As a journalist, I'm constantly engaged with the world around me. I've always strived to find the narratives in my community that localize issues of national importance, reporting on the manifestations of issues and ideas governing our world in fresh and novel forms.
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Bursting the bubble in academiaThe man in the middle of the photograph is Matthew Colligan, an alum of our school. He marched with white supremacists in Charlottesville, holding tiki torches, chanting, "You will not replace us." It felt surreal that the face of a previous member of my own community was in the middle of one of the most circulated photos from that appalling night in Charlottesville. We often say that such radical ideologies "don't exist here," but Charlottesville shattered that perception. What does this say about our community? What does this say about the discussions we're having? A few days later, I came across an article written by Colligan's classmate, who now works in education reform. In her own words: "I don’t think our schools and our town actively encouraged my classmate to become a neo-Nazi. But we can’t say with integrity that we did all we could to prevent it." This struck me. She talks about various instances of subtle prejudices that permeate her community and the lack of incorporation of anti-racist material into the school curriculum. According to her, when teachers tried to initiate such discussions in class, they were met with opposition from parents and consequently, administration. I talked to multiple teachers to confirm this. Indeed, when they gave students certain articles to read (about gay marriage, for instance), they were accused by parents of "having an agenda." I then read increasingly more articles, national and local, relating to schools' failures to address racist sentiments and their unwillingness to talk about issues that make them uncomfortable in their community. The resulting story, published in our second issue, brings attention to both Matthew Colligan and teachers' and students' views on how academia is doing when it comes to connecting students to what's happening in the world.
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#ItHappensHereToo: Male faculty guest columnists share how men can be allies
Jodi Kantor's and Megan Twohey's story on Harvey Weinstein shocked the world- and me. Then, more stories kept coming. Men from all corners of Hollywood. Then came Matt Lauer, Larry Nassar and Kevin Spacey. Women were finally coming out and speaking up for the first time about this pervasive issue. We had to cover this some way in our second issue. We wanted an opinion piece from a guy on his perspective about this movement, but, as an editorial board, we came to the conclusion that male students may hesitate to speak out about sexual assault because of possible backlash. So, instead, we asked male faculty to step in to voice their support and serve as role models. I sent an email out to all of the male faculty members in our school, asking for guest submissions. We received four. The result was powerful.
Read it here.
Read it here.