Student journalists are put to the test, and sometimes face danger, in covering protests on campus
Ordered by police to leave the scene of a UCLA campus protest after violence broke out, Catherine Hamilton and three colleagues from the Daily Bruin suddenly found themselves surrounded by demonstrators who beat, kicked and sprayed them with a noxious chemical.
On American campuses awash in anger this spring, student journalists are in the center of it all, sometimes uncomfortably so. They're immersed in the story in ways journalists for major media organizations often can't be. And they face dual challenges — as members of the media and students at the institutions they are covering.
Across the country from University of California, Los Angeles late Tuesday, a student-run radio station broadcast live as police cleared a building taken by protesters on the Columbia University campus, while other student journalists were confined to dorms and threatened with arrests.
