On Independence and Interference: An Invitation from The Student

On Feb. 2, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Angie Tissi-Gassoway discussed the plans of the new Student Center and Dining Commons (Student Center) with the Association of Amherst Students (AAS). During this meeting, the paper was informed that we would be relocated into a new space in the Student Center. This move, despite appearing harmless or standard, came with a correlated result of locking The Student out of Student Center at 1 a.m. 

This deadline was never meaningfully discussed with The Student’s current leadership, and as such it is not calibrated to the realities of student-run production. Instead, it arrived already decided, and was presented as a nonnegotiable fact rather than a policy open to dialogue.

The stated rationale for the deadline was security. From what we understand, there is not enough security to manage the building at that hour. Yet this justification collapses under minimal scrutiny. Other campus spaces — including the Science Center and Keefe Campus Center — operate with restricted key-card access after hours. A similar accommodation exists for WAMH radio hosts in Keefe. The Student was not only denied this privilege in the new Student Center, but was denied the ability to campaign for it at all.

In response to concerns about the imposed closing time, Tissi-Gassoway suggested meeting virtually to finish out any post-1 a.m. work. This suggestion reflects a profound misunderstanding of our process. In order to prevent unnecessary conflict between the newspaper and college administration, we believe it’s important to clarify the circumstances and processes involved in production night in this editorial.

We begin production on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 p.m. in the basement of Morrow Dormitory. This is the earliest feasible time for students balancing other commitments like classes, labs, rehearsals, jobs, and meals. Perhaps another publishing timeline might allow us to adapt to the Student Center’s 1 a.m. closure. But production cannot move to another day without sacrificing the timeliness of our reporting: Tuesday nights allow us to cover AAS meetings and campus news unfolding at the start of the week. 

As we come into the newsroom, articles are still being written and revised in response to events that occurred that very day. Throughout the night, editors are fact-checking, copy-editing, and coordinating across sections. Page layouts are being built in Adobe InDesign and checked repeatedly for spacing, errors, and visual consistency. Printed proofs are reviewed — often multiple times — by section editors, design editors, senior managing editors, and editors-in-chief. Website articles are uploaded and revised. The weekly newsletter, which reaches your inbox every Wednesday morning, is assembled and scheduled. With all these factors and duties considered, individual sections often work much later than 1 a.m., and editors-in-chief remain long after sections finish to complete final edits and closing tasks. Chronic sleep deprivation among editors-in-chief is a running joke precisely because the work demands it. Imposing an early closure does not make the work disappear — it simply makes it impossible to do responsibly. 

We would like to emphasize again that this work must be conducted in person and cannot be replicated virtually. Our process depends on constant informal collaboration: we regularly show one another drafts, exchange feedback in real time, and ask questions across sections. Our work evolves through this shared presence — through the ability to turn to a peer mid-thought, test an idea aloud, or troubleshoot a problem collectively. This kind of sustained, face-to-face engagement is a central component of the liberal arts education. The liberal arts model rests on dialogue, intellectual exchange, and the belief that knowledge is refined through conversation. To move this work online would be to weaken precisely the collaborative habits of mind that our education here at Amherst College is designed to cultivate.

Moreover, Dean Tissi-Gassoway acknowledged during the Feb. 2 meeting that “the paper is an independent, as we know, organization, so they operate differently.” We’d like to clarify: The Student is an independent publication, meaning that we are not directed by the institution on what we publish, but we are not self-sustaining. We rely on AAS funding for essential functions like the printing and delivery of our weekly issue, both digitally and in-person.

Recent changes to Adobe access similarly illustrate the danger of blind administrative “solutions,” as The Student had to request several school-funded Adobe accounts after relying on personal accounts — which are paid for out of pocket — for a prolonged period of time. At the AAS meeting, it was not even clear if The Student would retain access to dedicated computers in the new space. 

Beyond the problems that the new space’s closing time poses, the lack of logistics communicated with us over the move itself is concerning. Administrators noted that discussions with student leaders about new spaces allegedly occurred eight years ago. Even if true, this knowledge was not meaningfully passed down — and in any case, past conversations do not excuse present actions or lack thereof. The administration’s lack of communication with the current leadership of one of the college’s longest-standing institutions is inexcusable.

Even the logistics of moving raise concerns. Our newsroom contains decades of archives, documents, and institutional memory — we are concerned about trusting administration with facilitating the careful moving of these materials. 

Now, with our circumstances identified and explained, the issue becomes clear: moving us with short-term notice, imposing a peak-hour deadline, and restricting resources directly undermines our journalistic process. 

In a national political climate increasingly hostile to journalism and institutional critique, limiting the operational capacity of the college’s sole independent newspaper should alarm everyone. Whether intentionally or not, these constraints function as a form of institutional censorship. By impeding how — and whether — we can publish, the administration weakens the college’s primary internal mechanism of accountability.

As a registered student organization, we want to caution that administrative “solutions” imposed without consultation can cripple even the most established groups.

We are committed to the work we put into the paper every week and are proud of the sacrifices we make to maintain its production. Production night is a collaboration, the intricacies of which we want to make clear to the members of administration dictating our production capacity.  Dean Tissi-Gassoway and other administrators, we would love to host you to sit in on a future production night. You are invited every Tuesday night starting at 6:30 p.m. in Morrow Hall Room 005. We hope that seeing the effort that goes into each paper will influence the future decisions made to support student organizations and the work they do on campus.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of the majority of the Editorial Board (assenting: 13; dissenting: 0; abstaining: 0)