Free Distemper by Beth Saulnier

the details, and you know it. But, Alex, keep in mind that we don’t really know what the physical evidence
     is. All we know is what the cops have released, what a few lame-ass witnesses have said, and what you’ve managed to charm
     out of the local goons. We don’t know squat. It was only a fluke we found out about the dog collar. None of the other news
     guys have it.”
    “That’s just what I mean. What are we supposed to do with that? We can’t run with it.”
    “The hell we can’t.”
    “Who’s the source?”
    “You are.”
    “Oh,
please
.”
    “So it’s unattributed. ‘Police refused to comment on whether the victim may have been offed like a pooch.’ I love that shit.”
    “But what if it queers the investigation?”
    “I can’t believe you’re talking like this.”
    “Okay, neither can I. But it seems out of bounds somehow. Cody just happened to be in my house when he figured it out.”
    “Too bad for him.”
    “Do we really want to piss him off beyond all reason?”
    He sighed, eyeing me with the pity he reserves for teetotalers and the overweight. “You win. But what if I get it on the record
     from somebody else? Will that satisfy your newfound…” He cast about for the right word, and it came out in a growl. “Scruples?”

7

    A NOTHER JOY OF LIVING IN A COLLEGE TOWN IS ALL THE free entertainment. And I’m not just talking about the various paeans to wretched excess, like the annual rite of spring
     in which the architecture students build an enormous papier-mâché gopher and drag it through campus while the engineers sing songs
     and pelt them with beer bottles. No, I’m fond of the more impromptu, entirely unsanctioned outbreaks of mirth: the arcane
     fraternity rituals performed in drag, the couches that are routinely pelted from third-floor balconies, and, of course, the
     streaking.
    Benson also offers near-constant opportunities to observe the current state of campus protest. Last year, the hot topic was
     gay rights, after a couple of freshmen got bashed within an inch of their lives and activists took to the streets in droves.
     All the agitating worked—the university gave in to most of the demands—but that was pretty much the exception that proves
     the rule. When it comes to activism, there’s an awful ache about the place;call it the agony of having missed the party by several decades. Sure, they dress like the sixties are still upon us, with
     their braids and their tie-dye and their anklets made out of hemp. But there’s a certain desperation to it all, and it isn’t
     pretty.
    In the more than two years I’ve been at the
Monitor
, I’ve covered rallies, marches, and sit-ins (sits-in?) on the following issues: gender equity in sports, nasty labor practices
     at the company that makes Benson T-shirts (from what I hear, “sweatshop” would be too nice a word), the university’s investment
     in tobacco companies, a teaching assistants’ union, disabled access to the football stadium (there isn’t any, unless you sit
     on the field), a pomology professor accused of sexual harassment, and the crappy food in the dining hall. I always seem to
     get good quotes out of the protesters, which is either proof of my journalistic acumen or their willingness to mouth off to
     anybody with a notebook. One of them once told me that they trust me because I’m quote, “too young to be the man.” (And I
     thought I was just too girlie.)
    I mention all this because in what turned out to be a brief lull between the discovery of the second body and the third, I
     got caught up covering the latest social action up on the hill. This time, the hot topic was animal rights, and the protest
     forces were hitting it from all angles. They’d stormed a trustee meeting, demanding that Benson divest from companies that
     do animal testing. They’d raided a mink farm forty miles away. They’d trashed a bunch of labs up at the vet school and, over
     at the Ag school, liberated some