Good news for the mainstream press: Both girls wanted to see TV coverage of the event at 5 p.m. that day. However, they found reportage on channels 4, 7 and 9 wanting. Specifically, none of the packages we saw made mention of their group: They were among dozens of Chatfield juniors leading the freshman sessions, with supervision from teachers. No wonder why they pretty much ignored TV from that point on, turning instead to MySpace bulletins, where they could read the latest rumors about what really went down.
Then, on Sunday, we received two robo-calls from the school. The first simply stated that school would be open as scheduled on Monday; immediately after the evacuation, school officials had promised such notification would be forthcoming. Then, at just past 6 p.m., we got a recorded message from Chatfield principal Bernard Hohman, who revealed the substance that caused all the problems had been identified as pepper spray or mace. It was surprising, then, to open up the Denver Post this morning and find that the article on Chatfield's reopening made no mention of the Hohman call and offered much less definitive statements about the reason for the closure: "The cause hasn't been found, but there's an outside chance it was an old can of Mace that a student sprayed on campus sometime earlier, authorities said Sunday." (The authority in this instance was a spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.)
At this point, Lora and Ellie are planning to ask around at school today in the hope of learning even more about what actually happened rather than waiting for follow-ups from local stations. And who can blame them?
