Sometimes I don’t know if I’m cut out for this job.

When it comes time to defend your English degree (and you Liberal Arts majors know what I’m talking about), “journalism” is a great answer. It implies a nine to five, respectable existence.

But sometimes it’s anything but.

I was one of several reporters from the Collegian to report to the fraternity house fire on Friday. I have to admit that we joked as we headed over, not knowing what to expect. Even as we got closer our only concern was to see how close we could get, who we could talk with, what information we could absorb.

When we finally did get there we counted fire trucks, firefighters, police. We tried to approach them. We tried to get out from under the yellow tape. Finally we actually succeeded, and walked straight onto the lawn filled with the distraught and now homeless victims of this terrible event.

I suppose that may be some sort of coping mechanism, focusing in on details and scientific explanations so as to avoid the full horror of a tragedy. But the horror is still there after the who-what-when-and-why has been answered, and it’s something that can’t be explained or researched away.

I have to confess when I went over on to the lawn where the brothers were gathered, I tried to get them to answer questions. I have to admit I grumbled when they declined, and grumbled even louder when they shooed our photographer away.

I want to be a journalist, but there’s something so barbaric about the things I did on Friday, as part of my job, that have stuck in my craw from the moment I walked back toward the office to finish the job and write the story. There’s something inhuman about watching people’s lives crumble away for a paycheck.

But there’s one thing, though it’s only one thing that I can think of to justify my actions on Friday. I thought of it while I was walking back to write, and struggling with my own conflicting emotions. I thought of the saturation of media after the Sept 11 tragedies, and the stark coverage they gave the explosions, collapses, suicidal leaps and clouds of ash and dust from the World Trade Center. I thought of the statistics, maps and pictures they’ve been running without mercy ever since. Barbaric. But, I realized, necessary.

Were it not for the news, the nation as a community would not be able to fully share in the tragedy that affects their neighbors. Were it not for images traumatic enough to bring onlookers right to ground zero, the kind of patriotic, emotional, and monetary outpouring we’ve seen bind our nation together since Sept 11 would not have been as widespread, pervasive and generous. People far away that you don’t know are a statistic. Faces on a screen are human beings. Voices in print are human beings. That’s what we’re here to get across.

I still feel the need to extend my apology, not for the Collegian or for any of the other reporters or photographers on the scene that afternoon that kicked off Columbus Day weekend 2001 with tragedy instead of celebration, but for myself. I hate intruding into people’s grief. I hate intruding into people’s darkest hours, and I’m deeply sorry to have had to do it.

And, also for myself, I want to explain. For what it’s worth, I feel strongly that the members of our campus community need to know what happened to our fellow students, and that they need to see it vividly. Like our nation, when we’re faced with tragedy, we need to feel, react and then come together as one.