Letter from the Editor: An argument for student journalism
Editor-in-Chief, Jacqueline Deville
The oldest (maybe) question that college students ask themselves is “Why should I get involved anyway?” It is so easy for us in our first years of college to succumb to the allure of a little extra free time, a few more hours of sleep, or the peace and quiet of staying in our dorms. Meetings, practices, assignments, and responsibilities all haunt the average college student’s day to day and it can be hard to keep all of these things afloat while also expressing yourself, exploring your passions, and advocating for causes you care about. To this, dear reader, I have a solution: student journalism.
Finding your groove in college is difficult and finding your voice and place in this big, big world can be even harder. It can be so easy, especially in this day and age, to feel small, to feel powerless. It can be easy to be deafened and numbed by the constant torrent of information that has become so readily available to us by social media. It can be hard to grab onto an idea and make something of it. After all, you can only use so many characters to scream into the void of various blogging platforms.
But here, in the arena of Student Journalism, you can contribute. You can call attention to issues that your community is facing. You can ask big questions to big people and get real answers. You can rave about something you love and make more fans to geek out with. You can find and make a community. You can make someone, somewhere feel seen.
Last year, student journalists from Columbia University, reported tirelessly from the front lines in the Pro-Palestine protest and encampments as tensions with police rose. With the numbers of who to call if arrested scrawled on their arms in Sharpie and “student press” written on copy paper, painters taped on their backs they ran toward the chaos taking place on their campus. Without this perspective from people who could feel the grief, pain, and anger rising among their student and peer body, history could very well misremember this moment in history. History could misrepresent the characters of the people these student journalists knew the names and backstories of. Who they shared classes, memories, and meals with. Student journalists fearlessly published the truth of their shared reality. They published it for people to see all the facets of the scene playing out on their televisions and for you pages. Without student journalists, how easy is it for our generation to be misunderstood or undermined?
In our conversation, Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue, Former Centenary Conglomerate Editor in Chief, and my hero, Versha Sharma, explained how in her opinion, some of the best journalists out there were coming from college papers. She talked about the passion of the perspective of college students. We discussed how college students have not yet been jaded by a world we are still learning about and questioning.
So, I ask you, reader, what questions do have? What answers do you crave? Start asking them, see where they lead you, then come see us.
