Who? University of Tampa senior Peter Arrabal
Sphere of influence: Arrabal, 21, is the incoming editor of The Minaret, the campus newspaper which reaches nearly all the 2,000 students at UT. The biology major is also in the Sigma Chi fraternity.
How he makes a difference: Arrabal joined The Minaret two years ago as a sports writer and worked his way up to the paper's top position. Along with other staffers, Arrabal has helped spotlight UT administrative cover-ups, campus public safety issues and high-profile controversies that otherwise would've gone unreported.
CL: How did students receive The Minaret when you first joined the newspaper?
Arrabal: It really wasn't picked up all that much. I mean, we probably printed 1,500-2,000 copies a week, and there would always be newspapers laying around. We didn't write about anything people cared about. It was like we were like a PR tool for the school. We never had anything interesting; we just said, "Oh, this happened. That happened." Event reviews, sports write-ups — there was nothing that made you want to pick up the newspaper.
How has that changed?
We shifted toward having people do actual news and having people on beats. We have a Facebook account, and we get all kinds of story ideas that come through that. That's probably been one of our biggest tools for recruiting and getting people registered to our website, and getting story ideas and stuff. People screw around on Facebook all day, and they see our name on there, and we're always adding people and putting out questions to people and grab sources through that. People send us messages like, "Hey, you should look into this." It used to be we would just take a story and assign it to a reporter. Half the time they wouldn't do anything with it. Now we've got an investigative team and all kinds of different ways to go after these stories. Now we have stuff people care about.
How has the UT administration reacted to a more aggressive newspaper?
I don't think they expected this at all. For years, you know, we were just a PR tool. We had a university spokesman who, when we asked questions of him, said some things that probably got him in hot water with some people. He retired last year and we got a new guy who actually has a lot of media experience. The administration will, after a couple of somewhat embarrassing comments, decided they are only going to speak through him now.
I think when a professor opens his mouth, or somebody in residence life opens their mouth, it's like the people in public information must be banging their heads against the wall. All these people don't have any experience with a real newspaper; they have experience with a public relations publication.
What stories have made an impact on campus?
Anything involving residence life, dining services and security. Those are the three biggest things that all the students care about. They're always the tops of our reads online.
For example, [last year] there was a girl who came back with a guy from Gasparilla. She had been drinking, and her roommates came in and found him assaulting her in the shower. He ran away and they called the police. [Tampa Police Department] came and took the case.
The law requires that the school put out a weekly log of every incident that occurs. They usually do and they're pretty good about it. But this one week we just had a date and a time and it said "confidential" and didn't say anything else. This was when we just started getting into big news stuff and we just kind of brushed it off. And somebody came to us and said, "Did you hear about this girl who got raped at Gasparilla." We thought they were talking about that woman who said she was raped and got arrested for an outstanding warrant or something. But they were like, "No, no. The UT student." We called TPD and asked if was there were any sexual assaults at 401 West Kennedy [on that day]. They sent us over the incident report with all the identifying information blacked out of it. At that point we went to the school and they said, "Yeah, that happened."
It blew up. It got really big. It got picked up by the Times, Tribune and all the TV stations. That was my first big story I saw us come out with.
How did the campus react?
The students were pretty upset [the administration] hid it, and they weren't straightforward with us. The administration clammed up and ended up putting all these new policies together. I think the students then became unhappy with the policies [the administration] put together. It used to be anybody could walk into any dorm at any time as long as they had card access or somebody let them in the building or something. [The administration] came up with this new policy in reaction to this saying anybody who doesn't live in that dorm has to check in. There's going to be a security guard there all the time at night to make sure that unwanted people aren't getting in.
At first, the reaction from the students on [the story] was "Wow, this is a good story. Good thing you guys broke this one open." The administrative response was they seemed to treat it like it wasn't a big deal. The dean of students' response when one of our reporters asked him a question about it was, "When students drink, bad things happen and get out of control." When someone gets sexually assaulted, that is a completely unacceptable response. That was their first reaction and after that they changed all their policies. And they've kind of tightened up their ship.
I think the students liked the story, but didn't like the [administrative] reaction that came out of it.
Has the Minaret staff run into some thorny ethical issues while reporting?
Pretty much every ethical question that we come up with we go to our advisor first. He's got the professional experience. He's got the schooling and can at least point us in the right direction.
This past semester, we worked on a story where a basketball player was accused of raping a girl. He was never charged with anything by the state. He was investigated and we got the TPD report on that. But [the alleged victim] did press charges through the school system. He was found responsible, and he was disciplined and kicked out of school and then he appealed and was let back in. It was a huge fiasco.
We had weeks of ethical debates over whether to run the guy's name with [the story], because he was never charged with a crime. But the school said that he was responsible for a sexual assault.
It had occurred in September, we found out about in January, and we didn't get a story out until the second week of April, because we had constant debates about it. … We worked on that story for months and months and months. Most of it was over the ethics of "Is this a story? Do we run his name? Do we run his photo? How much do we give up?"
We actually discussed it with some journalism classes. We got some really good debate going. I think we taught the journalism classes a lot about ethics.
What can non-student journalists do to create a more open campus?
Really, if they want to create a more open and knowledge campus, come to us with ideas. Submit photos to us of something you did that was interesting. And if your roommate is a three-time Olympic gold medalist or something, and he's never said anything to the newspaper about it, come tell us about it and we can make that better known. We can only write about what we know. … We can't do our work without the help of the students.
There's this cliché that young people never read the news. But The Minaret has seemed to buck that trend on campus. Why do you think the paper has been so successful?
Because there are no other media outlets. We have a radio station, and all they do is just play music. There's two major newspapers in town — the Tribune and the Times — and they never write anything about UT. It's not like University of Florida, USF and these bigger schools, where they have heir student newspaper, and they have all the other local papers that write about everything happening there. We're a small school, and the bigger papers don't seem to be interested. If [students] want to know about something going on at UT, they have to read our newspaper. They aren't going to find out about why the building flooded out by reading the Tribune. They aren't going to find out about some fight outside that [attracted] 20 police cars by reading the Times. They're going to find out by picking up our newspaper and reading it.
What's one piece of advice you'd give an incoming freshman?
Everything in moderation. Some people come and go out to Ybor three nights a week, and they fall out in a semester. You got to take everything in moderation. It's the same way I deal with my classes — I didn't take all biology courses. I didn't just pick one club. Everything in moderation — your social life, your school life. It takes a semester or so to figure out that fine balance. But if an incoming student wants to have a great college experience, they just have to do everything in moderation.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2008.