IApril 2024, Students set up camps at universities in Canada and the United States to protest Israel's bombing of the Gaza Strip. Columnists for prestigious publications wrote condescending articles about the protesters. On Wall Street Journalthey were called “cowardly” and “compassionless”, and the writer claimed that viewers “were relieved to see the NYPD come”. [and drag] protesters away.” These writers seemed willing to dismiss the demonstrators and paint them in a negative light, without really asking what motivated them to camp out for weeks on end.
Meanwhile, the student press covered the camps thoroughly. They interviewed protesters, meticulously plotted events, and conducted nearly 24-hour radio coverage of the Columbia case. The student press also fulfilled one of the most important principles of journalism: providing oversight to those in power.
A few weeks before the camp opened at the University of Toronto that spring, a group of students staged a sit-in in Simcoe Hall, outside the offices of management, including President Meric Gertler. They called on the university to disclose the names of all companies in which it invests, divest from those that provide military resources to the Israeli government, and end all partnerships with institutions that either operate or support settlements outside Israel's internationally recognized borders.
One protesting student told me that the administration initially delayed and avoided meeting with them. However, he said he saw a look of “shock” on the administrator's face when he spotted a student journalist from the university newspaper. Universitywearing a press badge and talking about the sit-in. He believes the journalist's presence forced the administration to take action.
Times have never seemed bleaker for the media industry, with layoffs, the introduction of artificial intelligence, budget cuts, disinformation and an increasing crackdown on press freedom. There are also journalists in the Gaza Strip who are still starving and under siege by the Israeli military. While they have tirelessly reported on the attack that devastated the Gaza Strip – killing more than 67,000 people, at least one third of them children – they also faced the same difficulties they report: displacement, drone strikes and arrests. In the midst of all this terrible news, it was difficult to find hope. But for a long time, and especially over the last two years, I have looked to the student press for inspiration on how to cover this moment with assertiveness, courage and responsibility.
For example, in September 2024, student journalists Elissa Mendez and Cassandra Bellefeuille, writing for Carleton University's student newspaper The Charlatanbroke the big news that the university had fenced off the campus to prevent the encampment, contrary to the president's initial claims that it was for maintenance purposes. According to Mendez and Bellefeuille, the fence was installed on April 29, the same day a pro-Palestinian camp opened at the University of Ottawa. Their story states that the president of Carleton University, speaking at a senate meeting that fall, said, “I make no apologies for making this decision. The possibility of an encampment on our campus was a real possibility at the time,” and that an on-campus encampment would be “dangerous” for both protesters and community members.
Now, more than a year after the closure of many camps, some of which were brutally ransacked and destroyed by uniformed police, the rest of the world is waking up to the simple message of these students: what is happening in Gaza is wrong. Students have long demanded that university administrations not interfere in human rights violations. Bellefeuille and Mendez's report is important evidence of how university administrators essentially lied about their plan to limit a student protest movement that is justifying itself in real time against bad faith slander.
I have seen evidence of this moral clarity among student journalists in the United States. When I attended the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago in the summer of 2024, almost a year after the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed at least 100 journalists, the only public mention of Gaza I heard in all the panels, programs and events I attended came from a student journalist named Domonic Tolliver. In accepting the Student Journalist of the Year award, she reminded her peers of the enormous power journalism can have. “American media has the ability to shape and influence various world issues,” she said. “As seen in coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement or the Palestinian genocide, it is important to remember our responsibility as public servants to create space for balanced voices in journalism.” He was one of the youngest journalists in the room, more daring than anyone else.
One cannot help but recall the historical parallels with what student movements and the student press documented during the Vietnam War. In the 1960s, as today, students on campuses around the world protested the war, the student press covered the anti-war movement, and the mainstream media paved the way for its legitimization.
What fuels the courage of the student press? Of course, there is the optimism and enthusiasm of youth, but there is more to it than that. Many of them have yet to enter the ecosystem of mainstream journalism, which is less likely to go against the grain, challenge accepted norms or question the status quo. They haven't yet learned how to self-censor and adapt their ideas to get the green light from editors and publishers. Their superpower, according to Domonique Tolliver, is that their views are firmly rooted in the future: “What I can offer you is a fresh perspective. My newness in the industry allows me to see the evolving picture through a future lens.” And who better than the student press can see the future—and fight to protect it—more clearly and urgently than any of us?
But we also risk losing some of that courage. Journalism school enrollment has dropped. The beleaguered industry is being battered by personality- or influencer-centric content that overwhelmingly eschews some of the rigid norms of traditional journalism: eschewing faux objectivity, having a clear point of view, for example, but sometimes with virtually no fact-checking, legal or research resources. University budget cuts are affecting the longevity of journalism programs and the range of courses offered, and student writing itself is facing an existential crisis due to funding cuts. This all but guarantees a future in which the public is less informed, where stories by and about underrepresented communities are diminished, and where we are even more polarized and divided as we consume niche media, including those where facts are up for debate or interpretation.
I, too, have seen and experienced this decline in journalism firsthand: For the past three summers, I taught aspiring journalists at Boston University's Summer Journalism Academy, a short, immersive course on the fundamentals of journalism. Few things bring me more joy than seeing initially hesitant and cool aspiring reporters become more confident and fearless journalists over time together.
However, this year I, like other instructors, received some bad news. Citing budget cuts, declining revenues and other concerns, the administration suspended the program through 2025. A few weeks later I heard from a reporter Daily Free PressBoston University's independent student newspaper, which was assigned that summer to write a story about the suspension of the journalism academy. The ultimate irony: she herself was a graduate of the very journalism program whose possible demise she wrote about.
The journalism industry—and, by extension, the student journalism space—is changing, perhaps suffering, but also being remade in real time. To quote the Boston University Summer Academy of Journalism administrator who wrote the news about our program's cancellation in 2025: “Of course, I have no way of knowing what the future holds.” None of us do this. But one thing I do know is that student journalists do the important work of witnessing, documenting and reporting on these events, even when their more senior and leading colleagues are absent. And, as time has shown, they often find themselves on the right side of history.
