Dear Underclassmen,
I have overheard on many occasions, the tour guides in the middle of the CAB; student workers told to deliver the years-old script promising “hundreds of clubs and an active student life.” We all know that this is false advertising. I also know that at one point, the piece about student life was close to true.
In the past, Evergreen was not only crawling with student organizations, but was upheld by bustling student institutions, differentiated by their ownership of dedicated office space, budget access, and reciprocal role to the campus community. More than just the single bullet point for marketing fodder that “we have clubs,” these student institutions and organizations were seen and supported as complex services to the Evergreen community– responsible for circulating information, peer advising, and engaging the student body in ways the college proper could not. Many of these groups also came from earlier days of Evergreen, where it was more broadly recognized that student activities had a VITAL relationship to the college.
As it stands, the Cooper Point Journal is the longest-standing student institution and the only one left of its kind. And the only one allowed, easily, to provide consistent community service.
The 4-year cycle of college hurts the student body in a few ways, one being, it takes a few years to fully immerse yourself and understand what takes place here at an institutional level. It takes time to learn how to navigate this place with ease and push through to the places you need to be. One of the paper’s major jobs is to speed up this process and get information that protects our community out quickly and accurately.
The majority of our staff will be graduating in June and in an attempt to leave our newsroom as strong as possible so that the community can keep relying on the paper as their public forum we are seeking interested students to come in early, learn what the job takes and where it can take you. Underclassmen hoping to see if the CPJ is a right fit so you can be ready to go and take the reins when the seniors fly the nest. Leaving the paper in good hands means the world to us. It’s not just a job, it’s a public service.
By working for the paper you take an active role in preserving the history of events that take place on campus. You seek out the feelings of others and give them an opportunity to share their voice with the greater community. The student paper is an entity that has existed on this campus since 1971, and we want to see it continue. We need to remember, everyone needs to remember, what happened here. We need to remember who has a say in making change, and we need to remember that change doesn’t happen alone. Change starts with you. It starts with taking your political conversations with friends out of the living room and onto the printed page. It starts with you noticing something wrong and bringing it to the community.
From one group of peers to another, this is a personal invitation.
If you have EVER been interested in being part of a newsroom, we want you. If you have a half-baked portfolio from high school journalism club, a hobby of writing about the state of the world, or feel inclined to chase that haunted feeling at the core of the Evergreen State College, please find us. We need you.
Please consider attending our job shadow events listed below to find out if this is for you.
Until then, we’ll see you in the pages.
Your CPJ
