Hello. My name is Casey Nordcliff, and I am a computer science major here at N.C. State. I was reading the Feb. 20th edition of the Technician, and the headline was a bit shocking, but not for the reasons you might suspect. It reads, “RPD arrests student on charges of statutory rape, sexual offense.” Taken aback, I began reading. It gave the picture, full name, age, address, school year, major and the amount of bond money being held for a Mr. Sharka Holmes, the accused.

Now, here is a man who was accused of a crime, arrested by proper law enforcement, apparently gave no signs of resistance and was booked according to current statutes. He most likely has not gone to court. He has not been convicted. He hasn’t talked to a judge, or jury, or anyone else, except perhaps his lawyer. In the United States, one is always presumed innocent until proven guilty. It is entirely possible that this man can go to court and be found not guilty. If that happens to transpire, he will have what little of his reputation is left to go off of, best case scenario. He will most likely be ostracized socially and have his academic career put on hold, at least for a little while. Even IF he is found innocent, all ~35,000 students and however many faculty who have read the article will associate his name with a crime he did not commit.

As free-thinking, open-minded and tolerant as I was told N.C. State is, this is a blatant disregard for personal privacy. To publish as much information as the authors of this article did is rude, inconsiderate and, quite frankly, unprofessional. The authors are dragging a potentially innocent man’s name through the mud, based off of what I assume is public record consisting of police transcripts of the events aforementioned. Whether or not this man is guilty is irrelevant; what IS relevant is that his reputation is most likely forever tarnished by a preemptive, sensationalized headline. I hope that whoever this email reaches and/or whoever wrote the article has thought about the seriousness of their actions and will consider outcomes of people named in articles going forward.

Cordially yours,

Casey Nordcliff

junior, computer science