After a weekend of copy-editing and late night InDesign sessions, we are excited to release the first issue of The Voice for this semester. The paper features articles from both first-time contributors and seasoned staff members on a range of topics—including the politics of museums, the future of women running for office, and academic developments at the College. Despite the wide array of topics featured in this issue, many articles have an underlying common theme: political courage.
We expect political courage from our elected leaders. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley, tapped into this hope by highlighting that a simple act of political courage can spur systemic change. Max Whitsnant ’21, in his profile on John McCain for The Voice, noted that “the Maverick” secured his legacy by working across the aisle—an act of courage given our hyper partisan climate. But while holding leaders accountable is important, we should talk more about the courage and engagement we expect from voters. College students have the potential to spur meaningful social change. Yet, in the last midterms, only 18% of college students actually voted according to data compiled by Tufts University. We need to channel our desire for political reform into concrete action, and newspapers can play an important role in his effort.
We have seen that protests staged by college and high school students have real policy impacts. The #NeverAgain movement pressured Florida lawmakers to signed into law the Majority Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act—a start to more comprehensive gun safety laws. Social media connected students across state lines and expanded the movement. Social media represents an essential tool of the emerging media landscape. Newspapers that adapt to the digital age will prove more able to understand and represent movements. College newspapers, through media savvy, have already proven better able to represent their communities. In 2015, for example, the Columbia Missourian—the student newspaper associated with the University of Columbia—obtained video footage of campus protests that led to the termination of a professor.
In the upcoming year, we hope that The Voice will serve as an archive of events happening on campus and will energize readers to become more involved in national politics or the politics of Conn. We plan to revamp our website and social media presence to make the newspaper more assessable to the community and to be better aware of the issues important to Conn. You can expect more long-form investigative pieces if we believe that that a particular policy merits further exploration and the campus has not been provided sufficient information by the administration. We have new staff this year, all strong writers with great ideas on how to make The Voice the best that it can be. We look forward to hearing your thoughts in the months ahead and we invite you to reach out to us as we produce the next issue of the paper.
-Max and Dana
