The Stolen Christmas Tree

By Santiago Grandbois and Henry McClean

The Grinch has struck Granville! A sacred Christmas tree, decorated by elementary schoolers in a tradition stretching decades, has been stolen! Now the journalism department of Denison University must grapple with the ethics of naming the students responsible or keeping their identities a mystery. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

This phone call came with a hushed, you know, whispering into the phone. Um, you might want to check this out. Uh, someone someone stole one of the Christmas trees from downtown. I'm Alan Miller, a longtime journalist in Licking County, and I teach journalism at Denison University with my colleagues Jack Schuller, Doug Swift, and Julia Lerner. And the story that you just heard introduced produced one of the longest-running ethical debates in our department history. Here's why.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Word came up that a couple of drunk college kids stole a Christmas tree.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

It was big news. People across the village were talking about. Um, it was just starting to get out through word of mouth and some on social media.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Now you gotta remember, these these town Christmas trees, like second graders go and they make handmake Christmas ornaments, and they march out, and they hang, and they each class gets designated a tree, and they hang their ornaments.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

It's a tradition. You know, we have this candlelight walking tour that has graced Granville streets, turning us into a little Hallmark movie for 40 years now.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Occasionally I'm there at the right time and I see this delightful little parade.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

But, you know, with each of my kids. So I believe they start doing that in kindergarten.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

And the kids love it, and it's a ritual and the town is part of it, and they're and they walk by the shops, and this and the shops have Christmas music playing out the doors. And then, you know, the the thing that the kids have made, you know, this handmade ornament is now on display in the town, and their class like has a tree that they like own, you know, and now the family drives up and down the main street, and the kids point out the window, like that's our tree, that's our tree. And if they're walking, it's like, here's my ornament, here's my ornament.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

But it is it is one of my favorite days of the year is the candlelight walking tour, because like everywhere you go, it's just smiling faces.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

And these drunk college kids steal the tree. Like, so when word came out that that happened and we started communicating as a department, here's my here's my memory. Alan Midler said, we need to put these guys on blast. Who does this?

SPEAKER_03 2:41

You know, who steals from children? And so that's swirling around in my head as I'm starting to report on this. So I called Granville police, asked for the chief. He told me what happened. He also told me that the detectives they put detectives on this. Um or at least police officers, and he more than one. Um, so the police officers are investigating this theft of a Christmas tree, which is also so Granville. I love it. Um, and they found it in amazingly short order.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

College students in the middle of the day, broad daylight, just grabbed it out of the ground and said, Yep, that's mine now. Which I I mean, what were they thinking? What what could they have possibly been thinking?

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Um, and where they found it was in the dorm room of two Denison University students who apparently just wanted a Christmas tree uh for the holiday season.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

So the issue was do we name the students who did this or not?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

You know, we had the names. We had the names of the students involved. And do we use them? Do we not use them? What's the benefit of using them? What's the benefit of not using them?

SPEAKER_03 4:08

I think it was the longest-running ethical debate we had in this department to date.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

All day long we were talking about it. I mean, we went to lunch and we were talking about it. We came back here and we were talking about it.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

We're going back and forth. Um, you know, one minute Jack's in here saying No, we should name him.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Name him, we should name him.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

And then he'd go back to his office, and ten minutes later, down the hall he comes. No, no, no, we shouldn't name him. And then Julia would come in and she would say, I don't she has a really nice great way of saying, I'm not, I'm really not quite sure about how we should handle this story. And ultimately we decided we shouldn't use the names.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Just this like image popped in my head of a story like this going viral because some outlet picks it up, and because it could, you know, it could easily happen. You know, our stories run in the dispatch and the advocate, and it could hit the USA Today network, and boom, you know. Um, here's the names of these two students who did a really dumb thing, and then they and and then they pay in a way that to me didn't seem quite fair.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Like when they realized that students had made the ornaments, they were mortified. And they wanted to go to the school and like at an all-school assembly apologize to the whole school. And the superintendent and the principal were like, yeah, no, I don't know that that's a good idea. So now I was thinking, how do I write this story so that I don't name them and hurt the individuals, and also so that I don't indict 2,600 students, only two of which deserve to have any recognition in the story.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

What Alan did was genius, I think, because he he changed the tone of the story. He poked fun at the what they did, you know, like, okay, that was stupid. But he also like showed grace. And grace is really, you know, hard to come by in this world, I think.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

I think we did this one just right. And I'm not saying that because I wrote it, I'm saying that because we spent a day, at least, going back and forth talking. I mean, it's like that snow globe you hold up and you turn around and you're looking at all the angles to see everything you can possibly see or anticipate and and try to address it so that you you inform and entertain, but you don't do harm.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Damn it, maybe we need to go back and name no, I'm just kidding. No.