Position(s): Audience Engagement Assistant Editor (2021), Opinion Columnist (2021), Senior Opinion Editor (Winter 2021), Editorial Page Editor (2022 and 2023)
Section(s): Opinion, Audience Engagement
Semesters at The Daily: 7
I got COVID during my first semester at the University of Michigan. Looking for ways to entertain myself, I completed my first assignment for The Michigan Daily: a TikTok cataloging the egg sandwich, apple and chicken tikka masala that nursed me back from my illness.
Some of my friends have their burning bush stories; they had some miracle or happenstance that illuminated their path to 420 Maynard Street. I truly don’t recall the chain of events that brought me to apply to The Daily that fall, but I know that I’d be a worse person without it.
2020 was weird. Information was everywhere and rapidly changing. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. TikTok was sometimes a sand trap of mis- and disinformation. I didn’t really mind the sand trap; we can’t throw it aside as a platform just because of unreliable elements. We had to meet students where they were.
For the vast majority of human history, information has been scarce. There were technical limits to how and in what quantities information could be stored and disseminated. This means that the information you’d be able to get was just from those around you. Information was local, not global, and institutions like The Daily served to get this scarce information where it needed to go.
The internet solved the scarcity problem. Now, instead of one campus conversation, one campus newspaper, users can cultivate a league of socio-political informers from all over the world. But it also means that the amount of shared information people on campus are consuming has decreased. This disconnect between discourse ecosystems was unfortunately made quite clear during the Israel-Hamas conflict — and the subsequent campus uproar and counter-uproar.
Thankfully, the effects of an atomized student body are not felt in The Daily’s business office at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays. That’s when the Opinion section gathers, after our ceremonial dinner of $2 slices from NYPD. We answer icebreakers, usually apple-related, and attempt to help the campus make sense of the news and how they ought to feel about it. It was hard work, mainly as a result of the atomized conversations I’ve alluded to, but we did it: We found ways to vivify campus discourse and pushed our readers to the places they were able to be pushed. I’m grateful for my turn at the helm, and for my stalwart crew along the way.
To Quin, my rock and my co-editor, thank you. I don’t have enough words to express all of the parts of how you’ve made my time here special. You’re a brilliant listener and a world-class hater. Thank you for lending me your grace when I had little of my own. When we first started working together, I sort of felt like I was a zoo animal that was tricked into a new environment with a new enrichment toy. One day my blonde glasses person was a woman named Paige. One day she was replaced by a different blond glasses person named Quin. I couldn’t really tell the difference, to tell you the truth. I’m no smarter than a zoo animal. I’m really gonna pace my enclosure anxiously once you’re gone.
To Lindsey and Zhane, thank you. I feel a twinge in my chest when I think of you leading the section next year. I practically raised you from eggs! I felt the same feeling at 1 a.m. the morning after your election. It came sitting there, as an old man, watching the Opinion sophomores and freshmen — who I worried so intensely would never bond socially after the pandemic — live together as friends and fellow combatants and students and people. I can’t believe how proud I am of both of you and how electrified of a job you’re going to do. I trust you not because you’re the best editors our section has raised in my memory, but because you see our community as it is and as it could be. You’ll do great; there’s no other option.
And to Wikipedia, thank you for starting my editing journey half a decade ago.