It’s hard out there for a college newspaper. In today’s fast-paced, digitally revolutionized university sphere, information is at every undergraduate’s fingertips – and a cell phone is always closer than a newsstand. With the inexorable decline of print readership comes packaged, for many student papers, diminished interest in funding print journalism, as well as budget cuts for those papers still tied to their respective administrations. Other factors, from fluctuating student interest to administrative interference, compound what feels increasingly like a battle to assert and maintain the basic need for some form of student-run publication.
And yet, despite such significant threats, the importance of a student publication’s role in holding its staff’s administration accountable cannot be dismissed. Publications written by and in part for students serve a key role in establishing active, intersectional dialogue about deeply important subjects that matter not just to students but also to faculty, administrators, prospective enrollees, and the larger communities surrounding inner-city schools. The ability of a student publication to write critically and thoughtfully about the administration with which its staff engages stands in stark contrast to publications maintained by universities, which without fail address only what makes for good press. Maintaining a publication devoted to public discourse, not public relations, is the only way students can reliably rally for accountability and hold their administrations to the highest standards of ethics and legality.
Important issues do manifest on college campuses, which often not unjustly feel like a microcosm of the larger society surrounding them with a diverse array of enrollees, faculty, staff, and administrative officers all adding nuance to one shared community. How institutions engage with (and in some ways perpetuate) such issues as (but not limited to) sexual assault, mental health issues, racial or ethnic discrimination, hate speech, and censorship will always be of keen interest to the student body.
Out of that interest comes the Boston Collegian, a blog devoted to highlighting such campus-specific issues, students’ attempts to spotlight them, and instances in which administrations either support or silence advocates for ameliorating those issues. The blog will cover issues specific to college campuses, utilizing a mix of its own reporting and that of largely or completely independent student newspapers The Huntington News (Northeastern University), The Daily Free Press (Boston University), The Tufts Daily (Tufts University), The Harvard Crimson and Independent (Harvard University), The Tech (MIT), The Suffolk Journal (Suffolk University), The Heights (Boston College), and Mass Media (UMASS Boston).
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The Boston Collegian 