It has been a busy year for editor-in-chiefs.
Not all of our years have been quite as eventful as that of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, accidentally being added to government group chats discussing classified military plans — and, almost as impressively, being invited as a speaker at the New Orleans Book Festival. But leading a newspaper in 2025 is inevitably a monumental task; not only are attention spans increasingly short, but the number of newsworthy events seems to multiply by the day. In a city as vibrant as New Orleans, and a campus as alive as Tulane’s, there are enough festivals, speaker events, sports games, protests, political scandals and scientific discoveries to occupy our writers, photographers, editors and other contributors far beyond their time here allows.
The school year began with the visit of former President Joe Biden to announce a $23 million grant to Tulane cancer researchers, and shortly after, the renaming of the School of Public Health to honor a landmark donation by Celia Scott Weatherhead. Hurricane Francine brought 10 inches of rain, and several months later, the largest winter storm of the century brought the same amount in snow. The Green Wave continued to roll strong on the football field, until they crashed in a disappointing Thanksgiving Day loss. In Caesars Superdome, Taylor Swift played to a packed stadium of bedecked and besotted fans, while Travis Kelce’s Super Bowl showing in the same venue was not so spectacular.
In the new year, New Orleans was met with tragedy, as over a dozen people were killed in a terrorist attack in the French Quarter. The city scrambled to build up its security infrastructure in time for Mardi Gras, foregoing the previously proposed regulations on parade route activities. It also hurriedly invested in large-scale improvements to its physical infrastructure, repaving seemingly every street around Tulane’s campus.
On campus, too, life was marked by several changes in students’ environment. Ground was broken on several new dormitories meant to house upperclassmen, sparking some controversy, and Richardson Memorial Hall, home of the School of Architecture and Built Environment, reopened after four long years of renovation. Other areas of the school showed their age: just this month, a burst pipe flooded the ninth floor of the old monolith that is Monroe Residence Hall, displacing dozens of students.
More significant, though less immediately apparent, was the attempt to dismantle several of the university’s non-physical structures. Against the expectations and hopes of the majority of Tulane students, President Donald Trump was reelected as president of the United States, beginning his second term more aggressively than the last. Hardly a month after his inauguration, Tulane received the news that over a hundred million dollars in federal research funding was at risk of being canceled, threatening thousands of ongoing studies in critical areas of biomedicine. Several proposed amendments to the Louisiana constitution, supported by the state governor, would have cut hundreds of thousands of additional dollars from Tulane laboratories if Louisiana voters had not soundly rejected them. The university also received executive orders demanding the dissolution of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the cessation of alleged “relentless antisemitic eruptions,” both on pain of losing federal funding.
Tulane has, so far, complied with these directives. The Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion changed its name to the Office of Academic Excellence and Opportunity, and the Office of Gender and Sexual Diversity was dissolved. President Mike Fitts was not among the over 500 leaders of academic institutions who signed a recent letter opposing the Trump administration’s punitive measures against higher education institutions. Despite the acquittal of 14 pro-Palestine protesters from misdemeanor charges in the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court last month, seven protesters were allegedly placed under investigation by the Office of Student Conduct for participation in an off-campus rally.
Much remains to be seen regarding how Tulane’s administration will respond to increasing federal involvement, and the rapid approach of summer comes both as a needed respite and an unfortunate time when the eyes and ears of The Tulane Hullabaloo must close. The preceding summary of The Hullabaloo’s coverage from this past year is similarly incomplete; I urge you to fill in the gaps by reading or listening to our other content on the joys, sorrows and everything in between that punctuated this past year.
Being editor-in-chief, especially of a small, independently-funded college newspaper like The Hullabaloo, means accepting that you will be subject to a kind of failure; that is, the failure to cover all the stories that could be written, whether it is for a lack of time, resources, cooperation — anything. Even so, at The Hullabaloo, what we have managed to do this year is far from failing by any other count. We have grown significantly, with the addition of a new section, two dozen staff writers and new members of our podcasting and social media teams. We refreshed our website and print format, approaching journalism with professionalism and stylistic consistency. We maintained our commitment to publishing in print every month, keeping our archive of over a century alive.
It has been a great joy of mine to have led a group of editors, managers and contributors whose talent, motivation and dedication to the organization continually inspire me. The spring 2025 general board consisted of Olivia Warren, Ryann Goldberg, Lily Foster, Ellie Cowen, Lindsay Ruhl, Rosemary Mulvey, Sophia Finkbeiner, Benny Greenspan, Scott Houtkin, Alya Satchu, Evan Allbritton, Sophia Duhon, Liam Majeau, Nathan Jones, Zachary Kempin, Rithika Yalavarthy, Olivia Morgan, Jessica Clute, Arya Glenn, Varun Adelli, Shivani Bondada, Taylor Fishman, Campbell Harris, Ruby Motz, Lauren Olsen, Ellie Weko, Nathaniel Miller, Marion Candler, Kloe Godard, Brooke Mason, Julia Goldman and Erin Malloy. Their caring enough to tell the stories of this school — with integrity, fairness and style — is the heart of this paper.
To the Managing Board – Managing Editor Sophie Borislow, Chief Copy Editor Riley Hearon, Production Manager Nathan Rich, Personnel Director Arushi Kher, Digital Director Katherine Dawson and Senior Business Manager Matthew Rosenstein — I extend my deep thanks. To those who are graduating, know that you will be gladly welcomed back to the office as long as I sit at the editor’s desk.
I end this retrospective by turning my attention forward. As I enter my second term as editor-in-chief and The Hullabaloo enters its 120th year, I only hope to put this paper in the best condition it can be to support the work of future members and provide the community it serves with the most complete coverage possible. I intend to grow the organization even more next year, with the remodeling of our training and onboarding procedures, the development of our business team and the refinement of the systems that support our staff. If you want to join the paper, there is no better time than now. There is no shortage of news to write, either.
I encourage you to participate. I encourage you to submit a letter to the editor, send us a tip or advertise in our publication. As I have said before, The Hullabaloo serves not only to perceive what happens within the Tulane community, but to serve as a source of collective memory of student life — this is something that every student, I hope, desires to be represented in.
We remember stories. Ask yourself, which stories need to be remembered? What do you want the story of this school to be?