The Power of the Student Press

Uncategorized, Worcester State Magazine - 150th Anniversary

May 30, 2025

AUTHOR:

From mustache bans to Fleetwood Mac, newly digitized newspapers shed light on Worcester State across generations.

By Natalie Boutiette ’25

For a brief time in the 1960s, mustaches were banned at Worcester State. In 1970, a little-known band called Fleetwood Mac performed in Sullivan Auditorium.

Both of these details are gleaned from the new digitization of Worcester State’s student-led newspapers. As the university marks its 150th anniversary this year, this newspaper archive is available to all at libguides.worcester.edu/archives/newspapers. Led by university archivist Ross Griffiths, the digitization project was made possible by Worcester State’s membership in Digital Commonwealth, a nonprofit managed by the Boston Public Library.

Newspapers exist to inform audiences, and, in the process, they create community and a collective memory. They also preserve history. Founded in 1874 as a commuter school, Worcester State at first struggled to foster a sense of community, Griffiths said. Starting in 1942, the first student-led newspaper, The Acorn, became a resource for students to learn about upcoming club and organization happenings. The Acorn, in other words, helped campus life emerge at Worcester State.

The Acorn and its successor publications also offered professional experience and bonding opportunities as student journalists raced to meet deadlines in the newsroom. “It was as serious a newspaper as the Telegram & Gazette, with students tracking down sources and meeting tight deadlines,” Griffiths said.

Today, the papers offer a retrospective look at student life. For example, the mustaches: They were banned because the administration was worried about Worcester State being associated with hippies. And the Fleetwood Mac performance? The paper reported that the 1970 Winter Carnival would feature Fleetwood Mac, Butterfield Blues Band, and Mountain, noting that “Butterfield is the better known of the three groups.” It’s an interesting reflection for today’s reader: Fleetwood Mac became one of the most popular bands of the 1970s.

Browsing the digital archive, today’s reader also learns about policy and cultural changes in higher education. Between 1967 and 1970, students protested for more independence on campuses nationwide. They wanted to be treated as adults. That’s reflected in The Acorn’s 1967 name change to The Student Voice. “The newspaper became adversarial with the administration,” said Griffiths. “Students fought to make campus more democratic.”

The Student Voice had a long and successful run—through the 2012-13 academic year, when it published its last edition. A year earlier, student journalism at Worcester State had joined the digital age with the online news and literary magazine the New Worcester Spy.

Published for more than a decade, the New Worcester Spy became dormant at the end of the 2022-23 academic year. Its faculty advisor, Associate Professor of English Cleve Wiese, said, “There’s always rising and falling engagement” in student groups. But in this case, the digital paper reemerged soon after as the Wormtown Herald, which is now thriving in its first year on campus.

Reporters from the Wormtown Herald took a recent field trip to meet Griffiths and explore the earlier student papers. “It was eye-opening to see the evolution of student-led publications over time,” said Associate Professor of English Jamie Remillard, who, with Wiese, is faculty co-director of the Wormtown Herald. Seeing the old papers informed the student journalists’ understanding of how the Wormtown Herald fits into the history of newspapers on campus. It also helped them understand how to create a publication that meets the needs of today’s students.

Today, the Wormtown Herald publishes at wormtownherald.com and on social media. When asked about the reality of shortened attention spans among modern readers, Remillard replied, “We can’t combat those challenges, but we can adapt to them. The fact we have student journalists on campus who are curious and care, and are willing to write journalism, is giving hope that students will feel compelled to read those stories despite short attention spans. Humans are social creatures who love narratives. That doesn’t change if it is an Instagram post or a feature story.”

The Wormtown Herald has provided editor in chief Dakota Gelinas ’25 with a sense of community. “I feel more involved as a commuter now, being a part of the paper, than I was as a resident,” she said.

While it was not a conscious choice for the start of the Wormtown Herald to coincide with Worcester State’s 150th, it’s an appropriate one. The Wormtown Herald marks the “beginning of a really golden age of newspapers on campus,” said Wiese. “It is the right time for a vibrant paper to take hold. There is a lot of energy on campus and people want to participate.”

Natalie Boutiette, a student writer in the communications office, graduates this May with a business degree in marketing and a minor in writing.

Voices Across the Decades

1942

1942
First Issue of The Acorn

The staff held a contest to name the newspaper and chose The Acorn. Its tagline: “Big oaks from little acorns grow.”

1952

1952
Predicting the Year 2000

A (presumably) satirical article anticipated cars that go 1,000 years on a “single charge of atomic energy” and “nutritional cigarettes” to replace meals.