“We haven’t been sleeping. We’ve forgotten to eat. We’ve been staring at screens for hours on end,” members of the paper explained in an editorial. “Our negligence of our mental health has started to impact our physical health, and it’s also affected our ability to produce the highest-quality content possible. There was a tension in the newsroom, a feeling that everyone was close to their breaking point.”
The semester has been “taxing,” the journalists said, noting that the shift to online meetings and the never ending stream of breaking news have taken their toll — all on top of the ongoing public health pandemic, a full course load and, in some cases, part time jobs.
“We hope this decision will set an example for other organizations and students in general: It is OK to not be OK. By refusing to accept our own limitations, we fail to actively participate in the habits we claim to prioritize,” they wrote.
The paper will return to a normal schedule on Nov. 2, they said.