Since 1984, the Student Press Law Center has recognized student journalists who show exceptional determination and support for student press freedom. Ahead of announcing the newest honorees, SPLC reached out to a few former award winners to see where they are now.
For this profile, former SPLC intern Julia Gentin talked with a former reporter at the University of Alabama’s The Crimson White who won the 2013 College Press Freedom Award.
Abbey Crain and fellow The Crimson White journalist Matt Ford thought they were about to cover a celebratory story at the University of Alabama in 2013. A Black woman — whose relatives included a state legislator, state Supreme Court justice and trustee of the university — was seen as a “shoo-in” to a traditionally white sorority, set to integrate its ranks.
Reporters and photographers flocked to Bid Day to document the monumental occasion. Instead, the sorority dropped the student, and Crain and Ford’s reporting turned into a nationally groundbreaking story about discrimination in the University of Alabama’s sororities.
“I felt this really strong sense of purpose. This was wrong, and I wanted to know what happened,” Crain said. “I had Greek friends, and I just started asking and poking around. And then, honestly, it didn’t take too long until I found someone who was willing to talk about it.”
The Crimson White had previously reported on hazing and other problems within Greek life. But this time, Crain and Ford talked directly with sorority members calling out its internal racism, something that hadn’t been done before.
At first, the only named source, Alpha Gamma Delta member Melanie Gotz, wanted to be anonymous.
“I will never forget this. The day before it was supposed to run, she called me, and she said: ‘Put my name on that s***,’” Crain said. “It was a cinematic night, for sure.”
The story reverberated across the country
Crain and Ford’s reporting led to national attention from The New York Times, NPR, Time and other outlets. At the University of Alabama, the story sparked new scrutiny of other university traditions steeped in discrimination, and the university president instituted continuous open bidding (allowing new members at any time).
It didn’t come without consequences for the reporters. When the story was first published, Crain and Ford were asked to leave bars, and people blamed them for “ruining their senior year,” since a lot of parties were canceled in the wake of the article’s publication.
“They’re Greek life, the big man on campus. Any deviation from that is a risk to [your] reputation,” Crain said.
For calling out the Greek system’s issues with race and for the attention their story brought to the power of student journalism throughout the country, Crain, Ford and editor-in-chief Mazie Bryant won the Student Press Law Center’s 2013 College Press Freedom Award, now known as the Reveille Seven Courage in Student Journalism Award.
Frank LoMonte, SPLC’s executive director at the time, supported The Crimson White with their legal questions before publication of the story.
“They were very helpful [as] the grown-ups in the room. We needed that,” Crain said. “The story would not have been as powerful without the Student Press Law Center.”
Four years after writing the story, Crain came back to a football game for the first time since graduating and saw a Black woman with sorority letter buttons in the stadium.
“There’s a lot of problems with the University of Alabama, and it’s not like integrating the sororities is going to fix a history of racism, but to see the real change of this woman wearing buttons was pretty cool,” Crain said.
How the experience carried forward
After graduating, Bryant, Crain and Ford moved together to New York City for their respective journalism jobs. Crain spent three years at the Wall Street Journal as a news assistant writing culture stories before moving back home to Alabama.
“I missed home … and if everyone who wants Alabama to be more than it is leaves, then it’s never going to change,” Crain said.
Crain was one of the only reporters in the state covering women’s and gender issues for Reckon, a project through AL.com, when Alabama passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the country. She wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times in 2019 about the ban and the importance of local coverage to spark change.
Crain decided to take a break from full-time journalism, but the issue — and the importance of using her voice — kept following her.
She hadn’t published an article in two years when, in 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court effectively banned in vitro fertilization treatment just as Crain planned to transfer embryos she had frozen during her own IVF cycle.
“I am experiencing this. There is no better person to say this. So I am going to yell about being mad about it, and I’m going to tell you how wrong this is,” Crain said.
She told her powerful story to Glamour, which led to a private meeting with then-Vice President Kamala Harris about IVF in response to her advocacy.
In 2013, Crain said she learned what bravery is.
“It takes people who are willing to challenge the status quo, who are willing to ask the tough questions out loud, and I was good at that,” Crain said. “It taught me the power of my own voice. It taught me the power of what uplifting other voices could do.”
Crain’s advice for student journalists is simple: “You don’t have to move to some fancy city or some big place to make real change and hold truth to power,” she said. “Local journalism is what’s suffering, and they need passionate people to shake things up.”