“Will This Get Us In Trouble?”
More is expected of campus editors and reporters than ever, even as the challenges escalate.
The chilling effect of the Trump administration’s assault on higher education and the hollowing out of local news organizations across the country have created new burdens and expectations for campus journalists. Macy Alcido spoke to three about what they are facing and how they work to still report the news
- MS
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When Lizzy Alspach enrolled at the University of Maryland, The Diamondback newspaper played a key role in that decision. She started as a copy editor in 2022 and rose through the ranks to assume the editor-in-chief position last year. She was prepared for a challenge, but not for the barrage of obstacles that would impact her team’s reporting.
“I don’t think that when I came here as a freshman I thought I would be having these deep conversations with my managing desk on what we’re going to do if ICE comes into our newsroom,” Alspach said, now in her senior year. “It’s a little sobering.”
That’s just one example of the unprecedented difficulties student journalists are facing amid the Trump administration’s battle against higher education. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with Mike Hiestand, the senior legal counsel of the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), who explained that college-level journalists are experiencing many of the same obstacles that their professional counterparts face: from difficulty getting sources on record, to an increase in take down requests from international writers. In conversations with Alspach, and two other college student journalists, I learned that Hiestand was indeed correct. And then some.
Last May, as Olivia Mapes transitioned into her role as editor-in-chief of The Exponent, Purdue University’s student paper, the newsroom received an email from Purdue notifying them that the school would no longer help with circulation. Rather than having a school official place the papers on racks around campus, it would be left to members of the newsroom or good samaritans to do the job.
“We were caught off guard, because there weren’t really any warnings that they were going to do that. There’s no explanation,” Mapes said. “I think it’s just Purdue’s way of distancing itself from the paper. Even though we are independent, they just want it clear that we are.”
While it’s unclear if Purdue was explicitly trying to distance itself from The Exponent, students from other universities have experienced a rising chill between their publications and their universities. The Trump factor in this chill is difficult to quantify, but in one incident at the University of Alabama last year, it was explicit: In December, the school shut down Black- and women-focused student magazines Nineteen Fifty-Six and Alice Magazine, in response to federal crackdowns on DEI policies.
The Exponent faces hot-button issues head-on. A recent story, for example, covered the fallout on campus after faculty whistleblowers claimed the university had imposed a quiet ban on admitting graduate students from certain countries. While the paper hasn’t shied away from stories like these, Mapes said that sources have shied away from the newsroom.
“There are people who would have been happy to do an interview a few years ago, but they’re a little more scared these days,” Mapes said. “And that’s not specifically because of Purdue: That’s because of just the political climate now. There’s just a sense of self-censorship that is happening a lot. So it’s much harder to get interviews.”
Alspach lamented a similar experience at The Diamondback, with more and more sources refraining from talking on the record. She recalled a story the paper published last August, when the university renamed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion to “Belonging & Community.”
“We wanted to write a bit more about how students are feeling with these changes, and there are a lot of people who might be working with the university who just don’t want to go on record,” Alspach said. “It’s really hard because these are important stories.”
The Pitt News, a student-run paper at the University of Pittsburgh, reported that students from newspapers at Penn State and Duke said they’ve also struggled to get sources since Trump’s second term began.
One strategy Alspach has implemented is reminding her newsroom to focus on the “minimum story,” or the story one can create with the least amount of information. While those types of stories aren’t ideal, Alspach said a minimum story is better than no story at all.
Sophia Dasser, on the other hand, said The Cornell Daily Sun hasn’t had too much trouble with sources going on the record.
“Surprisingly, we have almost a spur of students and professors who are more willing to communicate with The Sun, because they realize that this is really a moment in history that should be documented quite authentically,” said Dasser, a sophomore at Cornell University, and one of the youngest people to assume the editor-in-chief position.
“If anything, the people who aren’t giving us statements are the administrators,” Dasser continued. The paper recently reported on Cornell’s new position that the university would practice “institutional restraint” when commenting on social and political affairs.
Even without the school’s cooperation, The Cornell Daily Sun continues to report political stories—including those that involve Cornell. Dasser remembered when the newsroom was reporting on the Trump administration’s move to freeze federal funds at Cornell, and the school’s subsequent settlement to restore those funds.
“It felt very dystopian,” Dasser recalled. She said that by that time, Harvard, Brown, and Columbia University had already endured their federal funding freezes, so the entire newsroom wondered if Cornell would be next. When Cornell’s time came, the first thought on the newsroom’s mind was the front page.
“It actually happened 30 minutes before we needed to submit the paper,” Dasser said. “It was an exciting time because we kind of knew that this was a paper that was going to go down as a very important event in Cornell’s history.”
All three editors-in-chief said their papers have received an influx in takedown requests from international students since Trump’s second term began. These students, fearing visa revocation or deportation, want their names scrubbed from certain stories that involve their political opinions.
Before Dasser became editor-in-chief at The Cornell Daily Sun, she was on the opinion desk. She remembers a wave of not only takedown requests from international student writers, but an increase in anonymous guest writing submissions.
“I think that’s interesting because it didn’t mean that people were unwilling to write about their opinions, but they were just genuinely scared of the persecution of writing said opinion,” Dasser said.
On the news desk, The Cornell Daily Sun doesn’t allow for anonymous sourcing. Mapes from The Exponent said they are fine with anonymizing sources and taking down stories for writers. And Alspach said The Diamondback follows a case-by-case basis, considering the current political climate, but leans away from take down requests or anonymization as much as possible.
“Unless it has some type of documented harm to your health or wellbeing, I’m not going to take it down, or we can’t anonymize you,” Alspach said. “We’ve been really strict about that, because I find that it’s really important for transparency for our audience and our community. But it’s still case-by-case.”
Other student newspapers across the country have also grappled with these situations. The Stanford Daily at Stanford University also saw an increase in takedown requests from international student contributors. When concerns surrounding the self-censorship of international students reached a boiling point, the paper filed a lawsuit against Trump administration officials, alleging censorship and violations of free speech rights. The Huntington News at Northeastern University also reported a rise in takedown requests, and subsequently announced a change to their takedown request policy that would allow for the removal of stories on a case-by-case basis.
Now that colleges and universities have become the story, the role student publications serve in their communities on campus and off has never felt more vital.
Off campus, student journalists feel an increased sense of responsibility as local newsrooms shutter at an alarming rate. Local journalism has taken a nosedive over the past couple of decades, according to Medill State of Local News Report 2025. The report, which tracked approximately 8,000 local news outlets in the U.S., found that almost 40% of all local newspapers have disappeared since 2005.
Mapes and Alspach feel their newsrooms cover gaps in coverage that their communities rely on—those communities being West Lafayette, IN, and College Park, MD.
“I can see with confidence that we definitely fill a void,” Alspach said. While College Park is only about 20 minutes outside of Washington, D.C., there’s plenty of residents in College Park and the Prince George’s County who are looking for news about their local communities.
“You have all these legacy and national outlets in D.C., but we still don’t have those reporters coming to Prince George’s County Council meetings,” Alspach said. Similarly, Mapes said The Exponent is at every city meeting.
At The Cornell Daily Sun in Ithaca, NY, Dasser said the newsroom feels motivated and excited by the opportunity to cover big issues involving the federal government, and even Cornell, in this political landscape.
However, that comes with a heightened responsibility to make sure the community is receiving verified facts, especially as American distrust in media reaches an historic low. Accuracy doesn’t just help dispel misinformation, but for Dasser, it helps cement the paper’s legacy during what has been, as you might’ve heard, an unprecedented time.
“There is an extra level of fact-checking and assurance that we are publishing the correct information, due to the current political environment,” Dasser said. “Because we realize that there’s an audience of people who are quite reactive, so we want to make sure that if they are reacting to a piece, it’s well-founded in truth.”
With the spotlight fixed on college campuses, Dasser and her newsroom feel they are under more intense scrutiny—a scrutiny that also comes with risk.
“Now, with every sentence and every word, we ask ourselves, ‘Will this get us in trouble?’”
- Macy Alcido