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Fair ‘Fearless’ journalist wins national award
Local lauded for report on Hofstra’s WRHU about college sexual assault
As a student at East Meadow High School, Brianna Borresen knew she wanted to be a journalist. After graduating in 2011, she attended Hofstra University, and it was during her freshman year there when she wandered into the college’s radio station, WRHU, and asked about joining it.
Before long, she grew to love radio production. Covering hard news, Borresen, 22, embarked on a series of discussions on women’s issues, which culminated with a 30-minute segment about sexual assaults on college campuses. The segment earned her a national award on June 22 from a nonprofit organization that aims to celebrate and honor programming created for women.
“I was always someone who liked learning and seeing new things and finding out information to everything,” said Borresen, who graduated from Hofstra in the spring. “Journalism is the best field for that.”
The topic was first brought to her attention in an article in Time magazine, about sexual assaults on college campuses, and Borresen said she was startled by some of the statistics she read in her own research. At the time, she was already a student-producer for a weekly radio program on WRHU, “A League of Our Own,” devoted to issues important to women, and she decided to use the platform to take up the sensitive subject herself.
For her segment, she interviewed Robin Hattersley Gray, the editor of Campus Safety Magazine, to discuss what it will take to create a safer environment for women on college campuses.
John Mullin, the director of operations for WRHU, and a professor in the radio department at Hofstra University, described Borresen as a hardworking and focused student with multiple skills. “Brianna knew the challenge of talking about such a topic,” Mullin said. “She is fearless and took the matter into her hands to create a masterpiece. Such professionalism and dedication was taken upon in this story, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
Borresen condensed the half-hour interview into an eight-minute feature for submission to the Gracie Awards, and won for “outstanding hard news feature.” The national awards ceremony is run by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation, whose mission to advance the impact of women in the media industry. Borresen received her award at a luncheon on June 22 at New York Hilton Hotel in Manhattan.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five college women are sexually assaulted, but less than 10 percent report the assault. In May, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said more than 100 universities nationwide are under investigation for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints.
It’s a subject that has never directly affected Borresen. But the more she read, the more she said it affected her on an emotional level.
Borresen is now working in television production, as a freelancer for NY1 News, based in Manhattan. At WRHU, she was a morning show host, news anchor, producer, reporter and an assistant news director. On campus, she was also the treasurer of Her Campus Hofstra and a graduate assistant for the Center for Civic Engagement.
She said she plans to join an organization in the future that supports awareness for college sexual assaults. “It was hard to read the statistics,” she said. “I read a lot of personal anecdotes and I couldn’t even imagine being in a position where no one believes you, no one does anything to help you and you have to look at your attacker on campus every day.”
