Senators fail ethics exam

Journalism 412 is Ethics, Mass Media and Society. Here is a question that might be on the mid-term:

You are a reporter covering the Ohio University administration. The administration offers to fly you to Minneapolis to cheer on the Ohio football team against Minnesota. After the game, it will put you up in a hotel.

You are not a sportswriter, and you won't be covering the game or anything related to it. But OU President Robert Glidden will be there, Michael Sostarich, vice president for student affairs, and Tom Boeh, director of athletics. It will be a chance to talk them up, get to know them better, make them trust you a little more. Do you accept the free trip?

If you said no, you pass. Even though you have to know your sources to cover them, you are not being paid to make friends. Disclosure time: Two Post sportswriters were also on that plane to

Minnesota. They were, of course, going to work, not to schmooze -- a

subtle – but key – distinction.

As a reporter, the only marketable commodity you possess is your credibility. If you give it up once, there's no getting it back. That's the funny thing about credibility; it can't be bought - only sold.

There's another funny thing: You only have it if people believe you have it. You don't even have to give up your integrity to lose your credibility; that is, you don't have to be actually dishonest. Once people °°think°° you've sold out, you're as good as paid for.

Especially if you sell out to the people you cover. As a reporter, you have to watch your sources, and that means watching them objectively, with your view unaltered by friendship or past favors. You can't be in debt to your sources.

Sources will offer to pick up the tab, sometimes to be polite - sometimes for the same reason a burglar might toss the watchdog a steak before he cleans out the jewelry box. As a reporter, you say no, thanks.

So how is it different for the president and vice president of Student Senate, who cheered on the Bobcats at the Metrodome? Well, senators are not obliged to be objective. Their job is to advocate, to be conduits that relay the student voice to the university administration.

To accomplish this, they have to do one of the things reporters do: watch what the administration does, and watch critically.

Will student leaders be less critical if they are treated to a trip to Minnesota or if they can watch home games from the president's box? Maybe not. But can they take perks, courtesy of those who should be subject to their scrutiny and maintain the confidence of the students they represent? Certainly not.

Senate President Jim Hintz said he and Vice President Melanie Johnston got a chance to build their relationship with key administrators and better understand the schedule of student athletes. Worthy goals, both. Furthermore, the flight didn't cost anything, because they were just filling empty seats on the chartered plane.

Fine.

And, he said, nobody in the administration tried to lobby him or get an inside scoop on senate activity.

I don't doubt that.

But Hintz and Johnston can meet with Glidden and Sostarich in Athens, or they can pay their own way to Minnesota. Instead, they took a handout - and gave away a little bit of their credibility at the same time. Nothing in senate rules prohibits what they did.

Something should.

Hintz said he doesn't see senate's relationship with the administration as adversarial. He ought to - not because the administration is the enemy of students but because it doesn't need a student cheering section.

What students need, and what senate is supposed to be, is a watchdog that growls when the university tries anything unsavory. Senators have to treat administrators as potential wrongdoers because they are, and senate's job is to tell them to knock it off. That job gets harder, not easier, when the two highest-ranking officers owe the administration favors.

Their intentions were better than their judgment. Without apparently realizing it, they made the watchdog a little less ferocious. Senate need not bite every time the administration extends a hand, but it must be more vigilant. If senators aren't careful, they might get de-barked.