The Pacemaker award, generally considered the highest recognition in student print media, is awarded in five different categories every year.

The awards designate Student Life as one of the nation’s 13 best non-daily papers serving a four-year institution, with one of the five best newspaper websites for the school’s size.

Kate Gaertner, former editor-in-chief and 2011 graduate, stressed that receiving the recognition was a collaborative accomplishment.

“It’s an award that was deserved, and I’m really proud of how hard everyone on staff worked to get it; I think it’s one of those things you can say is 100 percent a group effort,” she said. “It’s also very redeeming because it shows we were thinking in the right ways [about] transitioning to a more online-based media climate.”

Josh Goldman, former executive editor and 2011 graduate, spoke similarly.

“It’s a great accomplishment; it shows how much we grew as a newspaper last year, and I think it shows how well the entire staff worked together to put out a good paper,” he said.

Student Life previously won Pacemaker awards for its work as a non-daily newspaper in 2005 and 2009. This is its first time winning an online Pacemaker, receiving the recognition for a website designed by senior David Seigle.

David Seigle is the senior online editor for Student Life.

Student Life has published three print editions per week since 2003. Prior to 2003, the newspaper printed on a semiweekly schedule.

Student Life has had difficulty maintaining its funds due to the trend of print publications losing advertisers and circulation as content has become available online and as the economy has weakened.

Still, according to spokesman Andrew Satter, who led a committee that explored cost-saving measures for the paper, Student Life’s board of directors hopes this will be a temporary change.

“While we did not relish this option, it presented us with the most immediate way to staunch the losses that have been eating into the paper’s reserves,” Satter said. “We hope that when we get to a more stable footing we will be able to consider moving back to three days a week.”

Satter estimates that the change will save Student Life between $16,000 and $21,000 for the 2011-12 year.

Members of Student Life’s staff and board are confident the publication will maintain the same role on campus, despite publishing one fewer issue each week.

“Student Life journalists will continue to break news online,” said Diane Keaggy, head of the newspaper’s board. “We’re also confident the students will develop a more robust website with new features to draw readers.”

The Student Life staff hope to take advantage of the change to focus on other aspects of the publication.

“This will enable the Student Life staff to embrace the online-first mentality that is becoming prevalent in the changing news landscape,” said Editor in Chief Michelle Merlin. “Our staff will be able to focus on enhancing their online and multimedia skills, which are constantly in demand in the workforce.”

Other college newspapers have chosen similar courses of action to adapt to changes in the journalism field.

The University of Georgia announced earlier this month that it was changing its daily paper, The Red & Black, to a weekly publication in order to focus on its online presence.

Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Michelle Merlin

As editor in chief, 20-year-old Merlin, an Avon, Conn., native, will be responsible for hiring staff, supervising newspaper production and making all executive decisions.

Merlin has been involved with Student Life since just before her freshman year began in August 2008, when she participated in Freshman Press, the paper’s Pre-Orientation program. Merlin has steadily moved up the ladder in Student Life’s news section, going from contributing reporter to staff reporter to news editor to senior news editor.

Merlin is a political science major and is considering a minor in English.

She said she looks forward to completing the duties associated with the position.

“StudLife has been like a family to me” said Merlin. “I’m glad that I can contribute to it and continue to foster the connections and learning that I’ve found here.”

Merlin said she believes Student Life plays an integral role in connecting Washington University students to the St. Louis community.

“I love connecting to people, and StudLife enables me to do that through interviews and through the people involved with the paper,” she said.

She is also optimistic about Student Life’s room for improvement.

“I see StudLife not only as an excellent award-winning paper, but also as a training ground” she said. “I hope to create uniform improvement throughout each section, so that we can be even more excellent than we are now.”

Current Editor in Chief Kate Gaertner said she believes Merlin will excel in the position, as she has shown a strong commitment to Student Life over her nearly three years on staff.

“Michelle has a really keen sense of news and the kind of natural curiosity that makes a good journalist,” Gaertner said. “She did a great job as senior news editor, she really brought us together, and I think she’ll continue doing so as editor in chief.”

Then watch the Student Life video of student reactions to the tomato ban. You’ll hear, “It’s no big deal” and “I can do without tomatoes.” You’ll see, “I would like to have them, but I don’t mind not having them.”

Now, there are slightly more-heated opinions than that in the video, and there are much-more-measured comments under the online article. But I think there is a basic difference between the anonymity of online forums, and the medium of print in general, and the accountability that people find foisted upon them by the transparency of audiovisual recording: the tendency toward radical warmongering among written accounts, and the sensible, moderate consideration of issues among oral accounts.

There are two reasons, I think, for this disparity. The first is response bias. The kind of people who read an article and are moved to respond in an online comment probably feel more strongly about the issue addressed in the article than those who read it and move on, or than those who don’t read it at all. Video interviews have a higher chance of capturing the latter two types.

The second reason, to which I have already alluded, is the anonymity factor. I think anonymity is what allows those moved by certain articles to make the most shocking statements, things like “I think everyone involved needs to develop a thicker skin and just let it go” on the article about the Mothers bar incident. I imagine that it would be hard for that commenter to express him/herself directly in that way to the six students excluded from the bar.

This idea is not terribly new—that it’s the cowardly who shout most loudly from their keyboard, that those less opinionated are less likely to make themselves heard. But the disparity I am noting points to a trait that is prominent among, at least, Washington University students, but which is seldom conceptualized: We find it difficult to give valuable and constructive criticism in general, and we find it difficult to criticize at all people who are in the same room with us.

Have you been in a fiction writing class or another class where students workshop one another’s work? Such classes, teachers say, tend to be positively oriented, tend to shy away from what is wrong with each student’s story. “I really liked how x, y and z,” one might say, “but I was a little confused about the relationship between a and b.” When someone is just beginning their fiction writing career, the more valuable feedback might be, “I understand what this story is trying to do, which is x, but it does not do it, I think, because y and z.”

Now, face-to-face feedback is so valuable because it elicits this tendency to sugarcoat things; because you must take into account the intentions and thoughts of the human being whose work you are to critique, you moderate your own feedback in order to make it comprehensible to the person who has created the work. That value—the unavoidable, tangible, human presence of the object of critique—is exactly why we should learn to be better at delivering our evaluations, both positive and negative, of other people’s ideas and work. Because the person giving the critique must approach people critiqued on their own terms, discussion is likely to be quite a bit more productive, but only once we learn to formulate such critiques in the right way.

To take this a little further, I want to suggest that argument in the public sphere (in Student Life, The New York Times), which can be understood as a series of people critiquing each other’s ideas, would benefit immeasurably from the adoption of such a forum—but only if it were possible. If there were a way for people with different ideas to sit down in a room together and come up with a sensible understanding of the issue at hand, even if there are final disagreements in taste, we would all find ourselves more sensible people, for having such behavior as a model.

Unfortunately, I think the vapidity of argument in the public sphere is much more fundamental than the form it takes. It relies upon a collective ideological entrenchment that has itself developed into a matter of underlying values or, in other words, of taste itself.

When open minds meet, face to face, remarkable ideas can be produced. It is valuable that, at least, this can occur on a local level at Wash. U. We ought to practice such person-to-person critique more often.

Dennis is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at djsweene@artsci.wustl.edu.

With tons of AP credits, or even with none, work your schedule to take some courses just for fun. Every semester, take a course that seems interesting or beneficial, even if it doesn’t count toward three different requirements. Try a career-enhancing class like public speaking, or even a muscle-enhancing class like weight training.

One semester, take 12 credits and then take a language pass/fail, if you’ve always been interested in another language. You’ll get more than 15 credits for the semester, have only 4 graded classes, and learn another language!

More importantly than taking these suggestions, however, is finding an arrangement that works best for you. Be adaptable; just because you’ve never dropped a class in high school doesn’t mean that you cannot, will not or should not drop a classes here. Just keep your eyes, ears and course book open for alternatives.

Find a club or two that interests you, and devote time to that. Some people can be in 40 different organizations and manage quite fine, but to explore all that clubs have to offer, and to advance through the leadership ranks, requires commitment. In high school, it was easy to be involved in 40 different activities, since they mostly met during defined hours of the school day. In college, days are defined from when you wake up to when, and if, you go to bed. In between, the time spent in class, doing work, or being involved is all at your discretion. Discern wisely and don’t be afraid to re-prioritize. This may be the first time you’ll get over-involved or in over your head with stuff to do. Realize if that’s happening and adjust your schedule/activities/amount of time spent sleeping accordingly.

Take advantage of the opportunities here. You’ll hear a lot about opportunities in the coming months, and that’s because there is no shortage of them at Wash. U., and not just academically. I won’t explicitly encourage you to cut class to attend an assembly series speech or other interesting event, but take a step back occasionally and evaluate the big picture. A failed quiz, or even a B in a class, will not ruin your future.

Don’t feel the need to do everything first semester. Of course, pursue your passions from the start, but I’m sure you will find that many upperclassmen are not best friends with their best friends from first semester, and a lot are involved in a completely different set of activities than at first. That’s fine, as long as you’re doing what you love.

Aim to achieve what you accomplish. Personally, I came to college to expand my circle of friends and develop a social life. And I tried harder on that front than on the academic front. Now, I’m still graduating on time, and with friends! My goals are accomplished. Now go define, and accomplish yours!