I still walk past the Gatehouse sometimes, 20 years later. Its arched windows and vestigial chimney still stand sentinel over the students who pass through its gently creaking doors, clicking their words onto screens late into the night. The sameness is somehow comforting.
The News-Letter emailed over 800 alumni to ask if they would be interested in contributing to this magazine issue. Many responded to simply say yes, they would, but David Hawk went above and beyond and replied with a 1350-word reflection about his time at the paper — before we even asked him to write anything! What follows is his email to us, edited only for length and clarity, to preserve its enthusiasm, thoughtfulness and beautifully impromptu nature.
As we celebrate The News-Letter’s 125th birthday, it seems crazy to think that we have been up and running since 1896 and that we have covered everything from the everyday shenanigans of Hopkins students to earth-shattering global events and movements that have impacted the present day. I went through the archives of The News-Letter’s website, which go back to 2001, to find some of the weirdest, most interesting and most important headlines covered by our predecessors. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and read what the Hopkins community has been up to over the past couple decades:
From 1980 to 1984, when I was very young and very thin and absolutely adorable if your vision was blurry, I wrote a silly humor column for The News-Letter. It was called Ham on Wry. I still don’t know why it was called Ham on Wry. That’s the name the paper’s scruffy editor came up with (hello, Andrew Hurley), and it stuck for four years through a couple more editors (hello, Steve Eisenberg). I probably should have asked one of them what the name of the column meant. They probably would have explained it to me if I’d asked.
I’ve always fancied myself a writer. That’s why I responded when The News-Letter called for more voices, urging, “If you want to say something, write it down, and bring it in” (Friday, Oct. 4, 1974). Congenitally unable to pay careful attention to directions and details, I anonymously sent my article by campus mail and included my campus box address. Russ Smith (A&S ’78), one of the Features Editors, soon paid a visit to Hollander House.
The dream is always the same. I’m writing a screenplay about a teenager fantasizing about his babysitter when my wife flings open the bedroom door. Writing is risky business. Or is it dreaming? I do more than my share of both, and The News-Letter, where I first let my imagination run wild on the printed page, must bear some of the blame.
When I began college in the fall of 1966, I wanted to do well in some extracurricular activities. I tried out for the football team and lasted two practices. Then I ran cross country during my first two years. I worked on the speech team for a year. I was involved in a campus community service program for three years.
It’s 1981, a few months after U2 released their debut album Boy. Perhaps the editors at The News-Letter knew a good joke when they saw one, so they assigned a boy to review it. That’s how I, a freshman and not even 18 yet, got to pen a review that’s not quite as embarrassing as I feared it would be upon re-reading it 40 years later. “Since all members of this group are under 21, musical history could be rewritten if this act gets itself together,” I offered in a bet-hedging opening graph.
It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly 25 years since the two of us were spending every Wednesday night in the Gatehouse basement, churning out the Features section late into the night and developing valuable skills and a lifelong friendship. After polishing stories from our writers, putting the finishing touches on our own features and laying out pages, we would use our last bit of sleep-deprived, slap-happy creativity to put together the “Cartoons, Etc.” page. This included constructing a quirky Word Find — with themes such as “Parsnip (And Other Words We Like)” and “After This, I Get to Go to Sleep (And Other Things to Be Happy About)” — and of course, writing “Eat This!,” the recipe column.
Walking into the Gatehouse, to the right sat a long table with mismatched chairs. On a good day, pizza had just been delivered. On a bad day, half-empty boxes sat with grease congealing on cold slices. The paper had an arrangement with local pizza places: free pizza in exchange for ads. For hungry News-Letter staff, it was mutually beneficial unless you were a discerning eater. Cokes and Pepsis, regular and diet, were the fuel of choice.
As a precocious kid growing up in the ‘50s, I was a daily New York Times reader and avidly followed the ups and downs of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the early ‘60s, I chaired a student World Affairs Council in high school and dreamed about becoming secretary of state.
Health-care disparities and vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. have been brought to the forefront of national conversation in light of the pandemic and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter.
Last December, it was discovered that Johns Hopkins, the University’s namesake and founder, owned enslaved people, invalidating the narrative that he was a lifelong abolitionist.
Last spring, Hopkins Hospital paused its long-time practice of suing patients who could not afford their medical treatments.
“There were many opportunities to do the right thing, to make a difference for those families whose lives will never be the same. The pain and the horror of the whole process, of being relocated and displaced, of gentrified community — you can’t imagine the pain that goes through your mind.”
“As Black students begin the daunting process of applying to medical school, the structural racism and inequality that they experience is not always visible to the public,” Shavonia Wynn wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
The U.S. government classifies most colleges and universities as nonprofits because of their “educational purposes,” exempting them from federal income taxes. This means that, despite operating four campuses in Baltimore, Hopkins is not legally required to pay the city any property taxes.
Over the course of the past year, researchers have found that residents of low-income, majority-Black neighborhoods in Baltimore and cities across the country are at a higher risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19.
Due to restrictions for in-person labs, the University announced new changes to its curriculum to accommodate virtual classes. Students enrolled in labs related to biological sciences are now required to watch the Japanese program Cells at Work! along with its spin-off Cells at Work! Code Black.
It is with great embarrassment that I must share this testimony of mine. This story henceforth is my contribution to a greater and better public, so that anybody who can resonate with my struggles knows that they are not alone.
