The Milton Paper: Who Are We?
By TMP 44th Editorial Board
This past Monday, September 30, the Upper School Meeting included a response from Upper School Principal Mrs. Stone to The Milton Paper’s latest editorial, “Is the Milton Administration Over-Reaching?” which served as a critical assessment of the new Reach policy. We are always glad to see Milton’s administration take our words into account, and we appreciated watching more students interact with TMP as a result. However, the increased attention on us that day prompted us to assess our role as an editorial board. What does it mean o be independent, and how must we relate to the students and the administration? In other words, what is this paper’s purpose? Ultimately, we have settled on the following: TMP exists as a record of present-day Milton, designed to amplify student voices, provide opportunities for discussion, and present new understandings of this school, for students and administrators alike.
As any issue of the Paper will serve as a snapshot of the concerns of the student body at the time, we believe that this paper can act as a crucial tool for the administration to gauge sentiments among Milton students. Our editorial board, just eighteen students among over 700 in the Upper School, strives to represent the voices and conversations that are important to our peers, even if our particular opinion is not the dominant belief on campus. The news reporting, an amalgamation of the topics deemed important in any particular week, is a necessary tool for recording Milton’s history. TMP does not seek to incessantly criticize the administration, but instead to provide well-thought-out student perspectives on its decisions. Moreover, we contend that regardless of the divergence in our opinions, our goal is aligned with that of the administration: to advance the interests of Milton students. Thus, we urge the administration to continue to view us as a resource, and we intend to continue our mission of accurately representing the student body, both in our editorials and in our news coverage.
In addition to our attempts to affect change regarding the administration, TMP serves as a space for dialogue among students. The Paper is morethan a source of news; we also exist to spark discourse among the student body, to challenge our readers, and to provoke reflection on the kind of school we want to have and the kind of people we want to be. While both we and the Measure are student-run, we feel a responsibility to continue as the “people’s paper,” as we set out in an editorial last year. For this reason, we hope to write editorials that ignite discussion throughout campus and to use our opinion section as an opportunity to learn from varying perspectives. As we envision it, our purpose is to help you see this school differently, even if that means critiquing a phenomenon we notice within the student body or Milton itself. While this philosophy does not mean we will always take the anti-administration position, we do want to cover the issues that matter to our students. The Milton Paper is a paper by and for Milton students, intended to represent your concerns and you ideas. We rely on our student readers for direction, and our duty is nearly always to the students first.
To our readers: we are your paper, and we consider the responsibility of representing this school to be a deeply serious one. We are here to print what matters to you, but we cannot read your minds; we rely on your input in order to publish the articles that best speak to your Milton experience. Talk to us, write letters to the editor, discuss the articles that you read, and let us know where you believe we can be better. This relationship is reciprocal, and we earnestly hope to improve, whether as a town hall for student voices or as a method of communication to the administration. To become the Paper we strive for, though, we need you. Without your support or engagement, we are only words on paper.