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Vol. 37, No. 2
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8-14-2007
By: Julia Harris
Forensics class teaches students to dig deep
There’s a serial killer on the loose in Columbus.
Professional assassin David Bailey is responsible for 10 unmarked graves
unearthed on Ohio State’s Waterman Farm. Columbus police need help
tracking Bailey down and finding the evidence to convict him for his
crimes.
That’s the fabricated story Annalies Corbin and her
colleagues have been telling teams of high school and college students
spotted on campus this summer, armed with trowels, latex gloves and
fingerprint powder.
Officially, they’re participating in a program
called Forensics in the Classroom, designed to bring the science of
television’s “CSI” franchise into classroom settings. Unofficially, the
students are having a grand adventure while learning a lot about DNA
testing, chain of custody procedures, archaeology and bones.
Corbin
is the executive director of the PAST Foundation, a non-profit
organization that creates public school curriculum materials out of
scientific research. Previous projects have included studies of shipwrecks
from World War II and historical preservation field work on an 1800s
life-saving station.
“We partner with researchers to build the
public piece for the work and make it accessible to schools,” explains
Corbin, who also has taught anthropology classes at Ohio State. “Forensics
in the Classroom came about because we saw how interested kids were in
what they see on television and we wanted to capitalize on
that.”
In close partnership with Ohio State’s Department of
Anthropology and Battelle, among other sponsors, the PAST Foundation
assembled a team of local teachers and OSU faculty. The goal was two-fold:
Teach forensics science and correct some of the misinformation students
were getting from television.
The classroom program, first
pilot-tested in 2006 with students from Columbus School for Girls, takes
students step-by-step through the discovery and analysis of a crime scene,
teaching everything from ballistics to the study and measurement of human
bones.
“I can’t watch those ‘CSI’ shows because they’re just so
wrong,” complains Jules Angel, a doctoral student in anthropology who
directs Forensics in the Classroom as part of her graduate fellowship.
Angel also is a former crime scene photographer with Scotland
Yard.
“Of course if they tried to do something like ‘Reality CSI,’
it would probably be the most boring thing on Earth,” she admits. “In real
life you’re not going to get your DNA back in two minutes and you’re not
going to be able to run everything yourself, like on ‘Crossing Jordan’ or
shows like that. And then there’s all the paperwork.”
Her career
experience came in handy this summer, when the curriculum was field-tested
with groups of students from all over the country. The teams of budding
crime scene investigators often struggled with patience when following the
chain of evidence.
Jules Angel, second from left, director of
Forensics in the Classroom, discusses with students the findings and
implications of a grave site. | What was even harder for them, Angel recalls, was all the classroom
training and preparation that had to take place before they could even
begin their graveside explorations, painstakingly excavating the plastic
skeletons and bits of clothing that PAST Foundation volunteers had buried
more than two months ago.
“I call archaeology a kind of slow
gardening because anytime you do anything, you have to stop and draw a
picture of it or measure or something,” Angel says. “These students were
so desperate to get the bodies out of the ground that we had to keep
holding them back, reminding them to stop and document.”
Each
night, back at the dorms, the students watched episodes of “CSI” to
critique the science.
“When they first got here, before they had
learned anything, we asked them what they thought was real and what might
not be,” says Corbin. “By the end of the program they have a real sense of
what can and can’t be done.”
The intensive
10-day session ends with a mock trial at which each forensics team
presents evidence to a visiting judge and attorneys from the Attorney
General’s office, trying to link David Bailey to their crime. They also
identify their victim based on comparisons with data taken from actual
missing persons files. Students who aren’t presenting cases fill the jury
box and return verdicts.
Ultimately, Corbin hopes that teachers
across the country will use the curriculum, which will be available for
free at pastfoundation.org, to educate a new generation of citizens and
combat what’s come to be called “the CSI Factor.”
“When average
citizens sit on juries now, they think that if you don’t provide DNA
evidence, you can’t prove a person’s guilt. The truth, of course, is that
you don’t always need DNA evidence in every case. Just because it’s on
television doesn’t make it real,” Corbin says.
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