Women deep in conversation on the streets of Bielsko-Biała, Poland, 2008.
Image Source: Flickr Creative Commons
Who?
Shirley Chen. Fourth year. Boba addict (zero percent sugar, less ice).
What?
I am introducing myself as senior editor and what I hope to accomplish this year, likely in a font that wants to be taken seriously.
When?
Sunday night, three hours before the deadline.
Where?
Trinity Times’ News & Campus Life column, situated in the passionate hearts of students speaking up against the world’s injustices while upping their tutorial participation marks.
Why?
That is the question I asked myself when starting as a News writer last year. A reject from Arts & Culture, I was denied the chance to wax poetics and dissect fanfiction. Any creative juices had to be filtered through a lens of objectivity and the haunting Five Ws.
So why was I pouring heavily caffeinated blood, sweat, and tears into something ChatGPT could dish out in seconds?
Deadlines do not wait for answers. For my first article about Truth and Reconciliation Day, I desperately interviewed a random Canadian friend to reap generic but usable quotes. Instead, she hit me with a fiery speech about the tragic discrepancies between provincial education systems when teaching Indigenous histories. Said friend went to school in Quebec, Alberta, and Ontario. She lives this knowledge, as an individual whose experiences intertwine with historical processes.
Therefore, let me reassure my fellow introverts that human communication is worth it, despite being soul-draining sometimes. Through it, I found an answer to the why. Engaging student perspectives distinguish us from in-class research articles (which we have enough of). In addition to our world and campus, we report on what goes on within the lives and minds of our people. We initiate chats, which distinguishes us from Chat. For now, AI does not ask; it only answers.
Question: would this be too subjective? After all, objectivity has long been prized in journalism. Yet what is objectivity, when language and the one who speaks it are never fully neutral? News outlets have their own agendas; so do we. The ways in which we headline our articles already encompass our value judgments. We are saying: I am seeing, thinking, and feeling this. You should too.
In this column, let’s ask: why?
Here, I hope rigorous and intimate dialogues will bring some answers and more questions. I hope we can be interested in people, ourselves included. This way, we explore the wealth of knowledge within each person, their passions and rationales and biases that inform our own. I hope this is where you can tell us your whys with your words and your lives, because we are the Literature of Our Time.
Ultimately, I hope our column can be not an assertion but a conversation, of how we are the Five Ws yet so much more — how we are true to facts, yet not constrained by them. Today’s news is old and will grow older, yet it is from them that we uncover both our histories and futures.
How?
An open question, which I’ll leave to you and all of us, writers, readers, and humans alike.
(I do hope that whatever comes will partially involve fonts that spark joy, like Comic Sans MS.)
Cheers!
Shirley Yue Chen (she/her)
Interim Editor in Chief, News Senior Editor 2024-2025
