The first time I ever had to carry 
grief that did not belong to me 
was the day I began to report on 
survivors of former University of 
Michigan Athletics doctor Robert 
Anderson. Over a span of 37 years, 
more than 950 victims reported 
thousands of incidents of sexual 
abuse and misconduct at the hands 
of Anderson, remaining as likely 
the most sexual abuse allegations 
against a single person in United 
States history. 
There is an untold grief in 
reporting this kind of trauma, in 
reporting the tragedies that affect 
our schools and communities — the 
people we love and know — and what 
they ultimately leave behind. In time, 
even grief that does not belong to us 
has a way of becoming our own. 
College journalists are especially 

vulnerable to the weight of reporting. 
The world sees them as too young 
to understand the heaviness of 
grief or to report on the shootings 
that 
fracture 
their 
campuses, 
the homicides that destroy their 
student bodies, the bomb threats 
and sexual abuse scandals that 
define the way they reckon with 
themselves. But oftentimes, long 
after national news outlets have left, 
when press conferences become 
a rarity and towns begin to quiet 
again, 
student 
journalists 
and 
student-run newspapers become 
the last to remain, to understand, to 
painstakingly cover all that happens 
in between. And at a cost few are 
ever willing to make. What becomes 
of college journalists in the face of 
collective grief? What does it mean 
to grieve, to process, to become 
angry, to be in pain, to know joy and 
love and healing as a journalist first, 
and as a student last? 
I’ve 
spent 
the 
past 
month 

researching 
college 
newspapers 
across the country, and more 
importantly, college newspapers that 
found themselves at the forefront of 
national tragedies — those that have 
had to contend with what it meant 
to no longer feel safe in your own 
libraries, classrooms, newsrooms 
and homes. Over the past few weeks, 
I spoke to Ava MacBlane, Editor in 
Chief of The Cavalier Daily at the 
University of Virginia; Haadiya 
Tariq, Editor in Chief of The 
Argonaut at The University of Idaho; 
and Jasper Smith, Editor in Chief of 
The Hilltop at Howard University. 
These are their stories. This is the 
weight they carry.
The 
Cavalier 
Daily, 
The 
University 
of 
Virginia, 
Charlottesville, Va. 
The Cavalier Daily — The CD or 
The Cav, for short — is the University 
of 
Virginia’s 
independently-run 
student newspaper. It employs 
approximately 400 staffers and is led 

by Editor in Chief Ava MacBlane. The 
Cavalier Daily’s offices are located 
in the basement of Newcomb Hall, 
a student center that also houses 
the campus’s main dining hall. 
Staff sometimes take long naps on a 
couch chock-full of Squishmallows. 
A life-size cut-out of Will Ferrell 
sits in an odd corner, and there are 
lopsided frames of old newspapers 
from decades ago hung on the walls. 
Meetings are held in an area fondly 
dubbed “The Office” and on Fridays, 
when the production schedule is 
pleasantly light, the Copy staffers 
spend hours at one of the few empty 
tables gossiping about the day’s latest 
happenings. The newsroom here 
is well-loved. It’s the kind of place 
people visit just because they can.
On 
Sunday, 
Nov. 
13, 
2022, 
University of Virginia students 
and football team members Devin 
Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel 
Davis Jr. died after a gunman 
opened fire on a bus returning from 

a University of Virginia class trip 
to Washington, D.C. Two other 
students were wounded. A shelter-
in-place warning issued a campus-
wide “Run, Hide, Fight” alert that 
lasted well into the next morning. 
Students spent the whole night 
cramped into libraries and a variety 
of campus and academic buildings, 
trapped in an uncomfortable state of 
limbo and a terribly unsettling cloud 
of fear, in search of a reason why. 
MacBlane, 
who 
was 
the 
Managing Editor of The Cavalier 
Daily at the time, spent the entirety 
of the next 72 hours following the 
shooting, on the ground reporting. 
She missed meals and sleep, and 
much of her grief was experienced 
as a journalist first. Reporting on her 
community became one of the only 
ways she carried her grief, or rather, 
the only way her job as a student 
journalist allowed her to.
“You want to feel connected to 
people and to your community, but 

you can’t because you’re still the 
media,” MacBlane told me. There is a 
heaviness that comes with reporting 
on fellow peers who left the world 
so violently, a half-removed kind of 
grieving. 
While 
it 
became 
the 
sole 
responsibility of MacBlane and The 
Cavalier Daily to print the victims’ 
names, their hometowns, what they 
studied, the lovely, wonderful tiny 
things that made them who they 
were, there is also the realization 
that the journalists are students, 
too. They might have run into the 
victims of the shooting somewhere 
in line at a coffee shop or in the 
library, or the victims might have 
picked up a copy of The Cavalier 
Daily, because Devin Chandler, 
D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr. 
were here as fellow students, and 
now after a senseless act of violence, 
they no longer were. 

SARAH AKAABOUNE
Statement Deputy Editor 

The weight we carry: college journalism’s untold grief 

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

This is not an essay about 
watching movies — this is an essay 
about going to the movies, about its 
likeness to ceremony, about how it 
makes me feel quite a bit less lonely. 
About how it saves my weekends. 
About why sometimes, (and I never 
know when that sometimes is 
going to be) being alone in public is 
comforting.
For the past three weekends, I’ve 
spent a Friday or a Saturday or both 
at the Michigan Theater and State 
Theatre. The stretch began with 
the hotly anticipated, box-office 
hit “Dune” in a packed showing 
room at the Michigan Theater. The 
following weekend it was a quieter, 
charmed “The French Dispatch” 
in their largest auditorium, and a 
rowdy “The Rocky Horror Picture 
Show” seen (for the first time) from 
the upper mezzanine the same night. 
“Dune” again the next weekend in 
the Michigan Theater. The night 
after, a chilling “Last Night in Soho” 
from the cozy, elevated rows of 
the State Theatre. An anniversary 
showing of “Blade Runner” is slated 
for this coming weekend.
It’s not like I had outright planned 
to spend my October and November 
weekends this way. It just sort of 
happened, as these things often do. I 
saw “Dune” and realized what I had 
missed so much about a communal 
viewing experience, and so I went 
again. And again. And again. 
I’m enjoying this stint, as I tend to 
indulge in things for weeks at a time, 
only to abandon it once the novelty 
wears off. Next month I may be 
fervently knitting scarves that won’t 
see their ends, tossed in baskets 
with the needles still clinging to the 
last row I attempted. But I will have 
occupied myself for the month of 
December. 
Like my pocket-sized copy of 
“Slouching Towards Bethlehem” 
that protects against preventable 
boredom, going to the movies 

ensures a thing to do, it is something 
to put in your calendar. You can 
use it as a crutch. You can say, hey, 
I’m sorry. But I’ve got plans with 
red velvet seats, Bill Murray and 
incurable back pain tonight. And 
you can’t reach me. It’ll be dark and 
I’ll be happy. Or maybe not happy, 
but convinced of the possibility. 
I take care to treat moviegoing as 
a ceremony, one I should smarten 
up for: eyeliner, coiffed hair, heeled 
loafers. A scarf? Let’s put on some 
Etta James and dance a little (to my 
playlist called “Songs to Secretly 
Dance To”). 
Like when getting ready for the 
party is more fun than the party 
itself, going to the movies represents 
everything that surrounds the 
experience — it’s not actually about 
the movie, though I suppose it could 
be — it isn’t usually for me (even 
though “Dune” was actually quite 
good). And it’s never about the party.
It’s about if the butter has 
journeyed through to the bottom 
of the popcorn bowl, or the blessed 
moment the lights dim, finally 
introducing the sanctuary of silence. 
Sticky floors. A glorified night 
to myself. A place where you are 
commanded to turn off your phone 
and where nobody can reach you. It 
is a wonderfully liminal space where 
you feel transported, not totally out 
of reality, but somewhere perched 
on its border. 
~
Who is going to get offended when 
I say that going to the movies feels 
more religious than church? But 
how could you deny the parallels of 
a showing at the Michigan Theater: 
veritable gold banisters winding 
up to the second floor, the organ 
playing that precedes each movie. 
Gold leaf molding on the ceiling 
— a truly divine display. Enforced 
quiet. People congregating under 
the bright marquee. I pay more 
respect to going to the movies than 
I ever did going to church — and that 
should tell you all you need to know 
about my Catholic upbringing. 
At the movies, I am alone but 

surrounded by people who are also 
alone. It is comforting. At parties, I 
am only surrounded by people who 
are better at pretending that they 
are not also alone. Or people — and 
I write this with jealousy — who are 
actually not alone at all. 
I feel less lonely going to the 
movies for obvious reasons, but 
also for less obvious ones. The 
presence of other people without 
the responsibility of having to 
interact with them is a nice thing. 
You’re all connected by a desire, 
however fleeting, to see this movie. 
To eat popcorn loudly. To laugh at 
the right time. To suck the air out of 
the room by collectively gasping at a 
jump-scare. 
Durga Chew-Bose in her essay 
“Summer Pictures” puts it this 
way: “Going to the movies is the 
most public way to experience a 
secret. Or, the most secretive way to 
experience the public.”
When going to the movies, 
I am seeking out pleasure and 
entertainment. But I am also 
avoiding confrontation — I never 
like to interrogate why being home 
alone on a weekend night so disturbs 
me, but I imagine that much of this 
conception has to do with the social 
mores of college and conflicting 
ideas about solitude. Alas, it’s so 
much easier to watch Anya Taylor-
Joy dance to “Downtown” with the 
smugness of having escaped than 
it is to admit what we are escaping 
from in the first place. 
~
This 
past 
summer, 
a 
“moviehouse” was built on the 
western end of my hometown’s main 
drag. Its construction was followed 
by a minimalist bakery, a tapas 
restaurant, and a “unique urban 
market.” All of these establishments 
were constructed within the same 
year, which has given this street 
a sort of faux-modernity. Like the 
youngest child of five that wasn’t 
planned, this street’s end is late and 
too young to understand much. 

From left to right: ANNA FUDER/Daily, ALUM BECCA MAHON/Daily, ANNA FUDER/Daily, JEREMY WEINE/Daily

8 — Graduation Edition 2023
michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily
Statement

At the movies

TAYLOR SCHOTT
Statement Managing Editor 

Two months ago, I received 
an unexpected direct message on 
Twitter. It was from someone I had 
never met but vaguely recognized 
from the University of Michigan 
Twitter-sphere. 
“I think my roommate found your 
fake,” they wrote. “It kinda sucks 
btw.”
Said ID was not, in fact, my 
fake ID. It was my real Michigan 
driver’s license. It had disappeared 
somewhere between my apartment 
and Babs’ Underground Lounge 
after a night out about two weeks 
prior. I had been frantically looking 
for it ever since, tearing through 
my car, backpack and bedroom on 
a desperate mission to find it. In the 
meantime, I endured the humiliation 
of taking my passport to bars. 
I didn’t blame the Twitter 
stranger for assuming my ID to be 
fake. My driver’s license photo was 
exceptionally bad. I looked terrible 
in it — I had forgotten you were 
allowed to smile so it looked more 
like a mugshot than a driver’s license 
photo, and I was still hungover from 
the night before. I wouldn’t blame 
someone for thinking it was taken 
in a dorm basement with a digital 
camera from the 1990s. And ever 
since I turned 21, I’ve been paranoid 
that my license would be confiscated 
at Rick’s or the liquor store because 
there’s something about it that just 
seems so unconvincing. 
But there was something so 
stereotypically 
“college 
student” 
about that message that it was 
almost comical. It was a reminder 
of the absurdity of the fake ID 
phenomenon; they’re so ubiquitous 
that any driver’s license found left 
behind on the street is assumed to 
be a piece of fraudulent government 
documentation. 
Fake IDs have become almost 
synonymous with college life since 
the legal drinking age was raised to 
21 from 18 with the passage of the 

National Minimum Drinking Act in 
1984. The law was a bizarre quid-pro-
quo that withheld federal funding 
for highways from states unless 
they raised the drinking age, meant 
to circumvent a provision in the 
21st Amendment that prohibits the 
federal government from regulating 
alcohol. Four years after the National 
Minimum Drinking Age was passed, 
all states were compliant and 21 was 
the de-facto federal age.
Suddenly, 21 became the most 
important — and in my opinion, most 
arbitrary — social division on college 
campuses. Perhaps in recognition of 
how meaningless the divide really 
was, students almost immediately 
began trying to circumvent it with 
fake IDs. Utter disregard for the 
law became the norm. In one study 
published in 1996, 46% of college 
students admitted to using a fake ID 
to purchase alcohol.
For the most part, obtaining a 
fake ID is low risk and high reward. 
Minors can effectively purchase 
unlimited access to alcohol, weed or 
any other illicit substance. And it’s 
currently easier than ever to get high-
quality “novelty IDs” online, usually 
produced in China, that can be 
swiped and scanned. Sure, there’s the 
small risk of it getting confiscated by 
the bouncer at Charley’s, but chances 
are you’ll make it past him just fine.
Still, using a fake doesn’t come 
entirely 
without 
risk. 
Under 
Michigan 
law, 
it’s 
illegal 
to 
“intentionally 
reproduce, 
alter, 
counterfeit, forge, or duplicate an 
official state identification card or use 
an official state identification card 
that has been reproduced, altered, 
counterfeited, forged or duplicated.”
And using a fake ID to “purchase 
alcoholic liquor” is punishable by 
up to 93 days in prison and a $100 
fine. Students have been arrested 
for 
possession 
of 
fraudulent 
identification before, often when 
police officers are waiting near the 
lines going into popular bars. In 
2010, immigration agents arrested 
2 U-M students and 1 MSU student 
after intercepting a package with 

48 fake IDs arriving from Toronto. 
Regardless, it still seems like many 
illicit 
transactions 
do 
proceed 
everyday and uninterrupted, as 
students hand their ID to the cashier 
at Campus Corner, perhaps verifying 
their “address” or “date of birth,” and 
go on their way. 
Fake IDs are so common that it 
can be easy to forget the insanity 
of the concept: Minors have the 
opportunity to significantly improve 
their social lives and overall college 
experiences by committing federal 
crimes on a weekly basis. This isn’t 
to say underage drinking is bad or 
that people should boycott fake 
IDs; I actually personally support 
the lowering of the drinking age. 
Rather, I’d argue that this fake ID 
phenomenon that’s accompanied by 
ample, even grave risk is too often 
taken at face value. 
If you don’t have a fake ID, there’s 
a good chance one of your friends 
does. One could go as far to say that 
the never-ending stream of parties, 
tailgates and smoke sessions that 
are so integral to campus life stand 
entirely on an informal network of 
fraudulent identities. And I think 
it’s time to confront this network for 
all it’s worth and all it does for this 
campus community.
These are the real fake IDs of the 
University of Michigan.
***
“I thought I was totally screwed 
and lost everybody’s money. I was 
freaking out,” a Ross sophomore 
explained. The student, who wished 
to remain anonymous due to fear of 
legal and professional repercussions, 
will be referred to as Eric.
Eric had placed a mass order 
of 14 fake IDs for himself and 
fellow Michigan students. He had 
meticulously 
tracked 
everyone’s 
information in a spreadsheet and, 
together, 
their 
false 
personas 
spanned the entire country — he had 
ordered “novelty IDs” from Illinois, 
Connecticut and Colorado, among 
other states. 

The real fake IDs of UMich

HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Correspondent 

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

