Student Features

Breakout creator Natalie Vinh recruits journalism students to contribute features, photos and music reviews.

When COVID-19 hit Bellingham at the start of 2020, it wasn’t long before the community’s iconic music scene went silent. To the dismay of young local artists and DIY music-lovers alike, gone were the drunken walks to go sit or sway in a crowded living room covered in string lights and brimming with guitar riffs and drumbeats. But this fall, after vaccinated students started returning to Western Washington University, Bellingham saw not only the return of house shows and live music, but something else as well: music journalism.

I lift my head and slap at my phone, hoping to silence the incessant ringing of the 9:50 a.m. alarm. Eyes barely cracked, I reach over the side of my bed and pull up my laptop from where I left last night working on an assignment well past midnight.

Groggily, I click the link to join a Zoom meeting for my 10 o’clock class. I leave the camera off. I fall asleep again for the first ten minutes. 

It’s unlikely I’ll find a reason to leave bed before noon.

In a lush park in the middle of downtown Tunis, sisters Chahira, 21, and Nawres, 19, sat on a park bench. I held out my phone and pressed record as they began to share their experiences of being young people during Tunisia’s 2011 uprisings.

“There’s one memory that I couldn’t forget. A boy who was probably 15-16 years old set himself on fire in our school and died,” Chahira said. “I was twelve years old at the time and I remember that we didn’t go to school for almost two weeks because of that incident.”

Klipsun’s 50th anniversary spawned a unique opportunity for former and current staff to discuss their respective time as employees, what their generation stood for and what types of social issues they tackled with the magazine. 

The diverse mix of past and present staff members shared stories, lessons and laughs while looking over Klipsun issues from a number of generations during a celebration of Klipsun’s 50th birthday on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2019. 

For many young journalism students at Western, writing and editing for the Western Front is their very first time working for a newspaper. It can feel almost like a simulation, bouncing between sitting in a lecture hall, interviewing sources and communicating with editors on a daily basis. The Western Front tells the stories of the many living, breathing communities on Western’s campus, and like any long-standing news organizations, there is always room for improvement. 

On September 21, 2018, The Washington Coalition for Open Government (WCOG) awarded two Western journalism students Asia Fields and Erasmus Baxter with the Key Award. They were honored and recognized for reporting on the university’s handling of sexual harassment and sexual assault through utilizing Public Records Act.