Now that Darren Wilson has been cleared of wrongdoing, we should see multiple retractions from college newspapers.

Dave Huber of the College Fix reports.

Retrospective: How college newspapers smeared Officer Darren Wilson

Last Sunday The College Fix reported on how a (USC) Daily Trojan columnist called out the College Republicans on that campus for inappropriate comments made about radical Angela Davis.

Nathaniel Haas wrote in the DT:

While Davis might make for an easy target because she is a public figure, the sort of incendiary mudslinging could easily backfire for the College Republicans in another context, in the form of a lawsuit for online defamation.

The College Republicans should issue a written statement on behalf of the group, addressed to the Black Student Assembly and the Speaker’s Committee, that apologizes for calling Angela Davis a “murderer” and suggesting that she should have never been invited to speak. Anyone in the group’s executive leadership who wrote or sanctioned the post should immediately resign from their positions.

I agree that use of the term “murderer” was inappropriate. (And, as reported, the College Republicans removed the word, and others, from their Facebook page.)

“Murder” has a specific meaning: “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.”

Ferguson, Missouri’s Officer Darren Wilson was cleared this week of any wrongdoing in the death of Michael Brown.

That the federal Department of Justice concluded such is telling, given its stances on issues like voter ID and proportionate (racial) discipline in schools:

In an 86-page report released Wednesday that detailed and evaluated the testimony of more than 40 witnesses, the Justice Department largely corroborated or found little credible evidence to contradict the account of the officer, Darren Wilson …

Unfortunately, many of our nation’s college newspapers — along with myriad students and faculty — didn’t see any need to wait for an actual investigation into the Ferguson matter.

And notice: What term stands out in particular in the excerpts below?

From Chisom Onyea of the Columbia Daily Spectator:

However, I reasoned that such a distant event could not possibly be affecting him in such a manner, especially since the lawful murder of black people is not a new narrative.

Dunni Oduyemi and Tracey Wang, also of the Spectator:

Columbia neither supported us through nor apologized for the NYPD’s unnecessary presence. The protest called attention to the recent decisions to not indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo for the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, but the protest also confirmed just how Columbia views its students of color.

Brown University Minority Peer Counselor Jieyi Cai:

“It’s very easy today to say that we live in a post-racial society, (that) ‘we have a black president, therefore these murders do not have anything to do with race’ … We’re trying to show that it has everything to do with race.”

Speaking of Brown, here’s The Brown Daily Herald’s Armani Madison:

Instead, the tragic murders of Michael Brown and countless other unarmed victims of color over the past few months are violations of the highest order.

Continuing with the Ivy League, here’s The Cornell Daily Sun’s Philip Susser:

Brown was not the first, and probably not the last black man to be wrongfully murdered by a white cop.