Exit Letter: A Love Letter to the Newsroom, and Its People

I don’t keep attachments to places, really. Even when I’m back in Ohio, where I spent pretty much all of the pre-college life I can remember, I drive around and feel maybe, at best, the suggestion of nostalgia. The missing having mostly drifted as the people who it’s attached to have scattered away. This, I think, is bound to be what happens to my conception of The Amherst Student newsroom.

The newsroom is by far the place on campus most salient to me, with The Student having consumed more of my Amherst life than anything else. I mean, it’s taken up enough time for it to have its own calendar in my Google Calendar. That it’s bled enough into my conscience for me to often find myself typing even my emails in AP style. As I begin writing this (which I’ve procrastinated starting until my last production night, per tradition), I’m thinking that there is probably no one who will care to read this apart from the writers and editors I’ve worked with, my friends perhaps, and maybe an editor-in-chief a few years down the road looking for some exit-letter inspiration of their own — so I might as well write in the long, possibly-pretentious strings of words that I tend towards when unfiltered, what will likely read like a spruced up journal entry at best.

I’m surrounded by these bright blue walls I hate, the garish orange armchairs, the unsettling carpet stains whose origins will forever remain unknown. I’m sitting on the new couch that has only recently replaced the one that was sinking into itself so terribly, it had collected enough dust to send a cloud up each time one of us sat upon it. Above me is our whiteboard table of Goldfish flavor rankings, and across from it, the bingo board that’s likely soon-to-be-edited as the people who most often inhabit this space shift.

Still, there are signs of the past. The happy birthday banner draped across the corner, from the production night we celebrated then-Editor-in-Chief Lynn Lee’s ’23 birthday. The rainbow stuffed bear, dubbed Bob, who still serves as a cushion for naps. The Kendrick Lamar front page from a time none of us can remember, framed above the kettle. And in the podcast studio, the stacks of old issues that find their use as wrapping paper once a year during our holiday gift exchange.

Yet, I think, in a few years, I could come back and find the space completely unrecognizable. Maybe some cohort of editors will finally find the time to redo the space, a note that has so often come up in my time here. Even without this, I don’t know what I will remember. My conception of places has always been tied up much more in the people the place holds than the place in and of itself. And while so many of the people who’ve been instrumental to the newsroom throughout my time here haven’t necessarily been my closest friends, nor I theirs, there is something to be said about both the amalgamation of specific people who have formed the paper at any given point, and the greater institutional camaraderie that exists here without regards to time.

I’d say that people who end up on the paper tend to get involved for one or more of a few primary reasons — some swear by the power of journalism, some are coerced into it by friends already on the paper, some are truly filled with a love for writing or editing, and some are really just looking for something on campus to do. But when people join the paper, especially when they become editors, they seem to get sucked into the coalescence of all of this, adopting each of these things, in some part, from the others around them who are driven to do it each week.

My own joining The Student was sort of serendipitous, moved largely by the love for editing — which vastly exceeded any passion I had for writing — that I discovered in high school by way of working with, at first, just friends’ papers and stories and college essays, and later, articles for my high school’s small paper as its eventual editor-in-chief. But when, not long after my arrival at Amherst, I found myself puttering around the club fair, adrift, I didn’t beeline for The Student’s booth, or seek it out at all in fact. I liked writing enough, but I wasn’t necessarily drawn to the journalistic writing I’d see as I browsed the news every morning, or in the work I was exposed to in high school. I didn’t exactly feel called to be a writer, and it seemed that being an editor for, especially, a larger college paper would require this first. But, it must have been then-Editor-in-Chief Becca Picciotto ’22 who called me over to The Student’s booth, and I later decided that I might as well go to The Student’s initial interest meeting, just to check it out. Not long after, I was sent an email soliciting applications for opinion editors from Scott Brasesco ’22, one of the managing opinion editors at the time, which allowed me exactly what I wanted — to jump the hurdle of being a writer first, and go straight to editing. (Though I later learned, only to a smidge of dismay, that I’d have to ghostwrite editorials frequently. And of course, it’s impossible to escape writing altogether as an editor.)

My relationship with The Student is possibly the longest, and most consistent, relationship I’ve had at Amherst — before the end of my first month at the college, I was officially an assistant opinion editor. And just two weeks later, I was joined by my now dear friend Dustin Copeland ’25, whom it’s impossible not to write about if I’m to write about my time on the paper. Since his joining the editorial board, we’ve taken every step on the paper alongside one another, from our promotions to managing opinion editors to senior managing editors to now-editors-in-chief (though not for much longer). I genuinely cannot imagine having done all of this with anyone else, and I am so endlessly grateful.

While The Student’s readership might be limited to mostly our little college community, and some Amherst townsfolk or Five College students, faculty, and staff, I do think there is an importance to this paper, maybe even especially because it exists within a small institution where we operate so closely to one another, where we perhaps hold more stakes in the way the institution runs. The paper has the ability to highlight community voices, foster discourse, push for transparency within the college, and shape its archival story. And it also has the ability to better connect us with the greater Pioneer Valley, the other Five Colleges. It certainly doesn’t do this perfectly, and we are constantly engaging with questions of how to improve our reporting, our outreach — especially as a staff that operates independently from the institution, does not get paid, and has classes and jobs and other commitments that are important to us. The paper is constantly shifting based on the numbers and interests of our writers and editors, of the community itself.

Our time on the paper has been marked by reporting about Covid, Michael Elliott’s inauguration as president, the AAS budgetary crisis, the war in Gaza and surrounding protests and divestment demands, local labor protests and unionization, the passing of the AAPI studies major, and the recent election. The difficult questions that come with reporting on some of these topics — paired with Dustin being somehow more Type-B than me — have forced me to trust my intuition more heavily and assert myself. And maybe, though I tend towards classification as Type-B, I even have found myself liking, as editor-in-chief, pulling the organizational strings and having my hands upon so many aspects of the paper at once.

And while maybe less urgent, our time has also been marked by Dustin’s quintessential (if brief) architecture column, our favorite Seeing Double article about gazebos, many beloved cartoons, and possibly the best thing I’ve ever co-written.

I have spent nearly every single Tuesday that the college has been in session for the past three and a half years, here, in this newsroom, and it has afforded me much more than just a love-hate relationship with InDesign and a messed up sleep schedule. It was just minutes ago that I was pulled away from these rambles to toast “juice” with the other ’25s who’ve shared much of my time here. As I sit here, during my last production night, it’s hard to look back upon my time here with anything but gratitude. My attachment to this space, which is at this moment heightened because of it being our last production night, is only by virtue of the many wonderful people I’ve held here.

To all you lovely editors, thank you for entertaining me in conversation, in spite of the work we have for the paper, for our classes, as I traverse the newsroom each Tuesday night. Thank you for putting up with Shawn on repeat and, Sonia and Eleanor, for always singing along. Thank you, Lynn, for always bringing me tiramisu then. And Tapti, for the cake, too. Thank you, Brianne, for never failing to throw a good party. Thank you, Sam and Liam, for the trust. Thank you, Michael, for the Goldfish. And thank you, Dustin, for being the best co-editor and friend I could have asked for, through everything.

While there is still some business I have yet to do here, it is time to pass the torch. And I have no doubt that, despite stepping up a year earlier than the norm, my dear friends June Dorsch ’27 and Naima Mohamed ’27 will do a brilliant job as the next editors-in-chief, joined for their first semester by Michael Mason ’25, who could certainly choose to spend his senior spring any way else.

Perhaps next semester, I will be the friend who visits the newsroom, delivering snacks and bits of conversation late in the evening. And perhaps, for a while, I will linger.