University responds to backlash from Jessica Martin's 1st Person account

When Lisa Carl gave her English composition students at N.C. Central University the option of writing either a first-person autobiographical account of a significant event in their lives or an analysis of a graphic novel or anthropological classic, every student selected the first-person option.

"This may sound like a piece of cake, but you may find that it's the hardest assignment of all," writes Carl on the assignment sheet. "This is your chance to, finally, put yourself into the story."

According to Carl, an assistant professor in the University's department of English and mass communication, when the stories came in, one in particular grabbed her attention: "I had an affair with my high school teacher." This story, published along with others from the class in a special section of the Campus Echo, also has set off a firestorm of press attention and campus discussion.

It's the first-person account written by Jessica Martin, a junior in Carl's class. In the story, Martin recounts her affair with a band director at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, N.C. She opens her account of the alleged affair with a painful retelling of her abortion. Riding back from Greensboro with the teacher after the abortion, she writes: "In the car I leaned my seat back and cried all the way back to Winston-Salem."

Martin says that the band director, who she calls "James Smith" in the story, also had a sexual relationship with her best friend. Her narrative then provides an account of how the relationship developed and ends with Martin exploring her reasons for engaging in the affair. "Never having someone to express my feelings to, being under my teacher was a release from my other problems," she writes.

Martin's account was quickly picked up by the Winston-Salem Journal and then by the Daily Mail, a London-based tabloid.

Winston-Salem police soon began an investigation of Terry Lamar Jones Jr. Jones had been the band director at Parkland High School from August 2006 to November 2008, according to a statement released by Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

At the time of the allegations, Jones was 24 and Martin 17. While the age of consent in North Carolina is 16, state law prohibits a sexual relationship between a high school teacher and a student. If the age differential is greater than four years the offender is charged with a felony. Each offense is punishable by 15 months in prison.

On Apri 25 Jones resigned from his position as band director at Shepard Magnet Middle School in Durham and turned himself in police. According to the Forsyth County Sheriff's Department Jones has been held since Friday and his bail is set at $500,000.

Martin's decision to provide her account and the Campus Echo's decision to run the first-person account has sparked considerable debate across campus. Jones is an NCCU alumnus; Martin's best friend, whom Martin says also had an affair with Jones, is also a student at NCCU.

In a follow-up account provided to the Campus Echo about her experience of writing about her alleged affair with the band director, Martin described her semester as "full of experiences I will never forget.

"Who would have thought," she writes, "that I would make a stand for thousands of people … [that I would] be looked as an adult for once." She writes that she is "proud to have gained a higher respect and courage for myself, and others, as writers.

"I learned to stop doubting myself, I learned how many people on campus read the paper."

Shortly after the April 13 edition of the student newspaper was distributed, thousands of copies of the print edition disappeared under suspicious circumstances. According to NCCU campus police, tapes from surveillance cameras are being examined and removing newspapers is such a manner is a larceny offense.

Reaction to the story and its aftermath across campus has been mixed.

"I personally think she shouldn't have written it," said child development senior Dominique Selby. "That type of stuff is not suitable for the college newspaper. She should have taken it to the police or handled it personally."

Ravyn Johnson, criminal justice sophomore, agrees: "I don't think that was something that she should have done. It happened a long time ago. She just messed up his career. It was very entertaining to put in the Echo, but she shouldn't have put him on blast."

In an animated e-mail exchange, four faculty members in the department of English and mass communication questioned the Campus Echo's decision to run the personal narrative. According to one English professor it is his belief that "this student's privacy has definitely been violated – perhaps unintentionally and with her complicity," adding "it bears remarking that the eventual apprehension of her alleged violator was far less the object of the Echo publication than the possible entertainment value of her story."

One English instructor simply wrote: "What about editorial scrutiny? Ours." And later: "My major concern was that the story was ‘let loose.'"

But the Campus Echo editor-in-chief, Ashley Griffin, sees things differently. "These reactions make me question their motives," she said, suggesting that some faculty are critical of the decision to run the story because Jones is an NCCU alumnus and the story could damage NCCU's image.

"She writes about this three years later … psychologically it had a big impact on her. It's good for her. It's good that she stood by her story. It makes me feel happy for her that she got this off her chest," said Griffin, who added, "I think it's a shame, a sad day that someone would find that this story was for entertainment only … that's a shame."  Griffin said that she would have to question her own integrity as a journalist and as a person if she had killed the story. "If these allegations are true, this man broke the law. Why should we cover for him?" she said.