Savannah Brooks ’26 and Alex Gervais ’28
Editor-in-Chief and Executive Opinion & Design Editor
The Trinity community suffered the devastating, tragic loss of Nicky Green ’29 on Thursday night. As students, we grieve alongside our campus community. We lost a student, a peer, a friend, a fellow Bantam.
The Tripod has a responsibility to report the news. On Thursday evening, our goal was to fulfill that responsibility. We received backlash for our story, and we understand it. We realize that our neutral language created a story which seemed jarring and unfeeling. We apologize for the hurt that our reporting has caused our community.
We wanted to address our decision head-on and be transparent about why we decided to publish the story when we did. The Tripod’s mission is to be a newspaper that reports the news on our campus. That is our mandate, and that is what we, as reporters, aim to do. We felt on Thursday night that reporting the news was what we had to do. In the face of swirling misinformation which often surrounds tragic events, we felt we had a responsibility to publish what we could confirm about the situation to inform the wider community quickly and decisively.
We aimed to ensure that there was easily accessible, publicly available information regarding an event which, rightfully, many members of our campus community were concerned about. And, when it became apparent that one detail had the potential to be erroneous, we immediately redacted it and included a correction at the top of the article. The decision to publish the article so quickly is one that we understand the repercussions of and accept full and total responsibility for. Ultimately, we intended to minimize harm by ensuring that accurate information was readily available, but the immediate response to our article made it clear that our community was harmed by our reporting.
This article was one in a series of articles which have been published as breaking news rather than published along with our full edition on Tuesdays. Over the last few years, the Tripod has worked to become more adherent to journalistic standards and to be more committed to informing the Trinity community. Part of that process has been reporting as quickly as possible on events which we deem extraordinarily significant and subject to hourly or daily updates. Breaking news stories have included subjects ranging from the shooting of a student in Vermont to the disruption of water in the library. However, we have failed to create a comprehensive policy on breaking news and what the community needs to hear immediately, and misunderstood the community’s needs in this instance — and for that, we are incredibly sorry. We hope that you will provide feedback for our creation of our breaking news policy so that we can better understand our community’s needs in the future. More information on opportunities to provide feedback will come, but you can always send us an email or write a Letter to the Editor.
In the early hours of Friday morning, we elected to remove the post regarding the article from social media. Our original intention in posting about the article was to ensure information reached those in the community who may not have received the email from President Lugo regarding Green’s death. Instead, the post became the host of discussion regarding editorial policy. We welcome feedback and debate, but we felt that we could provide a more appropriate forum than that specific post. However, the article remains on our website due to our strict retraction policy, which can also be found on our website. We can only retract when our content is factually incorrect or when it is deemed libelous, dangerous or otherwise illegal by a court of law or by legal counsel. Any of our policies are subject to change with a vote from the full Editorial Board, and we will work with our team to understand and implement any changes we may make to said policy.
We accept and appreciate feedback from our community at all times, but especially right now. Email savannah.brooks@trincoll.edu, alexander.gervais@trincoll.edu and/or tripod@trincoll.edu to communicate your concerns. We are listening and we will respond. We want to have dialogue, we want to be open about our reporting and what happened on our campus. As always, you are welcome and encouraged to write a Letter to the Editor, and you can find instructions on how to do so on our website.
We also want to recognize that many students are interested in a forum to share memories of Nicky’s life. If this is of interest to you, we invite you to send thoughts, memories or prayers to tripod@trincoll.edu for inclusion in a remembrance page for Nicky which we will add to our website. You can specify if you would prefer to be anonymous or named. We hope that this forum will provide some small relief in the face of the hurt that we caused.
- Savannah Brooks ’26 and Alex Gervais ’28
Shameful. I hope this weighs on your conscience for years to come. Trinity students should demand your immediate resignation. The school needs to take serious and decisive action with the students who published this article.
How disgraceful and uncaring. Did you stop to think that maybe the parents hadn’t even been notified??? Bombarding friends and family in their grief? You should be ashamed for your actions. This isn’t news but rather sensationalism. Think deep and hard about what you did. Resignation is the very least you can do.
As an alum, this loss breaks my heart – and I have to say, the way this was handled by the Tripod was deeply unsettling. Publishing an article about a student’s death almost immediately after the President’s email felt jarringly insensitive. It came across as prioritizing speed and attention over basic human decency. In moments of shock and grief, the bare minimum is to give the community – and the student’s loved ones – time to process before broadcasting the news across social media. I sincerely hope the Tripod reflects on how callous this timing appeared.
Regarding this follow-up statement: it simply doesn’t meaningfully engage with why people were upset. It centers the publication’s intentions rather than the community’s pain – which makes the apology feel more like damage control than genuine accountability. A true apology would have more thoroughly recognized the harm caused, shown greater empathy for those who were affected, and more explicitly demonstrated a commitment to adjusting editorial judgment going forward. Rather, this statement missed an important opportunity to rebuild trust in a moment when compassion mattered most.
You think this helps? Take the article down. It’s that simple, don’t send it up the ladder to see if it violated YOUR guidelines or rules. Your lack of empathy as people is appalling from a College paper. This isn’t news, this is clickbait. The headline you used compared to the other article you referenced are radically different. Your school officials I’m sure can handle speaking to the students in a better way than you chose to in your article. This isn’t “water in the library” or even “a shooting of a student in Vermont” , all which you probably had a lot more information on before reporting. This is a student, a friend, and a family member that has loved ones that don’t need him being used as a pawn in your reporting to gain followers. Again, take it down, it’s the right thing to do until you all know more and can honor him in a way that you did with Ryan. Probably could have saved a lot of time just getting rid of the article instead of writing this half attempt at an apology to save face.
Thank you. I read the president’s email and was devastated. It’s an incredibly tragic and impactful event and it’s understandable that people on campus want to know more. The president’s email didn’t have much information, which was totally appropriate, but if you live or work on a small campus, you want to know more. I immediately went to the Tripod, because I know the current editor cares about facts and reporting, and would have additional information that wouldn’t be based on speculation. Learning that it happened in a first-year dorm was important to me, and helped me in speaking to students today.
For those alums weighing in, I deeply appreciate your commitment to Trinity, but let’s allow the student newspaper to decide for itself what it is “supposed” to report. The campus is grieving today. We are all heartbroken for this student and his friends, family, and professors.
There’s a 0% chance that comment from a ‘Trinity faculty member’ was actually written by a member of the faculty. I’m rolling my eyes so hard right now.
This is a very thoughtful statement on the mission of student journalists, which is to provide correct information to their readers about issues that affect them, even if that information is difficult for readers to hear. I commend these students for keeping this story up and issuing such a thoughtful and principled statement, and shame on those who are calling for resignations. Student journalists have the same responsibilities as professional journalists, and that is to report on events in a timely and accurate manner, which is exactly what these students have done. It is standard practice to reach out to families for comment, and it is a sign of diligence and respect for the deceased, not insensitivity. Deaths on campuses are all too common, and the suggestion that student publications should not report on them is completely wrong-headed. If it affects the campus or is being discussed among students, it should be reported. To suggest otherwise, or to harass these reporters, is to endorse censorship. Please keep at it—Journalism is a difficult field and it’s constantly under attack, but we need brave reporters to continue doing their jobs, and we are lucky to have such dedicated students doing this work.
“An event?” You guys aren’t reporters, you are students with inflated egos that are refusing to take proper accountability. Zero grace. You should be ashamed.
This is a back handed apology. There is no apology that will sufficient enough for publicizing a very private matter before his family was made aware. It’s disgusting and hurtful. His parents and family are struggling because of your article. You site the victims name and yet his “friends” name is not published. You have inflicted additional pain to his family. You gave us no time to grieve. All we have is people forwarding your cold hearted callous article. You thought only of yourself.
Alexi should step down too and be permanently barred from working on the tripod along with anyone else involved in release of the article. There should be consequences for your immaturity.
Trinity should expel all students involved. There should be consequences to your inhumanity. You can take down an article but you can’t take away the pain you caused countless people during a tragic period.
Do parochial schools really want people like this representing their school?
[…] on a moment that should have been as detached from exploitative journalism as possible. The justification provided the next day failed to address the main issue: the act of sharing information took priority over the respect and […]