Student journalists are put to the test, and sometimes face danger, in covering protests on campus

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.

On American campuses awash in anger this spring, student journalists are in the center of it all, sometimes uncomfortably so. They’re immersed in the story in ways journalists for major media organizations often can’t be. And they face dual challenges — as members of the media and students at the institutions they are covering.

Across the country from 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.

Hamilton’s attackers wore masks. But she recognized the voice of one as a counter-demonstrator sympathetic to Israel’s cause because of prior reporting when some of them filmed her working and harassed her by name. She checked out of a hospital Wednesday after learning that injuries to her arms and chest were bruises.

“While it was terrifying and, honestly, will take a lot of mental processing, the experience confirmed for me the importance of student journalists because we know our campus better than any outside reporter would,” said Hamilton, 21. “It has not deterred me from wanting to continue this coverage.”

COVERAGE THAT IS UP CLOSE — AND PERSONAL

Fear and anger were obvious in the voices of students narrating the action on Columbia’s WKCR radio on Tuesday. The station’s website briefly went down because so many people were listening to an audio stream, and its announcers recommended people tune in to FM radio instead.

Even though he wore a badge identifying him as a member of the press, police ordered Chris Mandell and other reporters for the Columbia Daily Spectator into a dormitory. When he tried to open the door, Mandell said he was told he’d be arrested if he did it again.

Mandell has been covering the demonstrations and the planning for months. While he considers it a learning experience, he said “it has been breaking my heart” to see the police presence on campus and how the story has been covered by outside journalists.

The Daily Spectator has been on the story every step of the way and hasn’t hesitated to confront Columbia University’s leadership in print. 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.”

At campuses across the country, around-the-clock reporting from protests and student disciplinary hearings have meant overnight vigils at encampments blurring into morning classes, homework and final projects crammed in between interviews.

Student-run news websites at Yale and the University of Texas-Austin cover the action with innovative live blogs. The Daily Trojan’s print editions have stopped for the semester at the University of Southern California, but Editor-in-Chief Anjali Patel tries to keep a reporter and photographer available at all hours to feed its website, post news on X and Instagram and do live streams. All during final exam season.

“We are still students at the end of the day,” Patel said.