OPINION: The Pre-Professional Journalism Program is Fake

Camryn Sanchez ’21

Sarah Lawrence College claims on its website that it is the “ideal place for students interested in journalism.” It is not.

I have actively wrestled with the college for three years to get the education I need as a journalism student. This semester, Sarah Lawrence has stopped offering journalism classes altogether.

Our pre-professional journalism program is one of four such programs offered at Sarah Lawrence College, the others being pre-education, pre-health, and pre-law.

The pre-health track has its own dean, advisor, student alliance (with a student board), pre-health advisory group, blog, speaker program, workshop, homepage on MySLC and a new weekly newsletter. “There are a cluster of courses that pre-health students need to take, so you naturally build a community around those courses,” said Associate Dean of Studies for Pre-Professional Advising Melinda Perlo Cohen.  

Similarly, the pre-education track is related to a number of dedicated on-campus initiatives like the Art of Teaching Program, the Early Childhood Center, the Art of Teaching film series and the Child Development Institute, which all do appear to exist according to MySLC and the college website. 

Journalism professor Marek Fuchs holds the title the Executive Director of the “Investigative Journalism and Justice Institute” at Sarah Lawrence College, which is not referenced anywhere on MySLC. It only exists on the college website, as a part of Fuchs’ title. 

Compared to other colleges’ journalism programs–and even to other Sarah Lawrence pre-professional programs–the Sarah Lawrence pre-professional journalism program is desperately lacking. It lacks classes, professors, resources, campus spaces, a graduate program, a dean and sufficient workshops. 

In my sophomore year, I petitioned journalism professors Fuchs and Sally Herships––and registrar Daniel Licht––for permission to take two journalism classes in the same semester.

A registration policy prohibits students from taking more than one non-fiction writing course––which encompasses journalism courses––at a time. I was only able to join Herships’s class weeks later when another student dropped out, and I struggled to catch up.

In my junior year, I had already taken every available journalism course offered (which were the same as those I had taken in sophomore year), and I resorted to using a magazine internship in place of a class as my journalism education. 

This year, I gave up. 

“If you want to take journalism classes, you're probably better off at a different school this semester,” Fuchs said. I took that advice.

Currently, I am a visiting student at a different university, which offers dozens upon dozens of journalism courses on topics ranging from war reporting to media law to television journalism. Topics which have never been offered during my time at Sarah Lawrence College. I am not writing to convince other students to transfer to other schools, but I am asking for Sarah Lawrence College to advertise what really exists. 

“That inconsistency of what is being advertised and what exists –– it feels to a certain extent dishonest,” said Phoenix Co-Editor-in-Chief Anna Mitchell.

Sarah Lawrence’s website recommends journalism students take: “What’s the Story? A Radio Journalism Class,” “Wrongly Accused,” and “A Question of Character: The Art of the Profile.” None of these classes are currently offered. 

“What’s the Story? A Radio Journalism Class” was last taught in 2019 by Herships, who told me: “I haven’t taught at SLC in a bit and don’t have plans at the moment to return.” 

An application for the pre-professional journalism program is supposed to be accessible through Career Services. However, director Angela Cherubini says that students should actually “reach out directly to Marek Fuchs” for the application.

“It's not an application process. People just contact me,” Fuchs told me. When I asked him if I was a part of this program, he told me he does not know. I still do not know either.

Fuchs has taught journalism classes like Wrongfully Accused in the past, but this year only teaches one class, a First Year Seminar. Wrongfully Accused –– a course partially taught in prison with SLC students and people who are incarcerated –– could not adapt to Covid-19 regulations. Fuchs says that the pre-professional journalism program mostly consists of occasional journalism speaker events, which are not exclusive to participating students.

Fuchs says that Sarah Lawrence forces journalism students to take classes in other disciplines and to learn how best to think and ask questions. “In a different journalism track you learn form probably better than you would [at Sarah Lawrence], but that’s all stuff that you could learn on the job,” says Fuchs.

Unfortunately for journalism students at Sarah Lawrence, this is information that undergraduate students at other schools with more intensive journalism programs have already been taught and will not have to learn on the job.

As much as I have enjoyed taking classes on art history, economics, or German film and literature at Sarah Lawrence, my peers at other colleges spent that time learning journalism. Learning writing through other classes at Sarah Lawrence is not the same as learning journalism. 

“The distinction between being a good writer and being a good reporter is huge, and that I think is the difference between a good academic program and a good pre-professional program,” said Sarah Lawrence alumna and journalist Kate Bakhtiyarova. She believes that Sarah Lawrence College has an outdated view on journalism. 

“If you don’t get lucky with that two or one class that may be offered, I really don’t know how that is supposed to be provided,” said Bakhtiyarova, “If the Phoenix that year isn’t really functional or if you aren’t able to land a job that really helps you… It’s not structured and it by no means would I say is a perfect choice.”

In contrast, the pre-health professional program effectively connects students to the workforce. Although the program consists of a group of classes, it is more than academic preparation. Cohen said: “It’s also the developing of the pre-professional portfolio which is a combination of academic preparation, co-curricular and extracurricular experiences and activities. Development of relationships with faculty, administrators, supervisors, PIs [principal investigators], etc. that will help to support that applicant along their path and may result in the writing of letters of recommendation.”

The pre-professional journalism does nothing to develop these other non-academic aspects of a pre-professional portfolio.

The Sarah Lawrence College website lists three notable journalism alumni: Natasha Rodriguez ’16, Francesca Carter ’15 and Lauren McKarus ’15. All three received graduate degrees from other universities.

Many famous journalists ––like Walter Cronkite, Christian Amanpour, and even Bob Woodward, to name a few –– never attended graduate school. Yet journalism students at Sarah Lawrence consistently pursue higher education elsewhere before they feel prepared for work in their field. Phoenix editors Amali Gordon-Buxbaum and Anna Mitchell as well as myself have all studied journalism abroad. I personally have taken classes at three other universities up to this point. 

Bakhtiyarova also received a master’s degree at Columbia journalism school immediately after graduating Sarah Lawrence. “It is a privilege to be able to get a masters degree at a very expensive institution if you are not arbitrarily lucky enough to be given the financial support to do it. What I received from Columbia is a network of connections” she said, adding that she did not feel she had similar connections through Sarah Lawrence. “I did not receive a single internship through the career office. I found every job that I had completely on my own, whereas with Columbia I have access to a database full of hundreds of jobs that want Columbia alumni, and all the information is provided at career services at that institution.”

Do not let the Barbara Walters Campus Center –– and its shrine to one of the most famous journalists of all time –– fool you into believing that the college is actually dedicated to supporting aspiring journalists.