2025 was an unprecedentedly bad year for student media across the United States.
In March, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts student from Turkey, was arrested by plain-clothes immigration enforcement officers after she co-authored an op-ed for The Tufts Daily in support of Palestine. She was held at an immigration detention facility for more than a month despite being in the country legally until immigration officials revoked her legal status while she was in custody.
In May, officers at Columbia University blocked Columbia Spectator reporters from entering the library reading room where a pro-Palestine protest was ongoing. Outside, Columbia public safety officers “pushed [a photographer] back by her head on two occasions while restraining her with an arm against her neck, effectively choking her,” Spectator editors Shea Vance and Heather Chen wrote, despite the photographer holding her arms up and displaying press credentials.
New York Police Department officers at the scene also threatened to revoke a Spectator reporter’s city-issued press credential, which allows them behind police and fire barricades, for asking if colleagues could enter the block, and “forcefully shoved” two clearly-identified Spectator reporters. One editor, Luisa Sukkar was suspended from Barnard College based on claims she was involved in the protest, despite identifying herself as a member of the media and publishing reports from the scene.
In June, Indiana University administrators rejected a student board’s vote to fund the school’s student newspaper, The Indiana Daily Student. Instead, the school required the paper to cut back from weekly print editions to special editions every two-to-three weeks. A few months later, administrators fired the paper’s adviser after he refused to enforce an illegal mandate that the special editions contain no regular news content. When student editors still refused to comply, the school refused to fund any remaining print editions.
In August, The Stanford Daily and two of its members filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem after editors noticed that fewer international students were willing to write for and speak to the paper. The lawsuit, which remains ongoing, challenges two immigration laws which allow the government to revoke student visas based on speech.
Even high school students were not immune from this wave of censorship. Students at Lawrence High School filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that their school’s use of an AI surveillance tool on their school-issued devices violated their First Amendment rights. After filing the lawsuit, school administrators imposed a blanket restriction that the students could not publish articles about it. The school voluntarily reversed that order after students requested a court order preventing the school from imposing such a restriction.
Even for those of us in the newsroom, who keep a close eye on attacks on student press, listing all these instances was shocking. But in spite of the darkness, there is a glimmer of hope. Student journalists at different schools stood together, and we are all stronger for it.
Following Öztürk’s arrest, major student media associations and nonprofits issued a joint “student media alert” condemning threats to press freedom and encouraging student media outlets to revise their policies on anonymity and takedown requests to ensure student journalists are protected. The coalition included the Student Press Law Center, College Media Association, Associated Collegiate Press and the National Scholastic Press Association.
When administrators cut the Indiana Daily Student’s print funding, the Purdue Exponent printed a solidarity edition and had it distributed on the IU campus. Student media advocacy groups including the SPLC condemned the university’s overstep, as did billionaire donor Mark Cuban. Following backlash and legal threats, the school reinstated print funding and created a student media task force comprised of faculty, staff and students “to safeguard the long-term sustainability, educational mission, journalistic integrity, and credibility of student media at Indiana University,” the university wrote in a statement.
When the Stanford Daily filed its lawsuit against the Trump Administration, more than 55 student news outlets, including us at The Mass Media, joined a friend-of-the-court brief authored by the Student Press Law Center urging the court to rule in their favor.
In a time when the United States is restricting speech at all levels and dissent can be silenced with the press of a button, print media is more important than ever. Since our founding in 1966, The Mass Media has served as UMass Boston’s newspaper of record, ensuring that the unique voices of our student body are preserved. Our values — accuracy, fairness, curiosity, humility and transparency — guide us every day and are integral to keeping freedom of speech alive at UMass Boston. It is our duty not just as journalists, but as members of this university.
We dedicate this special anniversary edition not only to our predecessors who founded and operated The Mass Media for the last 60 years, but to our colleagues across the country who continue to fight for independent student media.
We hope that this edition reflects the diversity of experience and viewpoint that makes the UMass Boston community who we are.
— Elijah Horwath and Joshua Levin
Editor in Chief and Managing Editor
This editors’ note appeared at the beginning of a special edition in honor of The Mass Media’s 60th anniversary, published Jan. 28, 2026. Read the full edition here.
