Last semester, I had a lengthy conversation with a Stevens employee about the nature of the press at Stevens and, more broadly, in the United States. This employee told me that they read something published in The Stute which they found at first to be shocking and concerning, and then, as they thought more about the context of the piece, uplifting and inspirational. The piece in question was a column I had written, published in the September 27 issue. Admittedly, the piece is a little more abrasive than it probably should have been; it discusses the failure of Stevens to act on their own admission to improperly charging students fees they should not have paid for years. My writing on the subject was borne out of passion, as the subject (objective descriptions of which appeared almost contemporaneously in The Stute‘s News section) legitimately enraged me. So provocative and incendiary was my language and content in the column that I faced a fair amount of pushback for it even within The Stute.
I am not writing about this to defend myself. The pushback I received then was deserved, and after September I began to dilute my passions in this column with more interesting and thought-provoking content.
So you can imagine my surprise when months after the piece was published, a Stevens employee strikes up a conversation with me about it. Shocked, they told me they were. Shocked and concerned. But not shocked and concerned that I felt the way I did, or that The Stute was willing to publish something so negative. No, the employee was shocked that I was allowed to publish such works at all, and concerned for me and my future prospects in the university. But that concern, I was told, quickly faded; the United States, unlike places this employee had spent considerable amounts of time before, values freedom of the press and the free expression of thought. Inspired, they then told me they were. Not because of the subject matter of my column. Sure, the things I described were not exactly good news, but they felt inspired by the fact that I could say them at all, without fear of life-altering repercussions.
The employee told me a long and disheartening story of a time long ago when they had not been so lucky as to enjoy the freedoms that I enjoy today. Uplifted, they told me they felt, to know so truly that our society now is not like that.
I turned the story and feelings of this employee over in my head for a long time. Chewed on it, spit it up, swallowed it again. To quote a wonderful song by King Crimson, “I carried it around with me for days and days and days, playing little games like not looking at it for a whole day.” It was a truly moving story; not a unique one by any means, but the fact that it was told here, at my university, in a building I would trod through probably ten thousand times in my life, made it special for me.
Eventually, I drew a conclusion, a theme from the story that I was comfortable sticking with. Those of us with a platform have an obligation to speak truth to power. There are only a handful of officially-sanctioned media organizations on the Stevens campus, and of those only a couple actually have the ability to reach the eyes and ears of the students and faculty here. The Stute is certainly the biggest of that group. Because of this, I feel—and have already begun, since December, to imbue my writings with this feeling—that the Stevens media community simply must continue to be that voice so long as we are listened to.
I’m not advocating for any big change here. We’re doing our job pretty well as it is. In fact, for those of you who aren’t involved with the Stevens media yourself, you would not believe the amount of flak that we get from pretty much every source imaginable. But this isn’t a thankless job. In fact, I believe that the story the Stevens employee told me is one of the greatest thanks I could ever receive for my work in the media. Something that I wrote gave someone faith not only in the authenticity of The Stute, but in the success and goodness of the United States as an idea. That is something to be proud of, as an organization; that is something worth fighting for.
Of course, people don’t always seem to agree with my view on the media. As I wrote earlier, you probably would not believe the attacks suffered by the Stevens media community. Sometimes being free means you have to accept the burden of saying things that make people uncomfortable. And sometimes, there’s no good answer as to why you have to do that other than that you simply have to. Every time I hear that our Editor-in-Chief was threatened by someone for something we published, every time a wannabe politician in Student Government tries to make up reasons to shut us down, every time I receive an email informing me that people have been asking questions about my “motives” behind my back, I know that the media is doing something very, very right. As strange as it is to write, it’s our responsibility to make people uncomfortable. It’s our responsibility to say things that deserve to be said when no one else will or can.
I understand that not everyone shares my view on this matter. In fact, I have recently come to understand that I share this very Opinion section with someone who has viciously attacked the Stevens media community for doing the very thing that I say is our obligation. While I find it disappointing that there are people so very out of touch with the role played by the media on this campus, it does not bother me. I know that our values are in the right place, and that when push comes to shove as long as we are fulfilling our duty we’re doing pretty okay. The story told to me by the Stevens employee was galvanizing, but I am certain that there are countless others who hear the words we write and speak and feel the same way.
Consider this a love-letter to the Stevens media community. I’ve certainly put too many hours of my life into you, but you have given back to me all of that and more. To see you lose your sense of purpose or abandon that freedom which you have uniquely acquired on this campus would be to see myself lose faith in this university and its student body forever. Fortunately, I see no signs of that happening. I hope the road ahead of us will be as bumpy as it is long.
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