"So what?" I replied. "Big deal."
I warned the editor not to let her personal feelings about Marti affect her news judgment. After all, the last three U.S. presidents have copped to taking a few hits when they were young. So who cares if FAU's student media director got nabbed for lighting up in college?
"Um, she was 36 years old," EIC Karla Bowsher told me on the phone, reading from the Texas police report she had discovered. "And the police found scales. And her husband has been arrested three times in three different decades on marijuana charges."
"Well," I said, gathering myself. "That's different."Even so, we sat on the news. The editor requested Marti's personnel file to see if she mentioned the arrest on her FAU job application. That file arrived two days ago.
Marti did note the arrest, although she put down the wrong year. According to the Dallas County police report, she was arrested on Christmas Eve 1996. Not 1995. While a minor point, it made us wonder: If FAU has failed to verify Marti's professional journalism experience, did Student Affairs check her police record? Because it's disturbing.
In his narrative, the arresting officer says he was called out to Marti's house and spoke with her teenage son – whose name I'm omitting, along with the lengthy passages that attest to both Marti and her son being Mirandized...
Officer Yanes then asked [the son] if there was anymore marijuana in the house, to which he replied, "There could be anywhere from a quarter ounce to a pound." Officer Yanes then asked him where it was and [the son] replied, "I really don't know, it's my mother's and her boyfriend's." Officer Yanes then asked Marti how much marijuana she had in the house, to which she replied, "only two joints." While searching the house, officers recovered triple-beam scales, paraphernalia, and a usable amount of marijuana in the TV room.
This is troubling for several reasons: First, triple-beam scales aren't typically for personal use. Second, neither is a pound of marijuana. Third, who tells their son there might be a pound of pot in the house? Fourth, this was anything but a youthful indiscretion. Fifth, how did Marti escape with a misdemeanor and probation?
Police say they found 46.6 grams of marijuana. That's 1.6 ounces. Or according to marijuana.com, more than 50 joints.
So what does Marti say about this? The editors are asking her at this very moment.
Right now, it's 10:30 Friday morning. The editor and managing editor have finally secured a sit-down interview. Until now, they've been able to extract from Marti only a few sentences at a time before she shuts down with "no comment."
Even though Marti's office is right next door to the UP newsroom, they're all meeting across campus in the administration building's Media Relations conference room. I don't expect Marti will be the only administrator in that room.
My best guess is that FAU officials have told Marti not be say anything else to the UP without them sitting next to her. That's because her past words and actions have resulted in unflattering media coverage. (Click on any link in the gray box to the right.)
I'm sure those officials expect more questions about Marti's journalism experience. Maybe they expect one question about the line, "misdemeanor possession of marijuana in 1995" on Marti's job application. But I can't imagine they know the editors have the police report. And I don't believe those officials have seen it themselves.
I've never been a parent, but I imagine this is what it feels like when you drop your kid off at school for the first time. I'm an adviser leaving two new editors in a conference room loaded with ill-disposed adults for what will surely be a hostile interview.
Like the parent, I've done everything I could to prepare them. And like the parent, I just want them to come back not beat up.
Later today, read what those editors learned – especially about the arrest record of Marti's then-boyfriend-now-husband – on their blog. But here's my big question...
Besides her arrest, Marti's personnel files shows FAU maxed out her salary. The school's first-ever student media director was supposed to be paid between $48,000 and $53,000 a year. Now I'm wondering why she got the max.
Was it her two years of verifiable journalism experience at a community newspaper chain that doesn't remember her? Her 2-4 years (no one can tell for sure) of part-time project work at The Dallas Morning News, during which she did something she won't discuss, but it didn't involve bylines?
Whatever it was, her drug arrest certainly didn't hold her back.
