On the Eve of Our Anniversary, A Dispatch from MIT
Dear Reader,
Our sixth anniversary is this Saturday, but I'd like to take a few minutes to address, from the perspective of a student journalist, what we're seeing on campuses across the world.
My education is in environmental engineering, while my reporting training is in environmental justice. Covering protests is neither something I am good at, nor something I necessarily wanted to do, especially having witnessed massive protests across my hometown of Hong Kong in 2019.
Yet, I felt compelled to cover, or at least capture moments of pro-Palestinian protests happening on my campus.
These MIT students, faculty, and staff who represent some the brightest scientific minds in the world. They are taking a moral stance to direct attention towards the connections between their institution, direct or indirect, with the atrocities being committed in Gaza right now.
What they are doing reflects how young people are influenceing the way science is done moving forward, and how science issues are already affecting millions of innocent people. This is precisely what The Xylom was founded to do.
At the same time, I see my younger colleagues at The Tech, MIT's student newspaper, and those at Boston University embedded with the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Daraj Media, among others.
Student journalists are on the frontlines, and we deserve to be paid for their work! We are working to balance our coursework with reporting about what matters to our community and beyond, while receiving fewer protections.
This is also why The Xylom was founded: while my time as a student journalist may be coming to an end, we will continue supporting early-career writers in any way possible by connecting them with reporting opprtunities, mentoring, and publishing partners.
As I wrote in my Rising Star acceptance speech of the Atlanta Press Club Awards for Excellence, awarded to the most outstanding Atlanta-area journalist under the age of 30,
The institutional obstacles and censorship I have faced while reporting about "Cop City" have been well documented. That is nothing remotely close in magnitude to the killing of at least 97 journalists and media workers in the Gaza strip; or the physical assault, unequal treatment, and threats of arrest that student journalists are facing right now as they report on Pro-Palestinian campus protests, especially those at Columbia University and UCLA.
America needs student journalists. Any functioning and healthy democracy needs journalists of all stripes. Bad actors may try (and fail) to discredit our work as amateurish and passionate, but we will always stand by our reporting and our commitment to the truth. I salute and stand in solidarity with those doing public service journalism, and I urge readers not to look away from the atrocities committed in Gaza and stateside.
Accolades may come and go, but we are entering our sixth year with a renewed calling urgency. Let's continue to grow science with words.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Ip
Editor-in-Chief
TODAY IN THINGS YOU MUST READ
FAMILY NEWS!
- You've heard it here first: frequent contributor Kang-Chun Cheng will be joining us as an Editor-at-Large! More details to come đź‘€
- Thank you to those who have responded to our audience survey! We will contact the five lucky winners of $50 gift cards!
- Congrats to Editor-in-Chief Alex Ip, the Rising Star of the 2024 Atlanta Press Club Awards for Excellence!
- Congrats to our old friend Bethann Garramon Merkle, who was selected as an Early Career Fellow of the Ecological Society of America!
A SOUTHERN FLAIR
- Today in Mississippi, the state legislature have reached an agreement on a Medicaid expansion proposal, which would only take effect if Trump wins. How is that possible? Mississippi Free Press looks at the "work requirement" provision tucked into the bill language.
- On the eve of the closure of the Sterilization Services of Tennessee, KFF Health News' Andy Miller looks at how Southwest Memphis residents are grappling with the fallout of the facility's toxic ethylene oxide emissions.
- In south-central Oklahoma, ProPublica, in partnership with Capital and Main, reveals how oil and gas companies are drilling oil wells for profit and getting away with not cleaning them up.
WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
- For The Nation, Friend of The Xylom Amber X. Chen writes, "Student Journalists Are Needed Now More Than Ever". She interviews student journalists across five campuses about the difficulties they face in covering pro-Palestine student protests.
- Up to 25% of downtown Juneau, Alaska's state capital, is at threat of climate-exacerbated landslides, city-commissioned hazard maps reveal. What did elected officials and residents do? They rejected the maps, and in doing so, overturned four decades of legislative precedent. A autopsy from Outside/Inside:
- The Guardian's Damian Carrington asked every available lead author or review editor of all IPCC reports since 2018 what they felt about the future... We're quite sure you could guess their responses, but we won't spoil them.
- For the first time, scientists have observed a wild animal (in this case, an orangutan in Indonesia) using medicinal plants to treat their wounds, reports the AP.
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