The Post received several inquiries about why it continually refers to Dedrick Peterson as a former member of the Ohio University Marching 110.
Peterson, a 31-year-old from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was sentenced to five years in prison Friday after he was found guilty on three counts of sexual battery.
Our reasoning as to why Peterson is labeled as a former member of the Marching 110 is simple: He assaulted the survivor, whom he had known for several years, at a post-game party among friends also in the 110 during OU’s 2013 Homecoming Weekend.
The fact that he was part of the Marching 110 — and among his peers when he committed the sexual assault — is part of the story. We would be remiss not to include that information in our reports.
We’re not the only ones who find it to be appropriate to mention Peterson’s Marching 110 affiliation. The affiliation has been noted by other media outlets and was included in news releases and Facebook posts from Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn.
We’re not singling out the Marching 110 by publishing Peterson’s affiliation with the band. If a person formally accused or convicted of a crime has any publicly-stated ties to this university or city, we’re going to include that information in our reports. That’s regardless of if the person was a member of the Marching 110, a representative on Athens City Council, a student-athlete on an Ohio Bobcats athletic team or an OU professor, for example.
We published a story Tuesday about Alvaro Mangual-Manfredi getting two years in prison for sexual battery stemming from an August assault behind Red Brick Sports Pub. Mangual-Manfredi has not been publicly identified as a member of any university or local organization or group, and he hasn’t even been identified as an OU student. If such information was available, we would have certainly published it, just as we did in the Peterson story.
It’s part of our job to do so.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post's executive editors: editor-in-chief Jim Ryan, managing editor Sara Jerde, opinion editor Xander Zellner and projects editor Allan Smith. Post editorials are independent of the publication's news coverage.
