Serves you right to get kicked out of Mary Park. During my morning walk around the west end of campus, I always pass by the housing units. The door signs clearly say that it is not a public building.

It seems to me that since you were a resident of the Mary Park dorms, you have the right to live there, since you paid to live there.

However once you decided to use your camera and do "photo journalism," (I saw those dorm photos) in the units, your status changed from being a paid resident to a member of the press, which I feel revokes your right to have a paid resident status and the protections that come with it (which the staff seems to have the right to force you to stop immediately).

Give it up... you just want the attention to get your face everywhere, just like how some photos you took were of people that wanted that 15 minutes of fame.

I have to agree with eveyone above. Tell us why you didn't do the right thing and return the keys to the owner. I'm embarassed that the Journalism Dept. supports your behavior and allowed a story like this to be printed.

In the future think about doing the right thing which are better stories to be remembered by not scandlist stories like this.

If scandal is what you want go cover tabloid news.

Besotting the First Amendment

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from abridging freedom of speech or the press. It’s helpful to remember that it does not enable persons to commit criminal acts in the name of free speech or the press.

On Friday, the journalism department at San Francisco State University arranged a press conference to promote a cause celebre. Omar Vega, an 18-year-old freshman, and aspiring photojournalist, went out with some of his friends last October, broke into a locked Mustang with keys found near their dorm, and proceeded to steal CDs, cash, and damage the inside of the car.

Vega brought a camera with him to photograph the crime and has now been transformed into a victim according to his attorney, Emilia Mayorga, “arrested for nothing more than engaging in his First Amendment rights.”

The five individuals and Vega spent about twenty minutes cruising around with the car keys, “pressing the panic and unlock button,” and “in search for the vehicle for a possible joy ride,” according to a caption labeled “Determination,” which Vega posted with one of six photographs of the event on a Website at SportsShooter.com.

After locating, breaking into, and ransacking the Mustang, the students threw the keys into some nearby bushes and returned to SF State.

After Vega’s photos and captions appeared on the Website, the College began to receive complaints from around the country, and indeed from as far away as South Korea, advising the University’s police that several students had been involved in a crime.

Vega and the other SF State students were brought separately before the director of the college’s Housing and Residential Services, DJ Morales. Vega told Morales that he had come upon the group of people clustered around the car, had no prior knowledge the students intended to commit a crime, and didn’t know that money or CDs had been stolen. After Morales explained that she had spoken with other individuals involved in the events of that evening and that their stories were somewhat different, Vega changed his story and said that he had heard the others talking about finding the car keys and going to search the car.

In his revision, Vega told Morales that he then grabbed his camera and drove with the other individuals to look for the car. Vega continued to deny that the other students were his friends despite their statements to the contrary. He averred that he had only known them a few months and that they should have known that he was acting as an objective journalist and reporter, not as their friend and accomplice. According to a report in Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle however, another student told police that “Omar was part of the group. We’re all friends, and he wanted to find the car just as bad as everyone else.”

Flanked by SFSU journalism professors John Burks and Ken Kobre, as well as lawyer Mayorga, Vega continued to evolve his story to the press Friday, except when he was interrupted by Mayorga and instructed not to answer. He said he had “no intention in the beginning to commit a crime.” Although he photographed a close-up of one of the students handling the keys en route, the individuals inside and around the car, and one person with a stolen CD, Vega said he still didn’t know what was going on, that he “thought it was a possible prank.” It was only after he asked what happened and someone responded that they got some money and tapes that it dawned on Vega that a crime had occurred. Incredibly, Vega said when he photographed the found keys, he didn’t know whether they were in the hands of the owner or not.

Vega made no attempt to contact the car’s owner and when Morales asked him about that, Vega blamed the victim for being irresponsible with her keys.

Photojournalism Professor Kobre, Vega’s advisor, said that Vega was a freelance photojournalist and that Vega was involved in a campus life project. That project has also included Vega photographing students engaged in sex and vomiting from illegal drinking in the dorms. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics taught at SFSU states in part: “Journalists at all times will show respect for the dignity, privacy, rights and well-being of people encountered in the course of gathering and presenting the news.”

Vega’s actions and multiple explanations for his behavior are not the most serious crimes here though. The carefully orchestrated parroting of “serious danger of impeding the First Amendment” refrain, first trumpeted by Mayorga and dutifully blown in turn by Burks, Kobre, and Vega, mocks the intent of that important right.

Vega can be excused his youthful indiscretion. Burks, the University’s Journalism Department Chair and Kobre, have greater reason to be ashamed. By latching onto an obvious platform certain to provoke controversy, those professors abrogate their essential mission to help raise ethical journalists. By fostering the Vega saga, Burks and Kobre send perhaps the most damaging message of all, that the journalist has a duty not to the public, but to his own selfish interests.

And there is the crux of this matter. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press belongs to the public. Journalists “who abuse the power of their professional role for selfish motives or unworthy purposes are faithless to that public trust,” according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors Statement of Principles. And teachers that lead acolytes down that path should turn in their journalism credentials.

The author is an attorney and member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He attends ElderCollege at SFSU.