Bri Nitsberg | Student Life

To the Student Body,

We, Hadia Khatri and Madison Yue, are excited to serve as the new Student Life Managing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion editors. After careful evaluation of Student Life’s coverage and staff diversity audits, we realized that the paper doesn’t represent the diversity of ethnicities, religions, and perspectives that make up the WashU community.

Because of this, we have decided to launch several initiatives and work to change our paper internally and externally. Our goals are to 1) increase our coverage of cultural and/or affinity groups on campus and 2) increase representation among our staff.

Among our initiatives, we are having personal meetings with the executive members of a number of clubs to receive feedback and share our ideas. Through these conversations, we hope to get suggestions, as well as a list of events to potentially cover. If you are a student leader of an affinity and/or cultural group and would like to speak with us about our coverage or advertisements, we strongly encourage you to reach out.

It’s not just student groups that we want feedback from. We want to know how all students, especially those with minoritized identities, are feeling about our coverage and content. 

Email us at [email protected] to connect with us. StudLife is made by students, for students — and that includes all students on campus. We want you all to feel welcome and included in our University and paper.

We also hope to increase our staff diversity, since that translates directly to an increase in campus awareness and therefore coverage. Recruitment season is underway, and we hope to have students of all backgrounds join each of our sections. During our open house on Wednesday, Sept. 4, we want to make all students feel included and comfortable. We want you to see our paper and office as a second home. 

To all the first-years coming into WashU: Welcome home, and welcome to StudLife. We hope to do you justice in our coverage. But to help us do that, we would LOVE to see you at our open house. We are looking forward to connecting with you and promoting an inclusive newsroom environment this year! 

Sincerely,

Hadia and Madison

DEI Editors