As a student of the archives, I deeply appreciate your article in outlining what it was like to be a student in the 80’s at the Cooper Point Journal. I found myself excited to read of your bustling news room, your big story break, and the experiences that had brought you to the CPJ in the first place. While reading, I was struck by how differently your CPJ was structured—weekly editions instead of monthlies, at times double to triple our current writing staff, and the support available for a group journalism contract! Imagine that!
I suppose that my surprise reached its peak when I took the time to revisit your opinion article in the January 15, 1981 edition of the CPJ where— rather than being faced with even more glaring differences between our times— I found that instead your words reflected many of the problems we continue to face today. You lead with a paragraph addressing the criticisms lodged against your leadership of the paper for lack of “hard news” and too many pieces written in “term paper style,” responding:
“I agree wholeheartedly that these were problems, but I would like to try to explain to those who have never been intimately involved with the paper just why this situation exists. Anyone who has been involved knows all too well.”
You go on to describe the outward hostility towards specialized journalism education at Evergreen, and how its absence led to an era of ILCs and group contracts on the verge of disappearance due to faculty burn-out. You describe the lack of a dedicated journalism advisor and how, without one, your own amateur impressions and scrambled research were the only tools available to teach your staff not just methods of writing and news reporting but the basics of student press law to keep everyone safe. Finally, you posit:
“…without genuine and full-fledged support from the Evergreen faculty and administration— particularly someone designated to advise the newspaper staff— the CPJ will continue to limp along from year to year, relying solely on the ability of its staff to answer any questions which arise.”
While I would not be so self-deprecating as to describe the efforts of my team or any previous years as “limping,” if the problems you describe in such clear terms still remain, I am sure you can imagine the institutional hurdles that have evolved in the four decades since you last touched the paper. To name a few: the disappearance of the Publications Board to facilitate hiring, training, and recruitment for CPJ; the enclosure of student groups and campus life following hinge points such as the V-Day uprising in 2008, the media outrage of 2017, and the cycles of recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic; the solidifying of a public relations department who at junctures have acted without awareness of and in direct opposition to student press law; the deterioration of reciprocal systems for student input and engagement at Evergreen such as disappearing task forces, dedicated committees, or advisory positions; the sequestering of information surrounding administrative changes into centralized channels without obligation of community presentation; and a campus culture that, following national trends, finds less and less pull towards printed news.
The years before me have moved dynamically with these changes, at times with the guidance of an advisor and at times not. They have through these years oscillated wildly in the effectiveness of reporting they were able to achieve. I don’t write this to downplay the urgency you name towards accurate, timely reporting on the developments that affect Evergreen’s students. Certainly, there are many ways that a more robust news staff than my own would be able to approach the current situations of this academic year in more traditional means. But even with that, perhaps it’s too much to expect the remaining student institutions at the Evergreen State College to operate “traditionally.”
Nothing says “early Evergreen student paper” to me like the idea of a twenty-something building their journalism portfolio with a big drug bust news break, made to share space with the work of a rising cartoonist and an enthralling personal account from a community member. The student paper is meant to present something that responds to student needs, and guarantees community readership. It makes perfect sense to me why you elected to run an editorial cartoon to attract the eyes of passing students into reading the harder news reporting, and why you made sure the account of a fellow student didn’t get buried and separated from the overarching story. While perhaps not up to traditional, journalistic standards, I believe you made the choices that drew your readership in the most. I believe that you made the choices that were defined by the culture you were steeped in.
In this contemporary era, the CPJ has been uniquely transformed by this culture– inheriting the aesthetics, priorities, and budget of an alienated, struggling campus culture. Circumstance has led the paper to take the shape of a monthly publication with longer-form, magazine-style articles, rather than the weekly news format you were a part of some 45 years ago. I ask you to consider these moves not just as creative but as ones of survival within an institution once so hostile to you as well. I too wish that any support for reporting existed outside of my average core writing staff of 3, but I celebrate their achievements in preserving the remaining journalistic strains of the paper. The CPJ has otherwise taken on a character to connect and prepare a disconnected student body on curated issues of institutional memory, arts, and culture. I maintain that these explorations, even in the form of commentary and opinion, hold dire weight and importance. Particularly at a time where students’ concerns feel most ignored by the administration, the expression and record of these grievances become vital starting places for organization. Much like your era’s featuring of personal essays, the ability for students to submit their thoughts and work to the paper is a vital means of engagement. When engagement within the student population, with print media in general, and with long form critique is otherwise at a profound low, the CPJ has taken on the form of a critical entry point. It is my deep and sincere hope that as culture rebuilds at the Evergreen State College, the newspaper can be seized and reshaped to fit the needs of an organized student body. I am grateful to have recorded this chapter of Evergreen through the means that resonated with my peers today, and hope that the next staff evolves to a new, dynamic strategy of their own.
As you name, “true” journalists make up an ever shrinking pool in this day and age, and one that has always struggled to exist at Evergreen. Whether the refined, standard layout you wish you had provided to the drug bust story could have done a better job of responding to the unique culture of early Evergreen remains a question for me. Perhaps it is better to understand the CPJ as a product of its time, its era, its moment, and the community it is embedded in. After all, this is our lab, and our experiment. I believe the people to refine the CPJ into the form that best responds to contemporary Evergreen are out there, and that a wider spread impulse towards community journalism can return. I too look forward to the new group of students who will take this project onwards in ways that further their ambitions and future projects.
Best,
Sako Chapman
Editor-in-Chief 2023-2024
Cooper Point Journal
