At the risk of humiliating myself, I present to you my answer to the “Why Northwestern” question from my Common App. I promise you it is the real thing, though you should have no doubts after reading it that it was written by a high school student. You are now about to witness the strength of unmitigated pompousness:

“The five weeks that I spent at Northwestern’s National High School Institute have made me positive that I want to study and pursue journalism, and that I want to do so at Northwestern. During the course of the program, there were moments when it occurred to me that I was doing precisely the things I wanted to do during my four years at college. When we reviewed cases for The Innocence Project with Professor David Protess, I decided it was an experience I wanted more of and that I could have only at Medill. Having had a taste of Medill’s unique combination of classroom learning and reporting opportunities, there is no other method from which I would rather learn.”

There you have it. Protess, with whom I spent about an hour as a 16-year-old cherub, made it into the shameless gushing that I submitted to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. The Medill Innocence Project was the strongest way I could think of to articulate my desire to go to Northwestern. I did not anticipate Medill’s yanking away the organization it had been bragging about for years from the professor who created it.

There was a lot I did not know then. I’ve looked at Northwestern from both sides now. One of the things I’ve learned is that a university, or at least our university, will squawk about the achievements of its faculty and students like a soccer mom on steroids but will divest itself completely the minute clouds of bad press begin to loom over Lake Michigan.

This has been happening a lot lately. Last quarter, I watched as the University pandered to flustered alumni with deep pockets, turning its back on my Human Sexuality professor. Now, my school within Northwestern is not only denying me the experience I have been anticipating for almost four years, but is also completely trashing the tenets of journalism that it has taught me to hold dear.

Cook County prosecutors claim Protess and his students acted unethically in their investigation of Anthony McKinney’s murder conviction. In the fall, Northwestern obtained separate legal counsel from Protess and complied with a subpeona by turning over class documents. Protess’s refusal to do the same has now led to his being barred form teaching the class this spring. Tuesday he announced that he will launch his own Chicago Innocence Project, separate from Northwestern.

I’m not going to make any assertions about the allegations against Protess. Medill taught me not make assumptions in the absence of actual legal findings. Of course, anyone who has ever been written up in a dorm knows that the University has an extralegal system of its own. But the University also has not claimed to know of any wrongdoing. Its official statement about this breakup said “…the laudable goal of the Innocence Project would not justify any improper actions that may have been taken by Professor Protess.” Within that use of the conditional tense lies the very reason for which I should not be denied the opportunity to participate in the Innocence Project with Protess next year. Ideally, I would like for this participation to formally count toward my Northwestern education, the way I had been told it would as a prospective freshman.

Medill has also taught me that important works of journalism often lead to fallout. Professors have held up the journalists who go to jail in order to protect their sources as heroes. I learned that news organizations should stand behind the people who work for them as long as the understanding is that those people did their reporting in good faith that they were within ethical and legal parameters. No one has proven that Protess has, intentionally or unintentionally, crossed any of those boundaries.

I understand that Northwestern has to protect its own image, but I don’t support this recent trend in public relations being the school’s number one concern at all times. I was under the impression that Medill was meant to function as a paragon for news organizations, practicing the guidelines it disseminates to its students. Perhaps this was just another extension of my naïveté that needed to be stamped out by the college experience. If so, congratulations Northwestern. You’ve done your job.

Ali Elkin is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected].