If you're wondering why I haven't been blogging much lately, it's because the media-relations aspect of my job at the university has been keeping me quite busy, and not under very pleasant circumstances. Last Thursday morning, I received the dreaded early-morning phone call that every PR director loathes: the campus police notifying me of a terrible auto accident involving some of our students. In this instance, five freshmen were in one vehicle, missing a stop sign and pulling off a county road and onto the highway, when their car was T-boned by the southbound Chevy driven by an off-duty campus police officer. One student was killed instantly, three others were taken to the local hospital, and the fifth, along with the off-duty officer, was air-evacuated to a medical center in Columbia, Mo. A second student died later Thursday morning. So Thursday began at 1:30 a.m. and consisted of a long day of dealing with TV crews, print reporters, campus officials, press conferences, etc. Friday was more of the same, on a smaller scale. I've spent the weekend recuperating from it all. Here's one news report of the incident.