Photographer was with the Times

The woman who followed Tower Club's pickups with a camera on Friday was a freelance photographer employed by The New York Times, a Times spokeswoman said in an e-mail yesterday. The photographer did not have University authorization to enter campus and was ultimately asked to leave by a Public Safety officer.

"[S]he happened upon a large, noisy crowd on a public street moving en masse toward campus," Times spokeswoman Abbe Serphos said. "Like any good photographer, she took pictures."

A Tower member who was present at pickups said the photographer began following the group immediately after it left the clubhouse. The photographer followed the students down Prospect Avenue, through 1879 Arch and around campus during Tower's pickups last Friday. After a verbal complaint from Tower president Jonathan Fernandez '08, Public Safety Associate Director Duncan Harrison asked her to leave, and she complied without resisting.

Serphos said that the photographer was on campus for "a possible article," but she did not specify what the article was about. She declined to provide further comment.

University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said the Office of Communications received an e-mail from a Times photography editor on Feb. 5, the Monday before bicker clubs' pickups.

"They wanted to have a photographer visit to see aspects of the bicker process," Cliatt said.

Cliatt said she explained to the editor that the Times would have to obtain permission from the eating clubs, as per University policy. Members of the media who wish to interview or profile students or groups on campus must obtain permission from their subjects before the Office of Communication issues them press passes. Cliatt said she did not hear back from the editor after informing her of the policy.

Jane Karr — the editor of the Times' quarterly Education Life section, in which an article on the bicker process is slated to appear — told Cliatt on Friday that the Times had not sent a reporter to campus that day. According to Serphos, Karr was not aware of the photographer's presence on campus at the time.

Karr, who contacted several eating club presidents and the University in recent weeks for the Bicker story, could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts yesterday and over the weekend.

"[Karr] said that they were looking into social institutions — she mentioned final clubs at Harvard and secret societies at Yale, and also eating clubs," former Tower president Chris Berg '07, whom Karr contacted during Intersession, said.