Early in the morning of March 30, 2009, the decaying, mangled corpses of a slew of dead animals were left by the front door of a college editor’s off-campus residence in Hillsdale, Michigan. The carcasses included one and a half deer, several large rodents, and a black goat, according to The Collegian, the newspaper of Hillsdale College in south-central Michigan. A copy of the sports section of the latest edition of the paper was found beneath the dead goat.
The headline on the sport section’s front-page read “Lost in left field,” and the story chronicled the college baseball’s team latest defeat to bring the team’s record to one win and 11 losses. The same day, The Collegian ran an unsigned, lead editorial in the paper’s opinion section that lamented the baseball team’s performance. The editorial called one unnamed coach a “rotten apple,” and criticized “most” baseball players for their alleged “swagger” on campus. The editors later retracted the editorial, apologizing and calling it “a mistake.”
The carcasses were left at the residence of Collegian section editor and writer John Krudy. A neighbor and fellow student, Nathanael Rae, told The Collegian that he saw suspects using a shovel to carry the carrion across
One week before the incident, The Collegian ran a story under Krudy’s byline about students and other area residents noticing an abundance of local roadkill that included “dead dear and rodents” following this year’s unseasonably fast spring thaw.
The Associated Press reported that Hillsdale College spokesman Christopher Bachelder called the act an “unfortunate” prank and said that the school “has taken appropriate action in response.” Editor-in-Chief Joy Pavelski said Wednesday that Krudy had decided not to press charges, according to AP.