A journalist armed with a camera who said she was with The New York Times followed Tower Club pickups Friday morning until she was told to leave campus by Public Safety officers.
The reporter's presence is consistent with recent attempts by the Times to contact eating club presidents for a story on bicker clubs, but when questioned by the University, editor of the Times' Education Life section Jane Karr denied sending a reporter to campus on Friday.
"[The reporter] said she was from The New York Times," Tower president Jonathan Fernandez '08 said. "I told her that we had instructed everyone to answer all her questions with 'no comment,' and that no one in our group was going to consent to her using our likenesses and she was wasting her time."
Fernandez said she had a camera around her neck and described her as "a middle-aged woman, clearly a reporter." Though the reporter initially waited for club members on the sidewalk in front of Tower's clubhouse, she then followed the group down the Street, through 1879 Arch and onto campus.
Once the group reached campus, they were joined by a Public Safety officer, as is regulation for pickups groups once they are on campus. Fernandez asked the officer, Associate Director of Public Safety Duncan Harrison, to remove the reporter from campus.
Harrison said he called the Office of Communications, which must approve all off-campus media before they conduct on-campus interviews. University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said in an interview Friday that she told Harrison "that the reporter did not work with our office to be on campus, and then Public Safety takes it from there because they understand that any reporter on campus has to be directed to our office."
Harrison said he then "advised [the reporter] that she had to get clearance through the Office of Communications and she said 'no problem' and left."
Communications was contacted last week by Karr with a request to cover the bicker process. Cliatt said she told Karr that Bicker is a "club process" and that reporters would have to obtain the consent of the eating clubs first. Despite multiple attempts to contact her, Karr could not be reached for comment this weekend.
"In this case, we did not hear back from the reporter, and we were only notified that they were back on campus [Friday] by Public Safety," Cliatt said. Cliatt added that she contacted Karr again "just to make sure that they were aware of our policies in general." She said Karr told her that there was no Times reporter on campus on Friday.
The Times did indeed reach out to bicker club presidents in the weeks leading up to Bicker, though unsuccessfully. Ivy Club president Wyatt Rockefeller '07, Tiger Inn president Kyle Morgan '07 and Cap & Gown Club president Meka Asonye '07 all said that they were contacted by the Times regarding Bicker or pickups. The president of Cottage Club did not respond to requests for comment.
Former Tower president Chris Berg '07 said Karr e-mailed him on Jan. 30 and later called him.
"I had a New York Times editor call me and ask me lots of questions about Bicker, and I said, 'Of course I can't comment on any of those,' " Berg said. "She said, 'Well, I know that pickups are on Friday, so I'll send a couple of reporters down and if anyone wants to give comments, they can.' "
Berg said that Karr told him the Times was "looking into social institutions," and that she mentioned finals clubs at Harvard and secret societies at Yale.
It is not clear whether the editor's plan to send reporters with or without Berg's explicit consent is crosswise to the Office of Communication's policy.
Cliatt stressed that the University has an "excellent working relationship with The New York Times."
"This isn't the first time we've had someone on campus saying that they were a reporter that wasn't a reporter," she said.
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