Dear readers, 

I hope that you have had a fantastic summer! With the start of Washington University’s fall semester this week, I am writing to you with a few updates from the StudLife editorial team. 

As during the 2020-2021 academic year, we will publish a weekly print edition on Thursdays throughout the semester in addition to our weekday email editions. If you do not currently get our email editions but would like to receive them, you can subscribe to get our work in your inbox by going to this link. You can see the online version of our first print issue, which came out on Thursday. 

We encourage any students who are interested in getting involved with StudLife to check out our new Get Involved page, which has our interest form, meeting times and other important details about becoming a part of the newspaper community. There is no journalism experience required to join—we will meet students where they are and provide the training, feedback and support necessary to help them grow into roles on the paper. Students with questions should email [email protected] and we will get back to you as soon as we can. 

In addition to the new Get Involved page, we have added other information to the About section of our website in an effort to increase StudLife’s transparency and build trust with the community we serve. 

That information includes an Understanding Our Content section, which explains the work each of our different teams does and clarifies some important distinctions in our opinion work, such as a shift we are making from calling opinion articles from the community “op-eds” to calling them “opinion submissions.” You can read a letter from our opinion editors about why we are making that change and about how community members can have their voices heard through the Forum section.

The additions to the About page also include a section dedicated to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at StudLife. We have significant work to do in this realm, so we want to provide readers and the community more insight into what we are doing to make the paper an institution better equipped to serve all members of the Washington University community. The page includes a progress tracker for our various DEI initiatives, which we will update regularly throughout the semester. We will also add demographic information for the 2021-2022 StudLife staff in coming weeks. If you have suggestions for DEI initiatives we should pursue or other feedback on our DEI work, please feel free to fill out this form.

We have updated our Policies section to provide more explanation for how we handle certain journalistic questions. The expanded section includes our conflict of interest and web policies and details what factors we consider when making judgment calls. Our staff will strive to apply these policies in as fair and consistent a manner as possible, as that will bolster the quality of our work and allow us to serve the Washington University community to the best of our ability. If you have any questions about our policies, please feel free to email me at [email protected]

Throughout the year, if you ever have an idea for something you think StudLife should cover, let us know! You can submit an idea through our tips and pitches form, or you can email a member of our staff directly. We will of course not be able to get to everything, but we will do our best to tell the stories of the Washington University community. If you want to provide your thoughts on the paper more generally, whether positive, negative or otherwise, please feel free to fill out our feedback form. I will also hold weekly office hours in the StudLife office on the third floor of the Danforth University Center from 1-2 p.m. every Friday—I encourage community members to stop by to say hello and tell me what you think of how we are doing. 

Thank you very much for your readership and have a great fall!

Best,

Matthew Friedman

StudLife Editor-in-Chief 2021-2022

[email protected]