It is one of the first tasks a journalist learns on the job, a routine aspect of reporting: asking for comment from the people or organizations that are mentioned prominently in an article, especially those cast in a harsh light.

For student journalists at Harvard, that practice has been met with a backlash.

The Harvard Crimson, a 146-year-old daily student newspaper at the Ivy League university, published an article on Sept. 13 detailing a campus rally protesting United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that has stepped up deportation raids under the Trump administration.

With the headline “Harvard Affiliates Rally for Abolish ICE Movement,” the article drew the ire of campus activists because of a sentence stating that the reporters had contacted the agency for comment: “ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.”

Act on a Dream, the campus group that had organized the rally covered in the article, started an online petition demanding that The Crimson vow to never contact ICE again and to apologize for the “harm it has inflicted.”