Rex Mortuus Est, Vivat Rex: A Loving Valediction

It took me a long time to decide what I wanted my parting words to be when my editorship concluded. I thought about confronting our long and complicated history, or chronicling the turbulence of the past few years here at The Review. I considered outlining my vision for the paper and its place on campus. But I found that none of these options captured what I really want to emphasize while I have one foot out of the door: my undying love for The Dartmouth Review.

Love is perhaps the only word I can find to capture how I feel about this organization. No other word carries the full weight of the passion, hardship, perseverance, and time that has gone into my editorship these past two years. There is a painful vulnerability that comes with caring deeply about something, and it is that duality of love that I hope to convey as I reflect on my experiences at The Review. 

The Review’s revitalization under my tenure was a taxing process that presented me with unexpected challenges, but it has also been my proudest achievement. My time at The Review has fostered my growth as a writer and leader, profoundly shaped my character, and forged my closest friendships. More than anything, it showed me how much I can care for something without any assurance that it would amount to anything.

Even before I was in leadership, The Review cultivated my skills as a journalist. Given considerable independence, I explored topics that I cared about and formed meaningful opinions on the issues facing Dartmouth. Reporting for The Review was the single greatest contributor to my appreciation of the Dartmouth community, as it gave me a keener awareness of what constituted it. Naturally, I also found plenty of things that I wanted to change. By then, I felt comfortable enough with my writing to publish more widely circulated pieces about Dartmouth in The Daily Caller and The Wall Street Journal. Most significantly, The Review fostered my confidence enough for me to write my most intimate article, “Institutional Failures,” which detailed my experiences with sexual assault on campus and the broken administrative processes that perpetuated further injustice. Without the influence of this organization, I would never have felt empowered enough to speak out against the administration so personally.

As my position in The Review advanced, I faced greater challenges that proved to be particularly formative. When I took up the mantle as editor-in-chief, The Review was in a tenuous position. The departure of all of the senior staff in the Class of 2019 left the organization in the hands of two sophomores. The nature of a co-editorship prevented any establishment of meaningful stability over that first year, and personal discontent sowed professional tension. Like a doomed long-distance relationship, the already severe issues we faced were exacerbated by my periodic absence from Hanover. 

Years of internal conflict had gone unaddressed, fostering a noxious culture that cracked the social foundation on which The Review relies. That culture spilled over into an ideology that permitted and endorsed obnoxious, dishonest, and indecent approaches to the organization’s governance and interactions with campus. Articles published in my absence like “The Whip of Affirmative Action” and coverage of David Horowitz’s event on campus exemplified the degeneration of The Review’s journalistic quality and integrity: they both wantonly employed racist and homophobic sentiments for no purpose beyond superficial provocation. Worse, following a shooting near campus in the autumn of 2018, certain staff members published an erroneous article that made unfounded accusations of nepotism against the Grafton County District Attorney and a Lebanon police officer. 

As many on campus now know, this untenable situation exploded last winter. A prolonged period of uncertainty and distress exposed existential threats to the organization—quality writers felt uncomfortable in the organization and much of the content that did get published was increasingly and radically bigoted. Preserving The Review’s existence demanded unprecedented change, and building a reputation of decency and integrity was crucial to restoring the organization’s vibrancy. 

As such, I was forced to make very difficult decisions during the precarious time between my first and second term as editor. I undertook a comprehensive restructuring of the editorial side of the organization, and a considerable portion of the senior staff was either dismissed or left of their own accord. Strained but not crippled, Jason Ceto—President of The Review—and I looked at our respective second terms as a chance to create a respectable and welcoming environment while maintaining The Review’s traditions and values. Without any assurance that we could successfully produce a culture that we had never even seen within the organization, we were basically gambling, and the stakes were high: after nearly forty years, the spotlight of The Review’s independent campus journalism had been reduced to a faint flicker. 

Luckily, Ceto and I were not completely alone. The senior staff who gambled with us on this vision had stuck around through all the terms of uncertainty with the hope that we would succeed. They all sacrificed time, energy, and mental fortitude to help us build an organizational culture that we could be proud of. This struggle brought us all together, creating friendships of the strongest kind—those bound in hardship and perseverance.

This process was not without stumbling, but in a matter of months we made substantial progress. Upperclassmen who left years before when the organization started taking a dark turn returned to help revitalize the “new” Review. New members arrived, who had avoided joining because of concerns about the former culture. At the dawn of this new school year, torrents of smart and ambitious freshmen arrived. Unlike in previous years, they stayed. Other parts of campus recognized the changes, and administrators and professors who had once viewed The Review with contempt now regularly—and enthusiastically—attend our termly wine and cheese. As I write this valediction, I can confidently say that we pulled it off. I could not be prouder of what we built and how far we have come. 

Love, as I have said, is the word I choose to describe how I feel towards The Review. That is not to say that I am unaware of its troubled history or the harm it has caused. In fact, I am more intimately aware of how The Review can do wrong than most. Rather, it is this organization’s ability to reflect and meditate on its past, take inventory of what is working and what is failing, and adjust course that attracts my adoration. That exceptional quality is rare, and it is only made possible by the presence of a staff that cares deeply for the organization and each other. Thus, the primary reason that I love and care for The Review is that the other people in the organization love and care for it too. The success of my editorship exemplifies the staff’s love for this paper, as none of this would have been possible without it. 

To the staff, I ask that you never let your love for The Review fade—the day it does is the day The Review dies. I thank you for your support and service over the course of my tenure, and I am hopeful for the paper’s future. To Ceto, Rachel, Sam, Jake, Will, Zach, and Joey—your friendship and sacrifice has made that future possible. My gratitude could not be expressed in words, but I trust that you know how important you have been to this organization, and more, to me.