Post for Week 4

During week 4, we worked on a fairly widely covered story about the closing of Reactor Field for tailgating. We missed out on tailgating for the first Mizzou game, but I suppose we got to attend tailgates and interview tailgaters. We interviewed about 6 students from East Campus and a few parents and students near the stadium the day of the game. No cops or people guarding Reactor Field would talk to us. Later in the week, we interviewed an officer at MU police and I found a good article on other schools that have made parking restrictions in the past. I emailed all of the schools listed in the article, and only Georgia and NC State got back to me. The assistant athletic director at Georgia was nice enough to do a phone interview with me, which was cool since that's a huge football school. We also interviewed MSA members and tried to talk to bars, but they were reluctant to talk to us.
We had a bit of trouble finding people who actually could comment on how they think these parking restrictions would play out, so our story didn't come out as great as I had hoped. The best info we got, I think, was that the other athletic directors felt like the students were just fine at their schools. There wasn't much of a public outcry at the schools that got back to me, while at Mizzou there are petition groups and student organizations going nuts. But at the same time, those schools had other big parking lots they didn't close, while Reactor was one of the only places students could tailgate.