Welcome back, Wesleyan! We’re excited to be starting the new semester (even though it’s way too cold to be outside), but we’re even more excited to be Editors-in-Chief (EICs) of The Wesleyan Argus this semester. We’re taking over the job from Camille De Beus ’19 and Sam Prescott ’19, who were EICs in the fall and started some initiatives that we plan to continue this semester.

For one thing, we’re continuing to meet with Demetrius Colvin at the Resource Center as we strive to become a more accessible, informed publication. In conversations with Demetrius and the staff, we’ve thought about how to focus on the quality of our content over its quantity. Thinking about placing “resonance over relevance,” as Demetrius puts it, has made us reconsider the ways in which we report on campus happenings to prioritize high-quality writing and respectful coverage. Our deadlines will always be important, but maintaining healthy relationships with our sources is more important. The Argus hopes to better serve the community instead of just operate alongside it.

We’re also working with the Office of Survivor Advocacy and Community Education (SACE) and the Bystander Intervention Program to educate our editors and staffers to be more aware journalists and members of the Wesleyan community. We met with SACE Director Johanna DeBari before school started last fall to discuss how our content—and journalism in general—can better support survivors of sexual assault. This conversation and the discussions we’ve had as a staff since have made us think differently about the power the newspaper has to prioritize conversations and voices that matter to students.

We are welcoming back a number of students who were studying abroad last semester, and we’re including them in these discussions and catching them up to speed. Going into the spring, we hope to continue recruiting new staffers and perspectives into the fold. Thinking about developing our content for the future, we want the paper to serve as an outlet for the massive amounts of written and visual work produced on campus and the efforts of creative and interested students.

We’re always open to feedback about our coverage or reporting, and we acknowledge that making the paper an inclusive voice on campus is an ongoing, active process that will continue to evolve. We meet every Sunday in Usdan 108 at 5 p.m. and are always looking for new contributors. If you have something to say and want to share it, this is the place for you.

William Halliday

Brooke Kushwaha