Dear readers,
I write to you today as the outgoing Editor-in-Chief of The Wesleyan Argus and as an international student attending Wesleyan on an F-1 visa. This has been a precarious and challenging time to lead our beloved newspaper. With President Donald J. Trump returning to the White House for a second term, the landscape of student journalism has shifted dramatically. Earlier this year, Rümeysa Öztürk, an international student at Tufts University, was taken into federal custody by masked ICE agents outside her apartment for co-writing an op-ed in The Tufts Daily. Following her detention and a wave of visa revocations and deportations tied to participation in pro-Palestine protests, President Michael Roth ’78 and many of my peers who’ve written in the Opinion section have raised urgent concerns about the increasingly repressive climate for free speech on college campuses across the nation.
Precisely because of these pressures, I cannot express enough gratitude for your trust and support. As political tensions continue to surge, our News section has done a remarkable job asking critical questions about the impact of the Trump administration on Title IX, DEI, freedom of expression, and international students’ rights at the University. They have captured the momentum of protests and community gatherings and held the University accountable for the decisions it has made, often without transparency—including the significant weakening of the Committee for Investor Responsibility (CIR), the likely termination of its partnership with the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), and the closure of the beloved Story and Soil café.
Amid these many tumultuous events, The Argus’ team has also made space to celebrate the joyful moments on campus, from the senior thesis celebration to the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship’s New Venture Awards and the inaugural student-run Shark Tank event, where our writers spotlighted the amazing talent and creativity in our community.
Our Features section, in particular, has shone a light on the extraordinary work of students, faculty, and community members, including a student pilot, the U.S.’s youngest sports agent, and a series of interviews with the professor couples on campus in our newly revived Valentine’s Day issue. They’ve also tackled investigative pieces, taking an in-depth look at Connecticut’s waste management systems. Our Argivists have unearthed forgotten campus stories, from the bizarre experiments of chemistry professor Wilbur Olin Atwater to the iconic commencement speakers across the decades. The Features section has also provided valuable guidelines on doing archival research with materials from the University’s special collections.
This semester has been abuzz with student theater, music, and art. Our Arts & Culture section kept pace with Spike Tape, SHADES, Theater Department productions, and six weeks of senior art theses. They delivered exclusive stories, from breaking the news of the Spring Fling headliner to interviews with rising filmmakers, including the directors of “Hell of a Summer” and “Happyend.”
Our Sports section, too, celebrated many historic student-athlete achievements, including the Wesleyan Men’s Basketball team’s no. 1 national ranking and Final Four run. From wrestling and softball to lacrosse and track, an extremely dedicated Sports team documented outstanding seasons across the board.
I would like to give special thanks to our incredible website editors, Marcus Leong ’28 and Francisca Wijaya ’27, who have worked tirelessly this semester to redesign The Argus’ website, making it cleaner, more accessible, and most importantly, secure. We had to laugh and also take it as a wake-up call when we learned that computer science professors at the University were using The Argus as a classroom example of an unsecured website. Thanks to the dedication of our tech team, we now have a much stronger and safer online presence. I truly appreciate your patience during the brief period when the website was down, and I am excited to share that even more features are on the way, including the return of co-writes on published articles, the launch of online ad placement, a text-to-speech function, and expanded multimedia elements. Thank you for your continued patience and support as we roll out these improvements. Stay tuned!
This semester, News Editor and Fundraising Manager Miles Pinsof-Berlowitz ’27 also led our first-ever virtual alumni happy hour, bringing together over two dozen former Argus members, many of whom now hold senior positions in major news organizations.
None of these would have been possible without the contribution by every staff member of The Argus masthead, especially our graduating seniors, who have poured their hearts into the paper during their time at Wesleyan. Our Copy and Layout teams worked late into the night issue after issue. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to former Editor-in-Chief Rose Chen ’26, who had to step down early due to health reasons, and to Managing Editor Miles Craven ’27 as well as Executive Editors Caleb Henning ’25, Sam Hilton ’25, Elias Mansell ’24 MA ’25, and Carolyn Neugarten ’26, whose steady support and unwavering commitment have been instrumental in steering the paper through a turbulent semester.
As I say goodbye, it is my pleasure to pass the baton to the Fall 2025 Editors-in-Chief, Thomas Lyons ’26 and Miles Pinsof-Berlowitz ’27, who I am confident will do a phenomenal job alongside Managing Editor Janhavi Munde ’27.
Things are not easy right now. But I hope you, our readers, will continue to feel welcomed to engage in respectful civil discourse within the space of our paper. Your voices and perspectives are what make The Argus happen twice every week. In return, the paper will remain a faithful and responsible steward of Wesleyan’s institutional memory. As Executive Editor Sam Hilton ’25 writes in his Opinion piece today, “The Argus’ job is not to say what the absolute truth is…. Rather, its job should be to investigate. To explore. To search for truth, but never claim to have finally found it.”
Thank you, all of you, for joining us in that search.
Yours sincerely,
Sida Chu
Editor-in-Chief
Sida Chu is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at schu@wesleyan.edu.
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