created and distributed the entertaining video below in an effort to win over the voters.

Lapin, who ran as a Democrat, lost the election to Republican rival Justin Cringler. Lapin received 33.8% of the vote and Cringler received 66.2%.

Click here to watch the Lapin Campaign Movie

The Northerner was the first to bring you news of the ordained minister and NKU faculty member who backed out of holding a same-sex marriage ceremony on campus after being concerned it might influence pending legislation that would prohibit universities from choosing for themselves whether or not to allow employees’ domestic partners to receive health benefits.

Other media outlets have now picked up the story, including the Kentucky Enquirer and Edge Boston, a Boston, Mass.-based media outlet geared towards the GLBT community.

The Northerner continues to look forward to bringing you breaking news first.

In response to the article “Minister Bails on Ceremony,” printed in Wednesday, March 5th’s edition of The Northerner, Sam Lapin, wrote the following response to the entire staff of The Northerner and others:

–

article in this week’s paper

NOTE: Documents and links mentioned in print edition are available in previous post (below this one.)

Originally, the work on Common Ground’s plan to hold a same-sex marriage ceremony on the Highland Heights campus was not on my list of assignments.

In fact, I recall the day Jenn Corbett, the news editor, faced quite a challenge after the first postponement of the event due to the severe winter weather that plagued campus on Feb. 12. It was set to be the main front-page story, complete with a fantastic photo and everything. But, then it didn’t happen, and it forced a complete revision of the plan for the news section on the day The Northerner went to print.

Just FYI, campus organizations, if you are going to have a newsworthy event, we’d prefer if it were (1) not canceled, and (2) not on Tuesday.

Moving on, after the event was postponed, I received the assignment to cover the rescheduled ceremony. It sounded like an exciting story in and of itself. I mean, it’s not everyday that somebody gets married in the UC lobby during the lunchtime rush, and I’m fairly certain it’s at least extremely infrequent that a same-sex marriage occurs there.

So, the photo editor and I headed to the event on Feb. 19. We stood, for a while, on the stairway, looking down on the informational booth they had set up. It was noon, when the ceremony was supposed to happen. It wasn’t happening. Having done some preliminary research, I knew generally what Sam Lapin, the ordained minister for the event, looked like. I didn’t see him there.

After a few minutes of what I’d like to call “NKU delay,” where you wait because nothing at NKU starts on time, I went down to investigate. Then, I learned that no marriages were going to take place because the minister had become “unavailable.” The first person I thought of was Jenn, who once again was anticipating this story being the main front page article. Trying to salvage something, I did a few interviews about the event that did occur.

I thought the story was dead, and that we would be waiting for another reschedule. Then, I caught wind of something more. That something, that the minister may have been intimidated into not participating, exploded into the story that was printed in this week’s edition.

At first, I hit nothing but dead ends. I could tell that something was up, but nobody was willing to talk to me about it. The Common Ground leaders brushed it off, and when I called Lapin, he only cited personal reasons. Instinctively knowing that more was going on than I was being told, I continued to investigate. Then I found a source willing to share about her knowledge of the situation, confirming those instincts.

After speaking with one of my editors, we discussed possible ways to go after this story. That’s when we came upon the idea of an open records request for Lapin’s e-mails.

After composing the appropriate letter, I found myself questioning where exactly to send it. That’s when I called Sara Sidebottom, the Vice President of Legal Affairs and General Counsel, to find out this information. She summoned me to her office.

It was there the we discussed several concerns about the request. After a couple of days of negotiating and contemplating the need for the information, The Northerner made a successful request with the General Counsel’s office for the necessary records.

I had no idea what these e-mails would say. I was certainly hoping to find something conclusive and juicy, but at the very least I was just hoping to find some information–information that I had been lacking.

Then, I was informed the information was available for pick up. I went to Sidebottom’s office and was handed 16 pages of emails. Among them were e-mails indicating that at least perceived intimidation was present. Now, we had a story.

The investigation into this story led to some high profile names, going all the way up to the President of the University. Following up on all the e-mails and obtaining information was difficult, as some sources were less cooperative than others and questioned if the story was even newsworthy.

With all the various sources involved, some which were or became less cooperative, it became imperative that the story be examined. Thus, several hours were spent organizing, writing, and editing the article to ensure it was factual.

Anyway, we presented the facts to you, the readers, for your conclusions.