By Brittany Burke
Insensitive. According to the dictionary the word insensitive means “deficient in human sensibility, acuteness of feeling, or consideration, unfeeling.”
I have never felt the need to use the word insensitive more so than I have this past weekend. The words alarming, disgusting, sleazy and unethical also come to mind.
What pains me even more, besides the fact that I actually have to group those words together, is I have to use them to describe a former writer and photographer for my own paper.
The deaths of Rich Royster and Brittany Mariani shocked the CCSU community. Less than six months after the fact, the family and friends closest to these Blue Devils are still in the grieving process. Mourning is an essential part to getting past something as tragic as this, and those who are still grieving should be allowed to do so in peace.
When someone of great popularity dies, it is inevitable that there will be bottom feeders who will try and make money off of their name and the circumstances. If there weren’t those kind of people in the world, we wouldn’t have all of the Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson memorabilia littering the sketchy side shops in all of the major cities.
Now, just because the general public has fed into this type of selfish exploitation of someone’s memory doesn’t make it right.
This past weekend, I found out that a former staff member of The Recorder joined the ranks of the insensitive and took the limited access he was given to the CCSU athletics community by the editors, including myself, as a member of my sports staff, and tried to make a profit off of the death of Royster.
This photographer/writer took photos that he shot for the use of the sports section and made the conscious decision to make up t-shirts, which he planned on selling for his own benefit. I would understand if they were t-shirts with his number, with proceeds going to his scholarship fund. However, a t-shirt with him on it, below tacky lettering? It is clear what the intentions were, especially when shirts featuring other CCSU athletes were also advertised.
How can someone feel okay about trying to make a quick buck off of someone else’s memory? No amount of time can pass, which would make something like this acceptable.
On top of using the picture, he also quoted the head coach of the CCSU football team, which he pulled from an article printed in the Bristol Press…against his knowledge.
A journalist and sports photographer is given access that most sports fans can only dream about. It is their job to take that power and present what they gather to the fans. It is not their job to violate the trust bestowed upon them and go behind the backs of the paper and team to try and make money.
In all of my journalism classes I have never learned about this type of unethical behavior, but something like this is right up there with fabricating a story or plagiarizing in my eyes.
An act such as this is appalling, and I would like to make it clear that when I wrote “former writer” I meant he is no longer associated with the paper, and most importantly my section.
I would prefer to keep Rich Royster’s memory alive with my words, not a cheap shirt.