The Phillipian

''The Phillipian'' is the student-run weekly newspaper of the American preparatory school of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. It covers school news including controversies, campus events, sports, faculty appointments, graduations, and academic programs, and it serves as a training ground for students to learn about journalism. Many of its student contributors have gone on to careers in journalism and the media. The publication aims to foster a literary and journalistic spirit among its student contributors. It is regarded as the oldest preparatory newspaper in the country and is in its th year of continuous publication. It publishes a digital version as well as archives of past papers, and publishes on various social media platforms. The paper edition is printed weekly during the school year, and there is a summer edition as well. The publication gets revenue from an endowment fund as well as advertising revenues from local businesses, and students run the paper as a business. While the paper has faculty advisers, all editorial decisions are made by student editors, and it is editorially independent from the academy's administration. In 2017 the printed version is 12–16 pages long and has five regular sections: news, commentary, sports, arts and features, and is distributed every Friday.

History

Beginnings

The first edition of ''The Phillipian'' was published on July 28, 1857, making it the oldest preparatory school newspaper in America.Frank Decker and Al Krass, March 11, 1954, ''The Phillipian''
Investigators Find That Phillipian Is 96, Years Old: Discovery Shows Phillipian is 96 Years Old
Retrieved December 10, 2017 The initial motto was '' Justitia fiat ruat caelum'', a Latin phrase meaning "Let justice be done though the heavens fall"; later the motto became ''Veritas super omnia'' or "Truth above all".

In the decades after 1857, there is no evidence of publication until October 19, 1878, when ''The Phillipian'' began regular publication, making it the second-oldest continuously published preparatory school paper.Note: Exeter's ''The Exonian'' is the oldest ''continuously published'' preparatory school paper.Note: Despite being the second published issue of ''The Phillipian'', this issue was also labeled as Volume 1, Number 1; as a result, there are two unique Volume 1, Number 1 issues of ''The Phillipian''. The first masthead listed editor-in-chief Edward S. Beach and nine associates.

In the 1880s, the paper covered issues such as disputes between students and the town of Andover, usually siding with the students, and covered the ongoing rivalry with Exeter and its paper.Claude Moore Fuess, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, 547 pages
An Old New England School: A History of Phillips Academy Andover
Retrieved December 10, 2017 It described initiation rites of Andover's secret societies:

Andover's secret societies had become recognized by the school, as the paper reported in 1884.Claude Moore Fuess, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, 547 pages

Retrieved December 10, 2017, p. 442

Early years

Sports coverage was important in these early years, and reporting was generally skewed in Andover's favor. Claude Moore Feuss, a former head of School (then called headmaster) who published a history of the academy, described the Phillipian's coverage of rival teams as "ungenerous to opponents".Claude Moore Fuess, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, 547 pages,

', Retrieved December 10, 2017, p. 458 The paper described the pitching of student baseball pitcher Alfred Stearns as follows:

Stearns was a ''Phillipian'' editor who later became headmaster.Claude Moore Fuess, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, 547 pages,

', Retrieved December 10, 2017, p. 505 In 1885, an editorial advocated against hiring a local professional baseball pitcher to help Andover's baseball team win against the town; it was a matter of "school honesty and honor", wrote the student.Claude Moore Fuess, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, 547 pages,

', Retrieved December 10, 2017, p. 457 The paper sometimes urged students to have greater participation in sports:

''The Phillipian'' touted the scholarship of the school's athletes, reporting that athletics and scholarship were not mutually antagonistic as had been commonly thought, but that "football is an intellectual game, not merely a test of physical strength, and that the active scholarship rule is favorable not only to scholarship, but also to football success."Texas School Journal, Texas Educational Journal Publishing Company, 1898, Volumes 16-17,
Texas School Journal
', p. 242

Twentieth century

The paper's length was typically four pages, although at one point it expanded to eight pages, but was scaled back. In the early 1900s, page size was increased.Claude Moore Fuess, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, 547 pages,

', Retrieved December 10, 2017, p. 439 From 1907 to 1917, a committee of faculty members supervised the publication nominally, by approving the selection of student editors.

In 1974, following the merger of Abbot Academy and Phillips Academy, the paper's offices were located at Evans Hall. One privilege of working on ''The Phillipian'' during those days was being allowed to stay out late on Wednesday nights:

Endowment Campaign

In 2013, ''The Phillipian'' launched a campaign to establish an endowment to stabilize the publication's finances. The one-year campaign was spearheaded by twenty-one Phillipian alumni including journalist Gary Lee and Microsoft intellectual property counsel Thomas Rubin. More than six hundred contributors raised $654,000.Staff reporters, ''The Phillipian'', 2015
The Phillipian Concludes Endowment Campaign
Retrieved December 10, 2017, "...The paper’s independence has always been guaranteed by precedent, by the school respecting that the paper is uncensored and unsupervised, and by the paper’s ability to support itself as a business. ... endowment will secure the future of that independence ... a truly free press is an extraordinary place ...." The mission was to secure financial independence of the paper. In 2015, ''The Phillipian'' discontinued on-campus paid subscriptions and publishes to students and faculty without charge.

A forum for controversy

The publication often allows students to air their views in a public forum. Editorials, op-ed pieces, and letters to the editor have sometimes stirred campus-wide debate.

In 2003, a student and ''Phillipian'' columnist criticized the school for its lack of appropriate mental health services, after she had difficulty during her Andover years of adjusting to a romantic breakup.Michael Winerip, July 9, 2003, The New York Times

Retrieved December 13, 2017, "...''My boyfriend and I declared each other as our first loves,'' she wrote in one of her final columns for The Phillipian. ''We had a rocky relationship, ... once she was sure to graduate, Cathy told her story in a three-part series in The Phillipian. She wrote that the way the school had treated her would discourage students who needed help from seeking counseling... School officials wrote letters to The Phillipian criticizing Cathy's series,..." She asserted that the school's negative attitude towards students who needed counseling might discourage students from seeking help. In 2013, a letter to the editor expressed concern regarding gender equity; the writer complained that in a school in which over half of the faculty were women, that since 1973, women were chosen to be school president only four times. The writer added that from 1973 to 2013, there were only nine female editors of ''The Phillipian'' as opposed to thirty-three male editors.Katharine Q. Seelye, April 11, 2013, The New York Times
School Vote Stirs Debate on Girls as Leaders
Retrieved December 10, 2017, "...The paucity of girls in high-profile positions ... leaves younger students with few role models and discourages them from even trying for the top...."Katherine Schulten, April 17, 2013, The New York Times
Why Aren’t There More Girls in Leadership Roles?
Retrieved December 11, 2017, "... several weeks ago in a letter to the student newspaper, The Phillipian, ... set off a raging debate that engulfed the campus..." In 2015, male athletes wrote a letter to the editor complaining how the male athlete sports-oriented culture was an indirect cause of sexism and led to an unbalanced "hook-up culture" at the school.Julie Sprankles, July 12, 2017, ''She Knows'' magazine,
15 Male Athletes Who Are Proactively Fighting for Gender Equality
, Retrieved December 11, 2017, "...the male athletes at this elite boarding school penned an unprecedented Letter to the Editor of the school newspaper, the Phillipian. ..."

Sometimes refusing to publish a point of view has caused controversy. For example, Marie Sapienza claimed that her English teacher had fondled her when she had been a 15-year-old at the school; later, when she was in college, she tried to publish a letter in the paper about the alleged assault, but was rebuffed.Bill Kirk, August 2017, ''Lawrence Eagle-Tribune'',

Garabedian claims report is 'tip of the iceberg' of abuse cases], Retrieved December 11, 2017,"... Sapienza tried to report the alleged assault but was rebuffed..."

Since ''The Phillipian'' publishes its archives, it has been a source of public information regarding disputes in the larger political sphere. For example, the paper was a source of news about whether Republican politician Jeb Bush had been a socialist during his student years at Andover.May 28, 2015, Andrew Kaczynski, Christopher Massie, Buzzfeed,
Was Jeb Bush A Socialist At Andover? One Student Newspaper Article Says He Was. But some students from the era say it was probably a joke that Bush was in such a club. A prep school mystery.
, Retrieved December 11, 2017, "...According to Andover's ... The Phillipian, Jeb Bush once attempted to get his political group "the Socialist Anti-Nationalist Party" into the Andover Student Political Union ... a sarcastic joke..."

The publishing process

Generally each springtime, outgoing student editors choose the next batch of editors for the following year. Editorial meetings take place in a basement room in Morse Hall. According to a report in '' Town & Country'' magazine, there is no censorship of ''The Phillipian''.RICHARD MCGILL MURPHY, July 7, 2015, Town and Country Magazine
How John Palfrey Is Bringing America's Most Elite Boarding School Into the Digital Age: For centuries Andover was considered the ne plus ultra of elitist, insular boarding schools. Now, with a young iconoclast at the helm, it has become an institution that would shock its 18th-century founders.
Retrieved December 11, 2017, "...There is no censorship at Andover, so Phillipian editors are free to print what they like....two faculty advisers attend editorial meetings, where they critique the most recent edition of the paper ... Rates of drinking, drugging, and sexual activity seem to track the general teenage population, according to the annual student survey published in the Phillipian...." While there may be no formal censorship, there have been some rules and restrictions; for example, a report in 2011 said that student editors were discouraged from contacting the school's trustees, and that trustees were asked by the administration not to speak to student reporters.Jack Dickey, August 12, 2011, Deadspin
The Hidden Message Of That Andover Rap Video
Retrieved December 14, 2017, "... When I worked at The Phillipian, the director of communications decreed that we were not allowed to contact trustees, even though some had listed numbers and would answer questions from reporters. Trustees were later told not to speak to us. ..." In 2017, the paper has a policy of censoring out the names of student writers, possibly as a way of shielding their identities on the Internet. At editorial meetings, there are two faculty advisers who critique last week's paper and offer suggestions for improvement. Academy instructor Thomas T. Lyons, who believed that "teachers shouldn't be dull", served as an adviser for several decades in the latter half of the twentieth century.Boston Globe, November 11, 2012
Thomas T. Lyons, 78; memorable history teacher at Phillips Academy
Retrieved December 10, 2017, "...Mr. Lyons, who spent 36 years at Phillips Academy as a teacher, coach, and adviser to the student newspaper, The Phillipian,..." In addition, ''The Phillipian'' serves as a reference for the school. It publishes an annual survey of students and student life.

Honors and awards

* 2012 National Scholastic Press Association Newspaper Pacemaker AwardStudent Press

* 2015 Kailash Sundaram, ''The Price of an Andover Education: Three Students’ Difficult Transitions to Andover''
* 2015 Opinion: David Shin, ''On Discussions and Diversity''
* 2015 Reporter of the Year: Kailash Sundaram, ''The Price of an Andover Education: Three Students’ Difficult Transitions to Andover''
* 2015 Design Infographic: Jamie Chen

Notable alumni

* Chris Agee, poet, essayist and editor (graduated 1974)
* Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist at ''Newsweek'' (graduated 1975)
* H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of '' Friday Night Lights'' (graduated 1972)
* Susan Chira, assistant managing editor for news of ''The New York Times'' (graduated 1976)
* Jonathan Dee, author (graduated 1980)
* Charles Finch, author (graduated 1998)
* Bart Giamatti, president of Yale and baseball commissioner (graduated 1956)Robert P. Moncreiff, Yale University Press, Oct 1, 2008, Book title: Bart Giamatti: A Profile, p. 15
* Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and former editor-in-chief of ''The New Republic'' (graduated 2002)JONATHAN MAHLER and RAVI SOMAIYA, December 7, 2014, The New York Times
Revolt at the New New Republic
Retrieved December 11, 2017, "... Mr. Hughes left Facebook in 2007 ...at Andover, he was news director of The Phillipian...."
* Victor Kiam, former owner of the New England Patriots (graduated 1944)
* Gary Lee, award-winning journalist for ''The Washington Post'' and ''TIME'' (graduated 1974)
* Seth Moulton, U.S. Representative (MA-6) and Iraq War veteran (graduated 1997)MICHAEL KRUSE, July 28, 2017, Politico
Generals Love Him. Top Democrats Despise Him. Can He Be President Anyway? Seth Moulton, the junior congressman from Massachusetts, has a war record that appeals to voters and makes opponents nervous
Retrieved December 11, 2017, "...Andover, where the motto is non sibi, or not for self, Moulton was one of two sports editors for the weekly student newspaper, the Phillipian. He worked late on nights before it went to print, when his peers were ready to go study or sleep..."
* Gerard Piel, publisher of the new ''Scientific American'' magazine (graduated 1933)
* Daniel Schwerin, main speechwriter for Hillary Clinton (graduated 2000)
* Joshua Steiner, Head of Industry Verticals at Bloomberg LP (graduated 1983)

''Phillipian'' writers have had careers in publications including ''The New York Times'', ''USA Today'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The Chicago Tribune'', ''The Boston Globe'', ''The New Yorker'' and ''Time''.

See also

* The Phillips Academy Poll
* The Revere
*The Exonian
* The Lawrence

References

External links

The Phillipian Online

The Phillipian Archives

The Phillipian CXXXVII
YouTube video promoting ''The Phillipian'' 2014

2015 Phillipian trip to New York City
YouTube video summary of visit to New York Times, 9/11 memorial, ABC News

2014 Phillipian trip to New York City

{{DEFAULTSORT:Phillipian
Student newspapers published in Massachusetts
Phillips Academy
High school newspapers published in the United States