The University of Maryland has finally released the names of students it has found guilty of sexual assault in the past 10 years. It was reluctant to do so, citing the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but said it would do so after state Attorney General Doug Gansler rejected that argument last year.

Three years after journalism students first made their request, the public finally knows: Only four students have been found guilty. Four. In 10 years. According to the school’s Clery statistics for 2007-09 (the only three years I could easily find on the school’s website), 21, 17 and 10 forcible sex offenses were reported each year, respectively. With 48 reported sex offenses in three years, it’s hard to imagine that in 10 years only four students have been found guilty.

Of those four:

only one of the students found guilty was expelled, and the other three were suspended for a year and forced to meet certain requirements, such as staying away from the victim and writing reflective essays. (The Diamondback)

It’s easy of course to see why the university tried to hide behind FERPA, a law that was intended to to protect the privacy of student education records. The number of students found guilty of sexual assault seems unbelievably low compared with the number reported to the school. It calls into question how seriously the university investigates students accused of sexual assault, as well as how seriously it punishes those they find guilty.

University of Maryland students should be asking their administrators some very tough questions right now, and hopefully they will make it clear that the University has a responsibility to investigate sexual assaults on campus and punish those found guilty. Reports of on-campus sexual assaults should be as publicly available as those detailing similar crimes occurring off-campus.

As bleak as the numbers are, at least they are public now. That’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that many, many campuses have disclosure policies similar to how Maryland’s was prior to Gansler’s directive. At UNC, my past requests for names of students found guilty by the Honor Court of sexual assault were denied because of FERPA (despite UNC’s FERPA training for professors that says this information will be released upon request). To this I echo the recent words of North Carolina state judge Howard Manning: ”FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can remain hidden from public view.”

Reports of sexual assaults on campus are not educational records, and we shouldn’t tolerate it when universities insist they are. If we truly want to address sexual assault on college campuses — a topic of much recent discussion given the Title IX complaint filed against Yale and Saturday’s Wall Street Journal column that argued in favor of shutting down all fraternities — we need to start with detailed reporting about how universities address reports of assault.

That kind of reporting is only possible if universities are forced to be open instead of allowed to hide behind FERPA. So, a plea: We only know about the situation at the University of Maryland because student journalists kept pressuring the University, fighting it all the way up to the state attorney general’s office. Journalists, and particularly campus publications, have a watchdog responsibility to fight back when universities refuse to release information on sexual assaults because of FERPA, and they should give ‘em hell until every college is open with how they deal with assaults.

Updated to add information about UNC-Chapel Hill’s stated policy on disclosing the names of individuals found guilty of sexual assault through the campus Honor Court. Thanks Kevin Schwartz and Erica Perel for pointing that out.

In March 2008, I was still two months away from joining Twitter. I posted no updates about her death on Facebook, shared no links to any of the many stories I wrote about her death and only RSVP’d to a memorial service held a few weeks later. The Daily Tar Heel wasn’t on Twitter or Facebook either but let readers to submit messages to a Memorial Wall. In 2008 and in 2011 we tailored our approach to where our audience was, which is what we should be doing. Asking for #EveToday-style Tweets in 2008 would have yielded us few, if any responses. Our audience simply wasn’t on Twitter then, or even in 2009. Even last year I’m not sure if we would have gotten quite the reaction we did today. People are simply much more comfortable with social media and using it throughout their life.

I welcome this evolution. I remember feeling very cut-off from the rest of the UNC community when we all department for Spring Break days after she was killed. There was no easy way for us to mourn together. Reading through the Tweets today was comforting, an instant reminder that out there, hundreds more felt just like me – saddened by her death and inspired by her life.

I wanted to raise awareness without being alarmist, preach safety tips without being smarmy (or reminding students of their parents) and reach as many people as possible. Wednesday, day 6, I started brainstorming hashtags with other editors. The incidents have reminded folks of Antoine Dodson and his infamous “hide your wife, hide your kids” interview. We somewhat seriously considered making reference to that, in part to build off of what students were already tweeting and in part because we felt the viral video’s fame could help grab students’ attention to this issue. At the same time, we didn’t want to make light of the very real threat the victims had faced. We settled on #lockthedoor, snappy yet relevant, given that the intruder entered through unlocked doors each time. I’ve curated Tweets using Storify to show how I used the account throughout the day:

I typically use the @dailytarheel account to share links and respond to individuals. Rarely is it used to Tweet frequently on a single topic in a single day, but I decided this issue was important enough to dominate the feed for most of the day. But because of that, I tried to take a joke, hoping students would appreciate it and perhaps tuck away some of the useful advice as well. Any complaints about the hashtag so far are about equal to the amount of complaints we might generally get about anything. I’m not too worried that we’re offending followers, but it’s something I’ll be watching.

The intruder is still at-large, but I like to think that this campaign helped raise awareness at least a little bit today. From our analytics I know Twitter was a top referrer to our stories online, and the hashtag was trending in Chapel Hill at one point. I plan to continue with it until they catch someone, or until the incidents stop. Ideally, we’ll hear good news soon. What do you think? I would love to hear suggestions for ways we could make this reach and resonate with more students.

But unlike past changes, the pages upgrades make sense and solve previous problems. It’s much easier to manage a page now and there are completely new ways for page owners to interact with their fans and spread their message. Here are the top three things I love about the changes:

1. Greater page autonomy. Previously, your page was tied to each admin’s personal account. Now, I can switch between my personal account and each page I manage. I can “like” other pages as the page and not as myself, which is helpful because I don’t care to see updates from 100+ UNC pages in my own wall. On the DTH’s news feed though, this is great.
   



2. Better tracking. When I’m logged in as the page, I get notifications any time someone likes the page or a post or comments. I could see all of this information in aggregate before, using Insights, but the notification makes it easier to tell on a daily basis how fans are reacting to the page.
   



3. Easier sharing. Before, if I wanted to share another page’s post on the DTH page, I had to get the URL of that post and post it to the DTH page as a link (whereas if I wanted to share on my on wall, all I had to do was press “share” and add a comment to post). Now, I can “share” and post to the DTH wall. Because it’s easier, I can see myself sharing others’ posts much more frequently and similar to how I retweet from @dailytarheel.
   

Other things I like: The ability to RSVP to events as the DTH, handy for keeping track of things happening later on I might want to share with readers; the ability to change our category (was previously Brands & Products and is now Media/News/Publishing); and the ability to show who is managing the page (a feature I haven’t turned on yet, but am interested in). I also like that I can post on other pages as the DTH, which I’ve already done to share a link to one of our stories. I can see this feature helping us connect with a new audience.

Dislikes: I wish the page showed thumbnail photos of our fans instead of just a number, and I wish I had greater control over the photos that line the top of the profile page (for instance, the ability to pick an album to draw those photos from). Otherwise, I’m really excited to see how this will make page management easier.

Are there any new features I’ve overlooked that I should take advantage of here?

I just edited my first Wikipedia article. I set a goal to edit one a day after reading that fewer than 15 percent of the site’s contributers are women. I can’t say I was terribly surprised (as the article notes, the 85-15 percent breakdown mirrors male-female representation in offline areas, too), and after going through The Daily Tar Heel Wikipedia page and adding citations, I am even less surprised by the disparity. It’s time consuming to do well and a lonely task.

But I strongly agree with what Wikipedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner said: “Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table,” she said. “If they are not at the table, we don’t benefit from their crumb.” So, I’m going to try to do my part.

(H/t to Andy Bechtel, whose tweet reminded me of this great Office clip.)

I tried it yesterday on the DTH page and was quite pleased by the results. The post had more impressions and higher engagement than our wall posts generally attract. The comments were more thoughtful than usual, too.

One wall post doesn’t say much about the tactic’s overall effectiveness, but it’s definitely something I’m going to continue trying.

I’m giving it a second try having read more tips for using Evernote, and I’ve devised a way that turns it into something that can manage my tasks as well as reference material. Here’s my setup:

Notebooks

The first time around, I used just one notebook. Now, I keep seven.

• @inbox: Everything comes here first and is processed
• @next: One-step next actions. I only keep things in this notebook that need to be done within the next week
• someday/maybe: Anything I need to do at any point beyond the next week
• wait wait: Anything I am waiting on (someone’s reply to a question, etc) goes here
• lists: Books to read, movies to watch, things I want, etc
• reference: Information I don’t need immediately but want to save
• done: Completed tasks

The benefit of seperate notebooks is that, true to GTD, I can empty my inbox every day. I can look at what needs to be done next, what I’m waiting on, and immediately tell what needs to be done first.

Tags

My tags list hasn’t changed much from my first time around, except I added Tickler tags.

• Context tags: Tags like @calls, @computer, @errands, @home, @work. Anytime I am at my computer, I pull up my @computer list and see what I can do on that list. Same with the rest. I also have tags based on people I interact with regularly.
• Project tags: I don’t do project tags for every single project, but overarching areas. So I have a .dth tag for my work at The Daily Tar Heel, tags for classes I am taking and tags for personal records.
• Goals: I have notes here for my 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 and 50,000 foot goals. I look at these regularly and update as needed
• Tickler tags: The core of how I use Evernote as a task manager.

More on my tickler tags: I have one for every day of the week, a “next week” tag and tags for every month. I only tag things that have to be done on that day. At the beginning of the month, I check the month file and evaluate items in the list. At the end of the day, I empty that day’s folder – either moving unfinished items to the next day or reevaluating them entirely. I also have one tag for critical items to alert me to tasks that need to be done immediately. I process these first.

Notes

The title of each note is the next action of a project. When that action is complete, I replace the title with the next action. (So, “buy books for class” replaces “find out what books are needed for class.”) This works well for smaller, several step projects. As soon as the project is complete, the note is filed in my “done” notebook.  I keep interview notes, copies of Google Voice voicemails, calendar reminders, important documents, recipes, etc. among my notes.

So far, this Evernote set up is working really well for me. I know there are other dedicated task mangaers. And I’ve tried out Springpad, which looks like the best out-of-the-box combination of task management and note-taking. But I’m wary of buying a task manager app I might ultimately abandon, and Springpad has many features I don’t see a need for (keeping track of favorite restaurants, for instance) that add clutter around the things I do need. Evernote is easy to use, accessible (I have the Blackberry app, the iPad app, the Windows desktop client and can access the web-based version as well) and free. I’m able to keep documents related to tasks connected with the tasks, and able to quickly process through what needs to get done each day. I can email things to Evernote to add them as a note. Hopefuly this will be something I can stick with.