There's been a lot of discussion among journalists about Northwestern's student paper apologizing for a series of coverage decisions, but I'm also interested in the way the students criticizing the paper seem to be thinking about protest.

(I say everything I'm about to say from what I assume is the slightly unusual position of a journalist who was also arrested and put through a university disciplinary process for participating in direct action in college.)

One of the students who was part of the Northwestern protest told a student photographer that he shouldn't have photographed her being knocked to the ground and told the Times "“We weren’t there to to get in the newspaper." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/college-campus-journalists-newspapers.html

I'm genuinely curious about this. Isn't it strategically valuable for the public to see that protesting students faced this sort of treatment from the police? If your goal is to make it harder for Jeff Sessions to get speaking engagements, why *wouldn't* you want coverage?

I understand the concern that student protestors might face disciplinary consequences, which @prof_gabriele highlights here. https://twitter.com/prof_gabriele/status/1194709096458534917

At the same time, I do think part of a good organizing process is picking people for these kinds of actions who are prepared to handle the foreseeable consequences.

Among other things, when I participated in the direct action that I was part of, I chose to do so because someone else who was originally slated to participate was at risk of losing a work-study job if they skipped a shift.

I am sure my parents were not super-delighted that I got hauled before the college's disciplinary committee and threatened with expulsion (we got off with a warning). But I 100 percent would have been okay had I actually been kicked out of school.

There are a couple of other ways to think about this. Part of the point of direct action can be to provoke an overreaction by law enforcement; in that case, it's generally useful to have that overreaction documented.

But it can also be the case that direct action can appear invasive, indecorous or even violent, and part of designing an action is to price that possible perception in and decide whether or not it's worth the risk.

(When we got busted, the campus police set up a mobile processing station in the building we were occupying us, and arrested us, booked us, processed us and then released us out of sight of the folks and press who were gathered outside. They were smart!)

In any case, I'm genuinely interested to see how all of these norms evolve, both a journalist and as someone who has participated in direct action and various protests. The expectations and norms on *both* sides matter.

Anyway, if you're a student activist currently in college, I'd be curious to know what your organizing process is like, both in the long term and for actions like the one at Northwestern!