Virtual tour coming to the UIS site

By Janee Mitchell - Feature Writer

UIS will be making several modifications to the UIS Web site. Sherry Hutson, UIS Web site developer, said, "Over the next year, we are planning many updates to the UIS website. Starting with the academic programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we are beginning to deploy new Web site templates that include state of the art technology and features for usability and accessibility."

Hutson said the first sites to be updated will be the psychology Web site, www.uis.edu/psychology , and the sociology and anthropology website, www.uis.edu/sociologyanthropology/ . The process to modify the sites began a year ago when the Campus Web Team spoke with the academic cabinet, the College Democrats and the provost, as well as other faculty and staff regarding the additions.

Many schools have virtual tours incorporated into their Web sites, where students can view pictures of the campus and housing areas. UIS will soon join the ranks with its addition of a virtual tour of the campus to the UIS Web site. After speaking with 30 students regarding the content of the virtual tour, the Web team decided to create a virtual tour using some of the ideas brought forth, said Hutson. She said there would only be a photo tour initially, however a more advanced tour with video and voice will be added later.

In a September e-mail, the campus announced that the new Web site initiative would involve the creation of departmental Web sites incorporating the old content with new content and new software and two workshops, free of charge, for individuals in charge of the management or maintenance of the sites. The Web services Website posted the statement that, "research shows that a majority of college students obtain their initial impressions, and form their initial plans to attend a particular college, based on visits to college Web sites." This is the principle used to develop the website initiative.

The website further stated, "In order to address these three essential needs - recruitment , technical support , and accessibility - we are implementing a new UIS Web site, including many advanced technical features." The other purposes, according to Hutson, are to meet the Board of Higher Education's standard that state universities certain Web accessibility guidelines, to enhance recruitment efforts and provide an "attractive, accurate, interactive and accessible content."

Hutson said UIS does not have a large enough staff to fulfill the content and technical needs of the campus Web site but that is the purpose of the Web site that is expected to have advanced features and increase recruitment as well as the attractiveness and accessibility of the campus and its programs.

Tribune reporter speaks about innocence cases

By Laura Camper - General Assignment Reporter

Tunnel vision in reporting and in investigating criminal cases leads to lost opportunities and makes it more difficult to find the truth, according to Maurice Possley, a Chicago Tribune investigative reporter who spoke at University of Illinois at Springfield Nov. 8.

Possley, a reporter since 1972 and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, works for the Chicago Tribune. He has been covering innocence cases since the 1995 trial of Rolando Cruz, who, after spending seven years on death row, was found not guilty of the rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico due to DNA evidence and recanted testimony. Possley and fellow reporters found numerous problems with the case that convicted Cruz during their investigation, including a 1985 confession by Brian Dugan, whose DNA was found at the scene.

Possley said he believes the police were fixated on Rolando Cruz and co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez and didn't follow up leads that didn't further the case against them. He said it is important in reporting and in police work to stay completely open. "Listen to everything and go wherever the stream may lead," he advised.

He said he received a wake-up call from a reader who asked him "Where were you when these people were charged?" The truth was, he says, he was there; he just wasn't listening.

Possley, who just returned from Louisiana , illustrated his point with a story of his trip. He was sent to Louisiana to gather information on hurricane victims in order to create a database of names, place and time of the deaths and causes of death.

Wearing blue-framed glasses, he read the leads from three stories that he wrote from information he received while interviewing coroners from the areas outlying New Orleans . One of the stories was about a woman who found three coffins in her backyard. Another story was about cremations done on unidentified storm victims. The third story was about what storm-related death means and why that is an important designation.

Even though these were not the stories he had gone to Louisiana to cover, Possley followed up leads. "When you're doing an interview, silence is your best friend. Don't be afraid of silence," he says. "People will try to fill the silence." Let them, he advises, you might discover an important lead.

Possley said he gets hundreds of phone calls and letters from prisoners who say they have been wrongly convicted. "There are a fair amount of delusional people out there, but there are also people who are right," he says. If they can provide evidence of their claims, he will try to investigate.

Possley said, "I am lucky that the Tribune will finance these kinds of investigations." He says the time and expense involved in the investigation is extensive so many papers will not finance them anymore.

His investigations follow a certain pattern. The first thing he does is go through trial transcripts to find case information and questions that need to be answered. Then he tackles police reports, looking for discrepancies or leads that weren't followed. After that, he looks at witnesses, first non-police prosecution witnesses and finally, authority witnesses such as police investigators or lab workers.

There are limitations to what Possley can do, though. "We cannot, as journalists, do DNA tests or make a motion in court. What we can do is ask questions. We put the story out there but someone else has to act on it."

Possley said that although he believes the United States ' justice system is the best, it is a "very imperfect system." The truth can be lost in the drive to win the case and, according to statistics, an average of once every two weeks an innocent person is convicted of a crime.

Charles Wheeler, director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at UIS confirmed Possley's point, saying, "This is not a moral issue but a question of whether we can trust the system to convict the right person."

Possley's presentation at UIS was sponsored by UIS's Downstate Illinois Innocence Project and Institute for Legal and Policy Studies.

Virtual tour coming soon to the UIS site

Tribune reporter speaks about innocence cases