The past couple of days the Daily has been plastered with stories, editorials, columns, letters to the editor and Quick Es about the student riot that took over Iowa State late Thursday.

That’s right. If you didn’t notice, I used the word riot to describe the mass student gathering that stormed Campustown and campus streets.

But before I get into the reason as to why I used the word I did, or why I used “Fuck dry Veishea,” I first must tell about how the story even got in Friday’s paper.

There I was, double checking the front and back page of the paper Thursday night when I got a call from a friend about a disturbance out at Towers Residence Association. The friend told me that it looked as if it was the same celebration that formed last year when “spring fever” reared its lovely head.

As juicy as this bit of news was, the clock was ticking away, and my 11 p.m. deadline to put the paper to bed was soon approaching. I decided that I would head over to Towers once the paper was wrapped up and ready for the printer.

When I first arrived at Towers, you would have thought Vice President Al Gore was making another special appearance at ISU. The parking lot was swimming with Department of Public Safety, Ames Police and State Patrol squad cars.

The crowd was small then, but it soon picked up more students when it made its way through Campustown and to the other residence associations.

So what was the determining factor that led my managing editor and I to drive nearly an hour to stop the paper from being printed?

The turning point for me was when more than 500 students stormed The Knoll. (It looked to me to be more around 1,500 students.)

I figured if these students are crazy enough to moon, streak and yell “Fuck dry Veishea,” on the sacred home grounds of ISU President Martin Jischke, then I was crazy enough to turn around on an exit ramp to make sure it got in the paper for the next morning.

That one act by rioters took the whole incident to another level.

Now, back to addressing some of the concerns readers have had with the Daily’s coverage of the riot.

First, the question: “Was it a riot?”

I have no doubt that Thursday night’s mass student gathering was a riot in every sense of the meaning.

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as the Veishea riots of 1988 and 1992, but a mob of students created a disturbance of peace, minor vandalism and set fire to their clothes in front of the Campanile. A riot doesn’t even have to involve vandalism or looting.

However, according to some university administrators and law enforcement officials they frown on calling it a riot because of the word’s negative connotation. Some ISU administrators have said it was just a bunch of students walking around and talking.

Well, if it was really no big deal and should not be tagged with a negative connotation, then why did Jischke say he hopes “it will not become a pattern because it doesn’t reflect well on the students, and it doesn’t reflect well on the university”?

If it was no big deal, then the administration should have no problem with the students having a mass gathering like last Thursday’s every week, right?

Second, the Daily’s use of the phrase “Fuck dry Veishea.”

As a journalist, my job is to strive for accuracy and fairness. By printing “Fuck dry Veishea,” no matter how vulgar it may be, I was printing the truth because it was what was chanted.

I would be doing a disservice to my readers if I gave them anything less than what was fact.

Though seeing dead bodies of people killed over in Kosovo may be emotionally unnerving, you don’t see NBC News cover up the bodies on their footage with the body of a smiling Winnie the Pooh.

Journalism is about covering real life events, it’s not about sugar coating the truth, which is what I would have done by printing “F%$@ dry Veishea.”

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Tara Deering is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Des Moines. She is editor in chief of the Daily.