The News Desk Jan. 15
Welcome to the News Desk. My name is Luke Taylor and I’ll be offering this weekly breakdown of the most important news on campus and what to expect in the upcoming week. For this first edition, I’ll be focusing on our featured topic of “What to Expect in 2022,” as well as what we might see in next week’s EIU Board of Trustees meeting.
If you’re interested in the changes to the News this semester including new ways to access our content and our revamped print edition, check out the first episode of our brand-new weekly podcast, The News Desk, in which I talked with current Editor-in-Chief Corryn Brock about her plans and what’s already been set in motion.
What to Expect in 2022
If you’re on campus, you may have already seen or picked up a copy of our first print edition with the new full-color front page design. The News’ editorial board worked together to decide what five things will be likely to have an impact at Eastern.
The Naming Committee’s continued work to recommend a possible new name for Douglas Hall may stand out as an issue which is unique to our campus, but it’s reflective of debates which have sprung up in institutions across the United States. Calls to remove statues of members of the Confederacy have made national headlines. While it seems as if Americans are far from reaching a consensus on the issue, more than 100 Confederate monuments have been removed since 2015. In even more familiar-sounding stories, universities as prestigious as Princeton have changed building names in response to student activism, while other administrations argue that the reasons to change these names aren’t strong enough.
Here at Eastern, this debate began in 2010 and has been addressed multiple times since. This current iteration of the Naming Committee has been meeting since 2020 and has held open forums and sent out surveys to discern campus and off-campus reaction. Read the most recent updates about the Committee here. The editorial board included this in our expectations for 2022 because it seems more likely than ever before that Douglas Hall’s name will get changed.
Jan. 21 Board of Trustees Meeting
The big news we’re expecting next week will likely revolve around the Board of Trustees meeting. We haven’t received an agenda yet since it is still a week away. However, we do know this: the News has been asked to talk to the Board about what we’re doing here at the News! I’m excited to see what Corryn and our advisor, Joe Gisondi, put together to present.
Like many meetings on campus, BOT can be pretty boring for those attending. A lot of the topics they address don’t have immediate connections to the student body and include loads of dense governmental language. That’s why the News makes an effort to cover the meetings; we pick out the most important decisions that were made, especially those involving money, and do our best to explain them more briefly and in easier ways to understand. I hope you’ll all check out our coverage in the coming week.
Listen to the first episode of the News Desk podcast here!
