The Tartan

Articles featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.

It’s been a fun ride, y’all. This week, our duo of dynamic duo Editors-in-Chief and Publishers have broken the anonymity of the Editorial Board to speak under their own names about their experience writing for The Tartan. After the publication of this issue, the cruel wheel of time will grind forward and providence shall whisk away these four stalwart members of The Tartan to adventures grand and unknown; their duties and privileges will pass forward to the next generation of newspaper kids, and the printing shall press on.

As for me, Ed Board, I am entering a solemn and indefinite retirement from this role. I am not at liberty to talk about my next project, but know that I shall miss the days of anonymously writing opinions on behalf of the Tartan Board. Am I one person? Am I three kids in a trench coat? Am I a cutting-edge Large Language Model?Whatever I am, the next Ed Board is sure to wrinkle your brains and tickle your hearts every week, all the same. Remember not to fear endings because impermanence is what makes moments beautiful. Peace.
-Will Curvan, Former Forum Editor

I graduated high school wishing I had gotten involved with the newspaper, so when I came to college I immediately wanted to join The Tartan. I remember sitting in Doherty waiting for Biology recitation to start and filling out this Google form on The Tartan’s old website and not hearing back at all (I now understand how easy it is for links to get lost in our Tartan universe). Eventually, I got myself to a meeting, where I met Frank, the old Editor-in- Chief, and Jen, who was also a first-year but somehow already an editor. That was intimidating, but she helped me figure out how to write something I was excited about — the new Abba album. I looked at old examples of Forum articles — and lo and behold — wrote my first music review.

I don’t remember when I moved from sporadically writing and attending meetings to editing for pillbox. According to my inbox, I actually rejected a nomination for “PillBox editor” (who did I think I was?) in 2022, but I began doing layout with Zach, who was the co-editor that year, in November.

As a sidebar, I met Zach during the first week of college when I decided to try out Astronomy Club. Neither of us were very interested in the telescopes. I found out from talking to him that he was the only person I had ever met at that point who had read my favorite childhood book series, “The Secret Series” by Pseudonymous Bosch.

I continued to edit for pillbox as a legitimately elected editor for two more semesters with help from Sahaana and Zach. I fell in love with layout. My mom, a graphic designer, used to work on InDesign on our home computer when I was really young. Working on pillbox felt like speaking a language spoken to me at birth, and, as a STEM major, having the artistic outlet meant so much to me.

When my MCS first-year orientation class asked me to predict what I’d do in college in a letter to my graduating self, I wrote that I thought I would become Editor-in-Chief of The Tartan. I feel so grateful that I got to actually do this, with the encouragement of former Editor-in-Chief Cole Skuse, and alongside Sophia and then Zach. These people have taught me so much about what it means to write, to do right by others, to lead with humor, to be a citizen

of the university and the world. I am not sad to be done with my work at The Tartan because I know I got so many things out of it, and I just feel lucky for that. I will end with a few of these things: an interview with one of my favorite music artists, nights spent watching movies with the funniest people I’ve ever met, my best friend Will, the wisdom and discernment to say, “We can’t publish that,” and the ability to write 1000 words in an hour.
-Anna Cappella, Former Editor-in-Chief

I never wrote for my high school newspaper, never felt the urge to do so, and don’t even like writing. I only joined The Tartan because I had nothing going on in my life and wanted to write about how phony the Tony awards are. I’m not a big theater guy (though we have some great theater guys at The Tartan), but the gist of the article was going to be that there are like 60 different nomination slots, but only like 40 possible plays or musicals that can even be nominated each year, so it’s not even impressive to be nominated for a Tony! This idea would instead be the first body in my mausoleum of unwritten articles, in illustrious company with the article about that time the old Jewish fraternity got into a street brawl with some Asian organization and nunchucks got involved, and an interview with the worstfish chess bot guy. I proposed this to the pillbox editor at the time and interviewed a theater critic for the piece, but then the editor quit and I didn’t have anyone to edit it and instead we ran a six- page article in pillbox that week because we had basically no content, which was true for many weeks at that time. For example, four-fifths of the Nov. 1, 2021 issue of pillbox were written by either me or Zivan Vasquez (one of the funniest people to ever write for The Tartan). This was a time of giants, near-mythological figures that seemed really old and imposing to me because I was 17. They’ve all graduated now.

I prefer writing humor articles over all others, and I’ve always endeavored to only write stuff that I would want to read had I not written them. I only became the pillbox (née PILLBOX) editor because I selfishly wanted more people to write exactly what I wanted. Instead, I just started writing less. I worry sometimes that Carnegie Mellon students are writing a historically small amount of funny stuff, but I don’t think that’s true. As an editor wrote in September 1923 in “Puppet,” “We’re down on our hands and knees yelping, whining, squirming and hissing for support. … We’re begging you to write down that funny, original thing your room-mate sprung.” So maybe it’s always been like this.

The Tartan hasn’t made me a better writer, but it has made me a different writer. I used to write multiple articles a week for the paper, and even had the gall of trying to get people to read them. My freshman year, I wrote too many articles and bombed my first Intro to Film Studies paper because I wrote it with the same mentality I was using to write my review of “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” a cover album of “The Velvet Underground And Nico.” (Like the seminal album, not many people read my article. The similarities end there.) Now I write almost no articles and am about to bomb my history thesis for reasons entirely within my control. But in between these two disastrous events, I got to work with and become great friends with some incredible people that I might never have met otherwise. I don’t want to shout any of them out in case I miss someone and they feel left out, so I just hope that they know how meaningful this all was to me.
-Zachary Gelman, Former Editor-in-Chief

My first impression of The Tartan was skepticism. Having worked on my high school newspaper and literary magazine, I was excited to join a group of lively, inquisitive journalists. I scrolled on the CMU Class of 2025 Facebook page and noticed The Tartan was holding an interest meeting. So, on a hot Monday in August, I walked into The Tartan Office beaming with enthusiasm.

Sitting down at the large oval table, I waited uncomfortably for someone to start talking. These did not seem like the college journalists I had imagined. Quiet and mild-mannered, two or three students who seemed to stumble into the office began to speak. Our former Editor- in-Chief Frank Hu opened the meeting in his trademark soft, almost nonchalant, cadence. He explained how, despite the hours, stress, and effort a newspaper requires, The Tartan had become a really meaningful place for him. Membership had dwindled during COVID-19, leaving only a few students to manage the life and legacy of the one student newspaper on campus. Frank desperately wanted to keep The Tartan afloat, emphasizing the newspaper’s history and significance of college reporting: being a student voice, an archival record, a vehicle of expression.

At the end of the meeting, Frank mentioned there were several editorial vacancies he wished to fill. One of these vacancies was The Tartan’s opinion section, Forum. I was immediately hooked. I saw opinion writing as a window into the university and was entranced by the idea of learning layout, pitching articles, and meeting other writers. A perhaps overeager first-year, I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity Carnegie Mellon had to offer.

I loved to write, but more than anything I loved to edit — constantly searching for friends’ essays, fiction, and poetry to take a look at. The Tartan, a small but mighty bunch, seemed like the perfect place to make an impact doing what I loved. Any fear about my age, lack of design experience, and, frankly, the languid energy of an organization fragmented by COVID disappeared as I jumped at the chance to be an editor.

This might have been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Desperate for members, Frank took me on as a complete novice. He introduced me to the former Forum editor, who gave me a crash course on editing The Tartan. At my first production meeting (where we layout and edit the newspaper), the small group held my hand as I learned how to copy edit and lay out pages in InDesign. I became quickly enmeshed in all things Tartan.

There are few times in my life where I learned as much as I did that first semester as Forum editor. Along the way, I met incredible writers and editors who made The Tartan feel like a very strange, very special kind of family. I found my voice starting “Novel-tea” where I’ve been able to continually express my incessant love of books. I even nurtured a passion for design that I never suspected lay within me.

Transitioning to Publisher in my sophomore year, I saw a whole new side of The Tartan. From recruiting and budgeting, to hiring our lovely Chief Technology Officers, to event planning, helping The Tartan be the best newspaper it can be has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done at Carnegie Mellon. When I decided to study abroad, The Tartan was especially hard to leave behind. Hailey Cohen, my incredible co-publisher, was the answer to my prayers. It is thanks to her willingness to take on this responsibility (as well as her admirable organizational skills) that I was confident in taking a hiatus.

As a team, the two of us (plus the amazing editors-in- chief we have worked with over the past few years — shoutout to Cole Skuse, Sophia Levin, Anna Cappella, and Zachary Gelman) have been able to take on projects I never would have thought possible when I entered The Tartan office for that first meeting. I am confident that Hailey, Anna, Zach, and I are leaving The Tartan much better than we found it.

I want to send a huge thank you to all the incredible people I have worked with over the past four years and, of course, to our readers! I have no doubt that we’re leaving you in good hands.
-Jennifer Bortner, Former Publisher

In high school, I was the editor-in-chief of my high school’s “newspaper,” which deteriorated into a very wishy- washy publication after COVID. I hadalotoffuninthisrolebutit was not very serious, and coming to college I knew I wanted to delve deeper into the world of student journalism.

I went to my first Tartan meeting at the beginning of January in my freshman year. I don’t remember much from that meeting but I do remember my first article for The Tartan. It was a pillbox article about the annual Carnegie Mellon Soup Crawl. This article was so much fun and I loved that I could write about the silly things I liked around campus and The Tartan would publish them! What a great and fun organization, I thought.

I continued to write articles that semester, and every time I loved both the process of writing and the pride that I felt when I saw my name in print. Returning in the fall for my sophomore year, I went to my first Sunday production and copy edited. I remember exclaiming, “This is fun!” while proofreading, because I was truly having a good time. I had always had a penchant for proofreading and I loved getting a sneak peek at the paper before it was published.

Little did I know at the time, that simple sentence led to former Editor-in-Chief Cole Skuse asking me in the next week if I wanted to fill the vacant Lead Copy Editor role with now-Editor-in-Chief Arden Ryan. Of course I accepted, and while that role was very time consuming, I am very happy that it gave me the chance to learn more about what it means to put together a newspaper. It was this experience that fully drew me into The Tartan. I found it to be a little refuge from the typical STEM-ness of the rest of Carnegie Mellon, which I appreciated as a history major.

At the end of that semester, I ran for Publisher with Jen. I immensely enjoyed my experience in this role. I’ve learned so much about writing from The Tartan but even more than that, it has given me opportunities to work with some of the funniest and kindest people I’ve ever met. I’m eternally grateful for all that this newspaper has given me, including a press seat at a Kamala Harris event, the confidence to make business decisions, and a guaranteed home to go back to on campus every Sunday.
-Hailey Cohen, Former Publisher