Anna Higgins has had a busy summer.
The rising fourth year is the editor of the Cavalier Daily’s four-person summer news team. It’s the second year that CD staffers have stayed in Charlottesville for the summer to keep students, faculty and alums in the know.
And though Charlottesville is emptier than usual, the news has been pouring in.
The team started off the summer reporting on the return home, and subsequent death, of U.Va. student Otto Warmbier, who was detained in North Korea for more than a year.
It was a difficult and “heartbreaking” moment for many at the University, Higgins said, so it was important to cover the story the story from Grounds.
“It was interesting being here from both a reporter perspective and student perspective,” she said. “ … Even though the University is so quiet over the summer, there was such an outpouring of emotion for Otto.”
There was also the news that Rolling Stone magazine settled a defamation suit brought by Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, the last lawsuit to stem from the explosive — and later discredited — story about U.Va. campus rape published in November 2014. The piece was retracted in April 2015.
And the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Charlottesville to protest the city’s decision to remove the Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park, formerly known as Lee Park.
The CD had two reporters on the ground for the event.
“It was a really, really tense environment,” Higgins said.
Higgins is managing two writers and a “proddie,” who handles graphics and design.
“I think it’s really important, especially when it comes to these last minute events,” Higgins said.
Author: Julia Horowitz