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In early March, Dylan Hembrough, the editor in chief of The Alestle, the student newspaper at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, published a story about protests on campus over federal funding cuts and censorship in science. The following day, the paper received a message from one of the protesters, who had been featured prominently in photographs and an interview, asking to have their name and image removed. At the time, Hembrough said, the paper didn’t have any policy allowing for such a post-publication takedown. “So, in that case, we ended up denying it.” 

Since then, the campus environment has changed—and newspapers like The Alestle have begun reconsidering long-standing practices, particularly when it comes to protecting people who have appeared in their pages. In the past few weeks, eight students at SIUE have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, Hembrough said—part of a group of more than thirteen hundred students nationwide who have been detained or lost their visas, sometimes for infractions as minor as participating in a protest. The turning point for many publications came in late March, when Rümeysa Öztürk, an international PhD student at Tufts University, was arrested by ICE and threatened with deportation over what the government alleged was anti-Israel activism and public support for terrorist organizations. The only evidence was an op-ed she coauthored a year earlier, along with three other students, criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza. “I can say that offering anonymity now has a new meaning,” Hembrough said, “as we are not just protecting sources from losing their jobs, but a possibly even more existential upending of their lives.”

On April 4, the Student Press Law Center, in conjunction with several other media rights groups, issued a new guidance that urged student newspapers to consider being more flexible about requests to remove content or identifying material from their stories. Previous guidelines from the organization had taken a much firmer stance against removing published materials. “The world is different now, and so I think our response has to be different,” said Michael Hiestand, a staff attorney with the center. Hiestand said that the situation with Öztürk “was really a watershed moment” for the organization.

The Harvard Crimson has received ten takedown or anonymity requests as of last Friday, according to McKenna McKrell, the paper’s president. The requests have come from students and alumni alike, seeking the removal of quotes or identifying information—such as dorms, majors, and class years—from published stories. So far, the paper has handled them on a case-by-case basis. “We’re always trying to minimize harm, but balance that with our goal of being the paper of record,” said McKrell, who is a junior. “I feel like it changes every day. I’ve had a lot of difficult conversations about what our standards are going to look like.” She added, “It feels like there is no precedent to turn to right now.”

Chris Evans, the director of student media at Rice University in Houston and adviser to the Rice Thresher, says he’s having to rethink journalistic principles he’s held to for more than two decades—sometimes making for awkward encounters with his student editors. “Those students who have been taught by their teachers, by people like me, that you don’t take down a story unless it is incorrect or libelous, are now holding to that and just saying my words back to me,” he said. The paper recently had an international student request to have an article from last fall, which he was featured in, taken down. “When it was published, he wasn’t in danger,” Evans said. After a debate, the paper decided the risk to the student outweighed the news value of keeping the piece up. Episodes like this have left Evans feeling that student newspapers need to come up with firm policies for situations like this, rather than making decisions ad hoc. “Many of these students will be professional journalists in a few weeks, a few months, or a few years,” he said. “They’re developing these standards now, and it’s going to deeply impact the journalism industry moving forward.”

At other student papers, the intensity of the moment has brought about more fundamental shifts in their coverage. The Battalion, Texas A&M University’s student newspaper, has ramped up its breaking news coverage, often making last-minute changes to front-page layouts. In recent months, they’ve twice had to redesign the front page right before it went to print—including after learning that the federal government had terminated the legal status of twenty-three students. “This is a more serious situation than I hoped we’d be in,” said Ian Curtis, a sophomore and the paper’s managing editor. During these stressful times, he added, it “helps a lot” to work together with a team in the newsroom. “I think we’re in a good place because our staff is close.”

The University of Florida’s independent student newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, has broken a number of stories about ICE activities involving students, including the revelation last week that the university had partnered with ICE to enforce immigration policies on campus. But it’s also struggled with a climate of fear on campus, said Ella Thompson, the paper’s editor in chief and a senior. “It has been tough to get some sourcing done on campus because I think students, especially in Florida, are just really afraid that there’s going to be repercussions for the things they say that get printed,” she said. “International students on our campus are obviously an important voice in those stories, and if they won’t speak to us, we don’t really have anything that we can report on.”

Garrett Shanley, a senior and the university editor at the Alligator, said there’s a “tangible sense of political paranoia,” even among the faculty. He now instructs reporters to contact faculty on private numbers and personal devices to avoid public records scrutiny. “Faculty have told me directly that they are afraid of speaking to the Alligator and other media outlets because they don’t want to jeopardize their tenure positions, or their jobs.”

Shanley, Thompson, and Kylie Wiliams, the Alligator’s digital managing editor and a junior, are among newsroom leaders who are preparing to graduate in the spring, and have found themselves reflecting on the legacy they are passing on to the next generation of student reporters. “We always call the Alligator a training ground,” Williams said. “And I think a lot of what our student newsroom does is it prepares our reporters to deal with really difficult situations once they get into the industry.” She couldn’t help noticing that the tensions that have swept through campus are reflective of the kinds of challenges that journalists will face in their future careers. “It’s an unfortunate situation on a lot of fronts, but I think it’s also good for our reporters who are passionate about pursuing journalism.”

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