Student journalists are covering their own campuses in convulsion. Here’s what they have to say

NEW YORK — Ordered by police to leave the scene of a UCLA campus protest after violence broke out, Catherine Hamilton and three colleagues from the Daily Bruin suddenly found themselves surrounded by demonstrators who beat, kicked and sprayed them with a noxious chemical. Here are some of the student publications referenced in this story: Columbia University’s Daily Columbia Spectator Northeastern University’s Huntington Daily News Ohio State University’s The Lantern UCLA’s Daily Bruin University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Daily Tar Heel Across the country from the University of California, Los Angeles late Tuesday, a student-run radio station broadcast live as police cleared a building taken by protesters on the Columbia University campus, while other student journalists were confined to dorms and threatened with arrests. In an editorial late last month, the students sharply condemned university President Minouche Shafik and said administrators have been uncommunicative except for “ominous late-night emails.” “This is your legacy,” the Spectator wrote — “a president more focused on the brand of your university than the safety of your students and their demands for justice.” UCLA professor Nick Shapiro speaks at a news conference on the UCLA campus, after nighttime clashes between Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian groups, Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Los Angeles. The Columbia-based Pulitzer Prize Board, meeting this weekend to decide on its annual prizes, issued a statement on Thursday recognizing “the tireless efforts of student journalists across our nation’s college campuses, who are covering protests and unrest in the face of great personal and academic risk.” At Columbia, whose journalism school is considered one of the country’s finest, Dean Jelani Cobb wrote a memo Wednesday to the population of budding journalists who are his students: “You are a part of history now. “This is a moment in our campus’ history,” said Arianna Smith, editor-in-chief of The Lantern at Ohio State University.