by Travis Normand

Why am I posting about this?  Because it is being reported by other media outlets, and I find it interesting.

Do you remember Sara Ganim?  Anyone and everyone associated with Penn State does.

Ganim was the reporter that was credited for breaking the story on Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State defensive coordinator who was convicted on child abuse charges  in June 2011.  [See her first report on Sandusky, from March 2011, HERE]

While I don’t necessarily agree with the way everything was reported (more specifically in terms of Joe Paterno), Ganim did win a Pulitzer for her reporting  on the matter.

My problem with how the information regarding Paterno was handled has more to do with the media at-large (or in general) than with anything Ganim reported.  If anything, Ganim has proven that she has a real knack for finding the big story, as well as the persistence to get to the bottom of it.

[See all of her Sandusky coverage HERE]

Ganim reported the Sandusky scandal while working at the Patriot-News.   Since that time she has accepted a job with CNN and has apparently set her sights on the University of Notre Dame.

As you have probably noticed by now, Notre Dame has been making recent headlines due to its appearance in the BCS National Title game and because of the Manti Te’o – Lennay Kekua hoax.  However, you may not have heard of another story regarding Notre Dame — one that Sara Ganim is all over.

Here is a short summary/intro to the Notre Dame story that appeared on Ganim’s Blog:

Lizzy Seeberg, a student at St. Mary’s College, committed suicide more than two years ago, but her story is still important today because of the way her parent’s say they were treated by officials at Notre Dame. It’s similar to the way the university handled two more scandals that were related to football on the teams road to the 2013 National Championship BCS game.

Link

[Video] Click HERE to watch the CNN video of Sara Ganim’s report

Interested in reading more about this story?  Here are some links I found that can give you perspective from all sides of the issue.  Articles/links in BOLD are the ones I consider to be better than the rest.

• HuffingtonPost.com – A list of stories on Lizzy Seeberg.
• HuffingtonPost.com – A list of stories concerning Lizzy Seeberg’s suicide.
• HuffingtonPost.com – Notre Dame Clears Football Player of Sexual Assault Complaint
• HuffingtonPost.com – Notre Dame Responds to Lizzy Seeberg Controversy
• HuffingtonPost.com – New Texts, Documents Detail Notre Dame Football Player’s Involvement
• HuffingtonPost.com – Notre Dame Response To Lizzy Seeberg Suicide Contrasts With Manti Te’o Girlfriend Hoax
• NCROnline.org – Reported sexual assault at Notre Dame campus leaves more questions than answers
• DeadSpin.com – Q&A with Melinda Henneberger
• WashingtonPost.com – Why I won’t be cheering for old Notre Dame, by Melinda Henneberger

Sexual violations of all kinds happen on every campus, I know, and neither man will ever be found guilty in court; one of the victims is dead and the other, according to the Notre Dame student who drove her to the ER afterward, in February 2011, decided to keep her mouth shut at least in part because she’d seen what happened to the first woman. Neither player has ever even been named, and won’t be here, either, since neither was charged with a crime.

• CBSSports.com – No charges, no name, just questions remain in Notre Dame tragedy
• PoliticsDaily.com – Lizzy Seeberg’s Family Feels Rejected by Notre Dame as Football Star is Not Charged

Instead, they were stonewalled and stiff-armed. The lawyer they hired just to get the school to communicate with them reported back that Notre Dame’s general counsel, Marianne Corr, had this message for them: “I hope the Seebergs know how bad this could get for them” if they ever went public.

This was the second veiled threat the family received. The first came to Lizzy herself, in the form of a text message from the friend of the football player she said had assaulted her.

* Note: Some of the above articles read as if Izzy Seeberg was a student at the University of Notre Dame — she was not.  She was a student at St. Mary’s University.