Origins, when we manage 
to unearth them, seldom clarify 
the cobbled nature of the pres-
ent. Instead, they often string us 
along a path of imagined priori-
ties, allowing us to feel qualified 
in recognizing how the past must 
inform our current agendas. In 
the spirit of the Origin Edition, 
we write to our readership as the 
editorial team of The Statement 
— The Michigan Daily’s weekly 
magazine — with our own ori-
gins under the microscope. The 
Statement we’ve inherited has, 
by nature of being a college pub-
lication, undergone nearly seven 
decades of change, spurred by in-
stitutional shifts, individual lead-
ers’ interests and commitments, 
and campus and social upheaval. 
We’ve inherited a dynamic, mer-
curial force. 

But The Statement wasn’t al-
ways “The Statement.” Students 
wanting to pen editorial and fea-
tures writing did so for the then-
labeled “weekend magazine,” 
which seemed to have dipped in 
and out of existence since the 
Daily’s own inception in 1890 
— that is, until August of 1963, 
when then-editor Gloria Bowles 
affirmed the magazine’s pres-
ence, promising a bi-monthly ap-
pearance. In the years following, 
the magazine would shorten its 
title to a curt “WEEKEND” and 
feature photo essays, fashion and 
literature editions, and even initi-
ate a witty “junk drawer.” 
Then, in September of 
2005, tucked below The Daily’s 
masthead in a pithy “From the 
Editor’s” note, then-Editor in 
Chief Jason Z. Pesick and then-
Magazine Editor Doug Wernert 
announced the inception of The 
Statement, which would “feature 
more in-depth reporting on is-
sues affecting both the University 
and the city of Ann Arbor. It is 
more intelligent,” they contin-

ued, “with the goal of exposing 
new ideas and information to 
readers in a magazine format.” 
In the same edition, planted 
above The Daily’s masthead, 
read: “Weekend Magazine Is 
Dead — Long Live The State-
ment.” Their choice in language 
may seem a curiously hostile 
rhetoric to employ, but Wernert 
and Pesick would oversee the 
greatest change to The Daily’s 
feature-writing capabilities since 
the advent of the Weekend Maga-
zine. What they understood was 
a veritable need for focused, ex-
ploratory journalism, with an op-
portunity for the creative to make 
its way into the fold. 
Beyond the editorial shift, 
the 
magazine’s 
name-change 
to The Statement paid homage 
to The Port Huron Statement, 
a founding text of 1960s coun-
terculture, and authored by The 
Daily’s own Tom Hayden. In a 
2021 Statement article by former-
columnist 
Leah 
Leszczynski, 
Wernert and Pesick would clarify 
that “using the Port Huron State-

ment as the magazine’s eponym 
was not necessarily due to ideo-
logical admiration for the docu-
ment.” Yet, their choice in name-
sake seems hardly incidental.
Hayden, a University alum 
and former Editor-in-Chief of 
The Daily in 1960, went on to 
found the Students for a Demo-
cratic Society, prompt JFK’s 
proposal of the Peace Corps on 
the steps of the Michigan Union, 
and serve as pallbearer after the 
president’s 
assassination. 
He 
also inspired President Johnson’s 
infamous “Great Society” speech 
and served in the California State 
Assembly, while still managing to 
contribute to The Daily. 
In June of 1962, Hayden 
would travel ninety-eight miles 
east of Ann Arbor, along with 
nearly four dozen other members 
of SDS to compose the Port Huron 
Statement, working for five days 
straight to perfect a document 
that would become the New Left’s 
founding manifesto. Their chosen 
site — Port Huron, Michigan — sits 
as an idle waterfront town, starkly 

unexceptional in character yet re-
deemable by nature of its proxim-
ity to Lake Huron.
Our editorial team made 
the same ninety-eight mile drive. 
We wanted to immerse ourselves 
in the environment Hayden 
and SDS had selected as a site 
of change, even if the site itself 
seemed to be nothing more than 
a matter of convenience, a lake 
to swim in during breaks from 
the writing sessions. But what 
we found, both unexpectedly and 
not, contextualizes our commit-
ment to the Statement as host to a 
similar kind of journalistic fervor 
that Hayden embodied. 
In the following sections, 
we make our values as editors 
explicit, examine the contempo-
rary condition of The Statement 
and its duties, as well as the role 
of creative writing and journal-
ism today more broadly. Here, we 
affirm The Statement’s commit-
ment to producing work that car-
ries the assuredness of fact, the 
depth and liberty of prose, and 
the ardor of poetry.

 TAYLOR SCHOTT, 
REESE MARTIN, 
SARAH AKAABOUNE 
AND JOHN JACKSON

Statement Editorial Staff

Jeremy Weine/DAILY

2 — The Statement // Wednesday, March 22, 2023
From the editors: 
The origins and future of 
The Statement Magazine

Jeremy Weine/DAILY

From left to right: Julia Verklan (former Statement Managing Editor), John Jackson (Associate Editor), Reese 

Martin (Deputy Editor) and Taylor Schott (Managing Editor) discuss Statement’s importance and future in 

Lakeport State Park Saturday, March 11.

 Julia, Taylor, Reese and John look out on Lake Huron.

