S T A T E M E N T

michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily
Wednesday, March 15, 2023— 9

The Argonaut, The University 
of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 
The 
Argonaut 
is 
The 
University of Idaho’s student-
run newspaper. It is home to 
approximately 25 staffers and 
led by Editor in Chief Haadiya 
Tariq. Its offices are located 
on the third floor of the Bruce 
M. 
Pitman 
Center, 
and 
on 
late production nights, tables 
are 
usually 
cluttered 
with 
dummy layout pages, junk food 
wrappers and cans of emptied 
energy drinks. The newsroom is 
warm and bright and sometimes 
staffers project the Super Bowl 
or Christmas movies on any 
empty wall they can find during 
the holidays. 
On Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, 
University of Idaho students 
Kaylee 
Goncalves, 
Xana 
Kernodle, 
Ethan 
Chapin 
and 
Madison 
Mogen 
were 
violently murdered in their off-
campus residence, spurring a 
weeks-long investigation that 
captivated the country. Within 
one day of the homicides, rumors 
about how a man dressed in 
black had killed four students 
began swirling on Yik Yak, an 
anonymous messaging app. That 
was the nature of a school like 
The University of Idaho; it was 
the way things were. Moscow 
was the special sort of place 
where everyone seemed to know 
everyone else, and everything 
in one way or another was 
intrinsically connected. 
The Argonaut was one of 
the first news sources at the 
house 
where 
the 
homicides 
had occurred. Tariq lived just 
down the road from it, and one 
of her staffers knew the victims 
personally. 
Soon, 
the 
house 
on 1122 King Road became 
something no one could ever 
seem to get away from. It was 
profoundly 
unforgettable, 
nestled one minute away from 
Greek Row and on particularly 
clear 
days, 
visible 
through 
the pine trees from campus. 
The 
first 
press 
conference, 
held at the Moscow Police 
Department’s 
offices, 
was 
bursting at the seams, the room 
far too small and ill-prepared 
to accommodate the journalists 
that had flown in to report 
on the homicides. It had been 
seven years since Moscow last 
recorded a homicide; the town 
had always been a quiet one 
and 
generations 
of 
families 
had loved the land and called it 
home.
Tariq 
didn’t 
attend 
her 
classes for the entire week. “My 
academics 
were 
completely 
on pause, the rest of my life on 
pause,” she said. “I just spent 

that whole week reporting … it’s 
more intimate too when you’re a 
student and you know the people 
who know (the victims) them. 
You can’t escape it, it becomes 
the whole thing you’re doing.”
Nearly half of the student 
body did not return to campus 
after 
Thanksgiving 
break. 
Things 
were 
different 
after 
the 
homicides; 
emptier 
and 
hollower. One afternoon, when 
Tariq tried to conduct street 
interviews, 
students 
were 
uncharacteristically hostile. 
“You know even though I’m 
here as a student and a journalist, 
they just see the journalist part” 
Tariq said. “And that was really 
difficult to deal with.” 
From the day the homicides 
occurred through the end of 
the term, Tariq spent most of 
her time reporting. It wore her 
down, in the way that attempting 
to understand and carry the 
entire grief of a community 
does, and it was something that 
even seasoned journalists with 
careers spanning decades could 
never truly understand. 
“One thing I remember; when 
we had the indoor memorial 
for the victims, I decided not 
to go, we had other reporters 
covering it, but I just could not 
be there.” she said. “I never 
in a million years would have 
thought that I would cover 
something this big. I thought 
the pandemic would have been 
the huge defining moment of my 
college journalism experience. 
You 
really 
only 
experience 
something like this once in your 
career as a journalist, and it’s 
usually not when you’re only 
21.” 
Last December, the Moscow 
Police 
Department 
finally 
apprehended 
and 
charged 
a suspect with the murders 
of 
Kaylee 
Goncalves, 
Xana 
Kernodle, Ethan Chapin and 
Madison Mogen. Coverage of 
the homicides, theories of why 
someone could have possibly 
committed such a crime, who 
the victims were — and the way 
they lived and loved — soon bled 
into coverage of the ensuing 
trial. But for now, Moscow 
is still in mourning, and The 
Argonaut is still here. 
“We will continue covering 
the trial, it’s something we care 
about a lot,” Tariq said. “We 
can fill the gaps that national 
media can’t address. They’re 
gone, they’re not here anymore, 
they’re not on the ground in 
Moscow 
anymore. 
They’ll 
be back for the trial, but not 
for what’s going to happen in 
between. We’re going to be here. 
They’re not.” 

The 
Hilltop, 
Howard 
University, Washington, D.C. 
The 
Hilltop 
is 
Howard 
University’s 
student-run 
newspaper. 
Co-founded 
by 
Zora Neale Hurston and Louis 
Eugene King in 1924, it employs 
57 staffers, led by Editor in 
Chief Jasper Smith. The Hilltop 
is one of a kind and it stands 
today as the first and only daily 
newspaper at a Historically 
Black College or University in 
the country. And after months 
of 
halted 
production 
and 
delays due to the pandemic, 
The Hilltop has just begun to 
live again. Staff have started to 
trickle back into the newsroom 
for more than just meetings, 
late-night 
editing 
and 
last 
minute production. And more 
than anything else, it’s clear 
that The Hilltop has always 
been the sort of newsroom that 
will forever change your life, 
if you let it. There is so much 

joy in leading The Hilltop. 
Homecoming, one of Howard’s 
most beautiful and celebrated 
traditions, has always been an 
honor for journalists to cover 
— and Smith has a soft spot for 
The Hilltop’s special front page 
layouts each year. 
On 
Aug. 
26th, 
2022 
for 
the second time in 48 hours, 
Howard University received 
its eighth bomb threat of the 
year. 
Students 
evacuated 
from Howard Plaza East and 
West Towers, two on-campus 
residence dorms, in the early 
hours of morning. JD, one of 
The Hilltop’s reporters and 
at the time, was in the towers 
and called Smith immediately. 
At 3 a.m., their first instinct 
was to discuss the reporting 
process. After all, this wasn’t 
the first time either one of 
them had had to cover a bomb 
threat, and it seemed like they 
had almost implicitly solidified 
the most efficient routine to 
secure as many interviews and 
photographs as possible. 
“It wasn’t until after we 
had finished reporting that 
I stopped to ask myself and 
JD … wait are you okay? Am I 
okay?” Smith said. “We’re just 
students too.” The repeated 
bomb threats had come to 
define the way they reported 
on these kinds of things, and 
the weight of what they had 
been truly asked to carry. 
To report for The Hilltop, 
to become the voice of one of 
the 
illustrious 
institutions 
in the country, and various 
communities in Washington, 
D.C. 
is 
to 
also 
sometimes 
reckon with days of repeated 
traumatic events. In the span of 

the same week, on the last day of 
Black History Month, Howard 
University received yet another 
bomb threat, and a student 
committed suicide. Reporting, 
for Smith, became a means of 
coping, of understanding and 
reconciliation. And perhaps the 
only means that her job could 
ever give her. Yet, there never 
seemed to be enough room to 
carry every ounce of grief. 
“Your 
universities 
are 
kind of like your playground, 
and in turn you get almost 
desensitized, it only hits you 
all at once after the reporting 
is done,” Smith said. 
“Journalism 
is 
a 
very 
thankless job, people don’t pay 
attention to the byline. You’re 
not doing it for you,” Smith 
said. “It just affirms the love 
I have for what I do and that 
what I’m doing is so much 
bigger than me. You can’t ever 
quit because there’s so much 
that depends on us working 
together.” 
***
There is love in college 
journalism, love in late nights 
spent in the newsroom, in the 
special sort of rush that comes 
with a byline, in creating 
something that is meant to 
outlive so many of us long 
after we have gone. But there 
is also grief too, and in time, 
it has become an unavoidable 
condition of what it means to 
be a journalist. Reporting on 
tragedy and trauma, the pain 
and anger, the love and loss 
that define the communities we 
serve, sometimes becomes the 
only feasible means of grieving, 
and 
mostly, 
the 
inevitable 
weight we carry.

 Students evacuate to Banneker South parking lot following a bomb threat to Howard Plaza Towers. 
JD Jean-Jacques/The Hilltop.

The ribbon cutting ceremony at the 7th annual Lavender Reception, celebrating the Howard LGBTQ+ community. 
Alexia Godinez-Thompson/The Hilltop. 

A memorial sign reads, “Forever a Vandal, Xana Kernolde.” 
Daniel V. Ramirez/The Argonaut
A Moscow police officer stands in the doorway of the residence where the homicides occurred.
Daniel V. Ramirez/The Argonaut

The Argonaut, Dec. 22, 2022 paper.

