If you head to the Digital Commons, you will find scanned issues of The College Voice – albeit with dozens of different nameplates – first published by women at the College in 1915. I have kept my eye on the archives since I joined TCV in 2019, and I finally decided to start with those archived paper copies in the office: stories tucked away in the galvanized cabinet, hidden in battered manilla folders and waiting to be unearthed. Though these archives only took me about fifteen years back, I found a compelling pattern: student journalists were, and still are, agents of social change, and the newspaper became a liberating outlet through which student-wide dissent was actualized. Ten years ago, TCV went through the archives and re-published noteworthy stories; here the noteworthy stories that have been written by and for students in the ten years since.
Fanning Hall was occupied by student protestors in May of 2016 to condemn the administrative response to the activist club, Connecticut College Students in Solidarity with Palestine. Club members has posted pro-Palestinian flyers – “fake eviction notices” – to call attention to Palestinian claims against Israel, and the flyers that were soon taken down despite citing a free speech precedence. They took to a Protest Blog to publish testimonies of bias incidents that were reported and documented by students but unaddressed by administration. Though the “Occupy Fanning” protest had ended with the 2016 academic year, the aim of the Fanning occupation left an indelible impact on the landscape of student protest at the College and fed the endurance of campus activism.
Just as student dissent forms regarding the Crozier-Williams renovation on our horizon, the College undertook a $9.8 million project on the Shain Library renovation that sparked conversations surrounding disability justice amid large-scale projects. Donald Budge ‘10 called the Shain Renovation “a giant middle finger to the students” and argued that Shain is a “trophy wife” of a large-scale campus project. In fact, several articles on campus accessibility – or lack thereof – claimed the Shain renovation as impractical given the lack of ADA-certified residential buildings on campus. With our recently-unveiled Palmer auditorium, as well as waterfront and the aforementioned Cro renovations in the works, it is worth noting that the spirit of an all-residential college is actively dampened by dorms that visibly demand repairs and an altogether renovation. 2012 called for deep investigations into the real cost of a Connecticut College education, listing the rising tuition at $49,385 – “the steep number many fear.” Meaning, our tuition has increased nearly $30k in the past fourteen years. A representative of the College in the 2012 issue called on the students to “maintain houses and public places” to minimize the operating budget of the College – a diplomatic ask given that the operating budget for an academic year would be $113 million in 2012. In the face of today’s steepening inflation and soaring tuition, how will the financial trajectory of the College ensure that funding is being allocated and diversified in the best interest of our student body, and that a liberal arts education can move towards attainability?
A plethora of 2008 issues took me back to the Obama/McCain election where social networking first began to mobilize voters; 2016 issues highlighted several campus protests against president-elect Donald Trump. Through both our local and presidential election cycles, The College Voice has been a constant outlet for the sharing and distributing of procedural knowledge of ballot-casting. The papers were relics of past protests during election seasons, where students relied on a united front to ignite campus-wide change and raise awareness.
Journalism has a rare capacity to call us into our present moment, and listen to stories that are actively shaping our social behaviors, knowledge systems, and cultural values. It is a meaning-making structure in our lives and its avenues of storytelling shift as the world shifts around us. Student activism has ebbed and flowed since, but student journalism is consistently a valuable mechanism of personal agency, a tool of discovery, and an access point into institutional reform. I have confidence in the longevity of The College Voice being a platform for our voices, and the paper continuing to share stories that matter with the community.•
