Dear readers,
As our time on The Tufts Daily Managing Board comes to a close, we want to thank you for joining us for a semester of engaging reporting and nuanced conversation. Throughout the past six months, you’ve enabled us to thrive as a student publication and call attention to the stories that matter most.
Over the summer, we co-published an op-ed with Vanity Fair written by Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, highlighting her experiences in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. We have witnessed firsthand students’ fears of the potential consequences of expressing their opinions on campus, and remain committed to upholding student voices in the face of heightened challenges to free speech.
As the semester began, we welcomed an enthusiastic new cohort of writers, editors, photographers and artists. Patrick Healy, an assistant managing editor at The New York Times and keynote speaker at Dailycon, our staff-wide training event, led an enlightening discussion with us on journalistic principles.
In October, to stand with our international student writers, staff and contributors, we signed an amicus brief supporting The Stanford Daily’s lawsuit, which challenges the Trump administration’s revocation of international student visas for exercising their protected First Amendment rights. We joined over 50 other student newsrooms in signing this brief to protect student journalism and free speech on our campus and at universities nationwide.
November featured our first-ever live coverage on the local elections in Medford and Somerville, reflecting our dedication to providing relevant and timely news to our audience. We also expanded the distribution locations of our print paper, so more members of our local communities have access to the Daily’s content.
Through it all, we filled our pages with both the serious and the more light-hearted, all thanks to our talented staff: From university responses to funding cuts in the humanities and STEM departments to insights on dating apps at Tufts, we strived to report on a diverse array of topics that engage with our audience. Our multimedia sections provided an additional dimension to our reporting, with photo stories spotlighting Boston protests, videos reflecting on the closure of the JCC Starbucks and audio stories sharing intimate perspectives on current events.
Our time together has been filled with many late nights producing content, many laughs and many Daily DJ-ing sessions.
It’s also been filled with difficult decisions. As journalists, we have a responsibility to present current events and perspectives with accuracy and nuance. This means we always strive to stay true to our mission of providing reliable reporting, often leading to rigorous debates about everything from punctuation to fact-checking. We hope to be not only ‘where you read it first,’ but where you can count on hearing it ‘fully.’
To our staff, thank you for your committed hard work throughout the semester — whether it be your dedicated reporting, careful editing or inspiring enthusiasm, we truly appreciate each and every one of you.
And to our audience, thank you for your continued support. We couldn’t be a publication without your insightful feedback and dedicated readership. We work to strengthen your trust each and every day.
It has truly been a pleasure.
With love,
The 92nd Managing Board of The Tufts Daily
Dylan Fee, Samantha Eng, Gretta Goorno, Evelyn Hsy, Grace Lee, Max Lerner, Claire Wood, Aisha Karim, Jaylin Cho, Maxwell Shoustal and Carol Wu
