Student newspapers are present on college campuses for one reason: for their employees to learn the ropes through their own successes and failures. In one instance at a rival university, its student newspaper thought they had quite a story — until its editors realized their reporters had broken the law.

The Daily Iowan at the University of Iowa ran a front-page story on Monday about doing a sting operation on Hancher Auditorium by having three underage reporters see if they could buy alcohol without being carded at three separate events. The reporters were successful. The writer of the article then contacted U of I’s vice president for Student Services, the Hancher house manager and the director of Iowa’s Alcoholic Beverages Division to alert them that the law had been broken.

What didn’t occur to the Daily Iowan staff is that they had broken the law as well, and a Johnson County lawyer will be following up on the reporters’ actions.

This situation is enough to make student editors everywhere cringe and say, “ouch.”

It was a pure and simple mistake on behalf of the Daily Iowan staff, one that could have been solved by including university police. But in this case, it seems that the prospect of a big, exciting headline on the front page and a nice pat on the back made the Daily Iowan editors jump the gun.

“We didn’t use deceptive means. They didn’t use fake IDs and didn’t drink the beverages. It was simply a test to see if [Hancher] would sell,” said Ryan Foley, Daily Iowan editor in chief in a Des Moines Register article this week. “I guess it would be considered illegal if they purchased, though.”

At Iowa State and at U of I, journalism students are able to take an ethics course to challenge young journalists’ ideals and tactics while teaching them about proper courses of action to stay within the law and within their own moral boundaries.

The Daily is not perfect, either, and our staff has had its fair share of ethical decisions and, sometimes, problems. With threats of legal action and angry phone calls, student editors are faced with these decisions every day across the country. Two years ago, the Daily was threatened with legal action after a questionable photograph was published inside the paper alongside an article about the opening of Peepland on Duff Avenue. A former state representative sought out help from the Iowa Attorney General’s office to prosecute the Daily, but there was not enough evidence to support the representative’s claim.

In the case of the Hancher alcohol sting, hopefully the Daily Iowan staff has learned its lesson and will be more careful when considering stories like these. In this business, a journalist can afford to make only one mistake.

Editorial Board: Cavan Reagan, Amber Billings, Ayrel Clark, Charlie Weaver, Katie List