Sexually suggestive photographs of ASDVC President Lindsay St. Hill were recently given public exposure via a false Facebook profile that included links to the Web sites from which they were taken.
Although Facebook quickly took down the fraudulent page after St. Hill complained, it was an open secret among ASDVC board members and others that she had posed for hundreds of these photographs and several videos available on several public Web sites.
Inquirer editors discussed whether or not this was a legitimate news story that outweighed St. Hill’s right to privacy. Ultimately, we voted unanimously to run the story, knowing that many readers would accuse us of sensationalizing what St. Hill described in an interview as “modeling swimwear and lingerie to be sold.”
Bill Oye, dean of student life, expressed just such a reaction to the Inquirer editor in chief: “If this is headline, page-one news, then someone isn’t looking at the larger picture.”
But the “larger picture” is that St. Hill is an elected official, and her actions merit more attention than that of the average person.
We chose to go ahead with the story because St. Hill is the public “face” of DVC students. Her picture is on the cover of the spring schedule, she represents us at statewide leadership conferences and she presides over weekly ASDVC board meetings where decisions are made that affect DVC students.
As a result, we believe the existence of these photographs and videos on publicly accessed Web sites is newsworthy – particularly since some of them were taken during summer 2009 after St. Hill was elected ASDVC president.
St. Hill refuses to say when and where she posed for the photographs and videos, although she insists she was not the ASDVC president at the time. Yet the photographer who holds the copyright on many of these pictures says the photo shoot was last summer and the pictures themselves carry date stamps for July and August 2009.
The fact that St. Hill made a conscious choice to pose for sexually suggestive photos and videos raises questions about her judgment. It also offers a valuable lesson to all students about how what you put on the Internet can come back to bite you at any time.
We invite readers to continue this debate by expressing their views on The Inquirer’s decision by visiting our website at theinquireronline.com, emailing us at [email protected] or by sending letters to The Inquirer at 321 Golf Club Road, H-102, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523.