Welcome (or welcome back) to everyone at Wesleyan! We are so excited to be the Editors-in-Chief for The Wesleyan Argus this fall and are looking forward to an amazing semester with you, our wonderful, dedicated readers. The two of us come from slightly different journalistic backgrounds, one coming from News and the other Arts, and we took different paths to The Argus. We hope that our experiences will be an additional asset in our quest to bring you thoughtful, balanced coverage. 

The start of every new semester is an opportunity for reflection, letting us at The Argus look back to learn from the past and set goals for the future. College is an interesting time in all of our lives. The inherent consistent turnover of people every year often leaves gaps in our institutional memory. So now we ask ourselves, how can we best learn from past decisions when we were not present when they were made? 

Each semester, we turn over the reins of this long-running college newspaper (the oldest biweekly college paper in the country, not to brag) to new Editors-in-Chief. This new leadership must get acquainted with how things are run and get up to speed with all the goings-on at the paper they’ve inherited. To help guide us, and, we hope, provide some guideposts for those who might follow us, we are making clear our priorities for this semester: community and transparency.

Promoting community means strengthening bonds within and between our own staff and readership. It means better communication and support between the paper’s different sections. It means welcoming everyone who wants to contribute to The Argus with open arms, whether they’re a senior staff writer or someone walking into the office for the first time. Importantly, it also means continually striving to create a paper that accurately reflects the Wesleyan campus community, in all its depth and diversity. 

This goes hand-in-hand with our second goal, transparency. As with our aim of community, this principle of transparency applies both to The Argus’s internal and external affairs. We want to ensure that our editorial and publication processes are clear and accessible to all, which means better communication between fellow staff, sources, and the broader Wesleyan and Middletown communities. 

Towards that end, we would also like to speak to our current initiatives at The Argus. We are proud to be continuing the Argus Voices Fund, created by former Editors-in-Chief Serena Chow ’21 and Claire Isenegger ’21 two years ago, in order to offer financial compensation to low-income students of color. As work with The Argus is unpaid for most students, the Argus Voices Fund aims to lower that barrier and correct the overrepresentation of white and higher-income students in student journalism. Thanks to our continued fundraising and dedicated staff, we are excited to be able to continue and expand this program. 

Also in the interest of lowering financial barriers to journalism, we, as Editors-in-Chief, are now being paid for our work. This wasn’t our idea (though we can’t say we were upset to learn of it), but rather an initiative carried out by previous leadership in the hopes of opening up this position to students for whom committing the requisite number of hours would otherwise be a financial burden. As our fundraising efforts continue, we hope to be able to expand compensation and work towards making our independent newsroom ever more inclusive. 

Another initiative that we are proud to be carrying forward is the Argus Speaker Series. The Speaker Series provides an opportunity for not only Argus staff but the larger Wesleyan community to learn from and speak with professional journalists. While our lineup for this semester is still in progress, we have some exciting names in the mix that we hope to share with you soon. 

Lastly, we have redesigned our coverage tracker in response to input received over the past two years. Since 2020, we have used this form to track the topics of our coverage as well as demographics regarding our sources as a streamlined way to see whether the sources The Argus chooses to interview keep up with the diversity of our campus and local Middletown community. Our tweaks for this year aim for even greater inclusivity regarding race and ethnicity, particularly Indigenous and multiracial identities. We have also updated our form to better collect data regarding the representation of the greater Middletown community and of first-generation and low-income (FGLI) students on campus. If you are contacted for comment for an article, we strongly encourage you to fill out our sources demographics form, as well as give any feedback you may have, as we are continually seeking to improve our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. 

We would also like to remind our readers that you have an important role to play in making The Argus even better. We would like to alert you to our tip line. If there’s a story you feel needs coverage, go to our website and click “submit a tip” in the header to let us know. In the coming weeks, we will be further publicizing and revamping our tip submission system to make it even more accessible. Additionally, our Opinion section and our Letters to the Editor both remain open to any thoughts or opinions you might have on topics from national news to goings-on at Wesleyan to The Argus itself.

As we begin a new year at Wesleyan, we want The Argus to be a newspaper known for thoughtful, reliable coverage. We strive to be a newspaper that cultivates a strong and supportive community, one that represents you and will make your voice heard. We’re hopeful that we can build on the work of those who have come before us, and we promise to work towards an Argus that is better than ever and constantly improving. We hope you’ll join us in this endeavor, whether it’s contributing a letter or an article, submitting a tip to our tip line, or simply sharing an article you found interesting on your social media.

If you would like to get involved in The Argus, the best way to get started is to come to a Sunday meeting. They are held at 5:00 p.m. This Sunday, Sept. 11, we will meet in Usdan 108, though locations will vary throughout the semester. To keep up with the latest around campus, follow us on all our socials: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our new-and-improved TikTok account. If you’re more old-fashioned (no shame in that!), grab a paper copy or two around campus—new issues come out Tuesdays and Fridays.

Wishing everyone a wonderful start to the year,

Hallie and Oscar

Hallie Sternberg can be reached at hsternberg@wesleyan.edu or on Twitter @halsternberg.

Oscar Kim Bauman can be reached at obauman@wesleyan.edu or on Twitter @oscarkimbauman.