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Rowan University Journalism Class Working On Unsolved Murder Case

GLASSBORO, NJ (CBS) - A group of Rowan University journalism students is spending the semester telling the story of a student brutally killed on campus.

It's called the Donnie Farrell Project. It's a semester-long class where students spend all of their time investigating the death of 19-year-old Donald Farrell. The sophomore was beaten to death near the X-Press Mart on Rowan's campus four years ago.

"The case is unsolved; no arrests have ever been made," says Adjunct Professor Amy Quinn, who teaches the class. "There's a substantial reward and it's sort of an open case. So, before the case got too cold, we really wanted to get our journalism students in there and give them hands-on experience working on this type of case."

But Quinn says the point of it all is not to solve the crime.

"Our job as journalists is to tell a story and to tell that story from as many angles and as many perspectives and with as many voices as we can."

"We're all Rowan students; he was a Rowan student, so there's a definite connection there," says Cameron Meiswinkel, one of the nine students in the class. "It hits close to home, because it could have been anybody. We're journalists, so we're going to give 100 percent to whatever we do, but I think that makes us want to do it even more."

Quinn says students will get the opportunity to speak to Farrell's family and friends, police investigators and view surveillance video taken minutes before Farrell's death.

At the end of the semester, all of the student work will be featured on a multimedia website.

Reported by Cherri Gregg, KYW Newsradio 1060

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