Daring Season: Life at the “Herald”

Our senior editors reflect on their lives of daring. Indulge us in some sentimentality, will you? 

Here’s something they don’t tell you about being editor-in-chief of a magazine: you’ll spend three hours in the office every Thursday night and edit hardly anything. That happens later—I henpecked through pieces in any free hour I could snag on Friday and Saturday. But while our section editors diligently highlighted sentences and ripped pieces to green suggestive shreds, and our designers tweaked angles and colors on Photoshop to make beautiful art for our website, I spent my Thursday evenings wandering around Phelps 207, asking questions about people’s days and talking about things irrelevant to the Herald and shouting references and jokes at Oscar from across the room. 

The main piece of advice I’ve given to Hudson and Angel as they begin to embark on their editor-in-chiefing journey is that this gig is about thirty percent actual work, and seventy percent vibes. If I didn’t take seriously the suggestion from Cameron Jones, BF ’26, that we go to a strip club to review the food, what sort of editor would I be? If I had heard Julia Murphy, BF ’27, and Zoe Frost, MY ’27, fervently debating the historical wrongdoings of Miss Piggy’s relationship with Kermit and I shut it down and told them all to get back to editing, what sort of leader would I be? A bad one. We had the time. That suggestion gave us one hell of a story, and Muppety conversation gave us two whole item for the blocklist, and both also provided new reason for us all, whether we were participants in the debate or just the giggling peanut gallery, to return to Phelps 207 the following week, and to devote a slice of our busy weeks to the Herald. To keep itself running, this magazine needs to pull a weekly trick: gather, edit, copy-edit, and publish a dozen pieces within four days, and make sure everyone heads into the next week feeling happy and proud. 

It was that good-vibes magic that brought me into the Herald. On September 9, 2023, it was twenty days since I’d moved into my tight Farnam Hall dormroom, twelve days since I’d registered for classes, ten since I’d started classes, six days since getting overwhelmed by the sun and the shouting at the extracurricular bazaar, and two days since I’d received an email from Arthur Delot-Villain, YC ’25, encouraging me and all other freshman new to his pan-list to write a piece for the upcoming issue of the Herald. Following the directions on that email, I sent two poems and a short story to Cal Barton, YC ’25, and Ana Padilla Castellanos YC ’25, the two Voices desk editors. By that Thursday, I went to the Herald’s office on the third floor of 305 Crown Street, and Cal and Ana edited one of those poems for an hour with more skill and passion than I had ever witnessed before. I didn’t know anyone could feel so strongly about a piece of writing that wasn’t their own. And everyone was like that: all around me, pairs of editors laughed and hunched seriously over laptops, trading barbs and asking silly little questions about grammatical structures. Delot-Villain padded around in his socks, hair wild and vibes like a Beatnik as he went desk by desk, talking about article structure and making references I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what to think, other than that I loved this fucking place. 

That was 952 days ago. A few months shy of three years. Since then, Yale’s gotten a new president, and so has the United States. Wars have started, protests have risen and fallen. My grandfather died, my brother graduated college, my mother joined a choir. I’ve taken thirty-one classes and only dropped a few. I’ve written twenty-six pieces and twenty-two letters from the editors for the Herald. I’ve made friends and lost friends, I’ve fallen in and out of love, I’ve swung low into depression and back up into the daily ecstasy of living well. Life bucks and wriggles and shrugs; you need a saddle to help keep you stable. That’s been the Herald. 

I love this little magazine. In the wild undulations of college, the Herald’s been my home. It’ll still be a home, next year—someone’s gotta write actually interesting theatre reviews around here—but it’s time to move on. I’m only able to feel this sort of contentment because I feel so proud of what we’ve done this year. We’ve covered the culture of the year, and we’ve created a culture that people want to be part of, and that will endure as a home for future first-years anxious for a community of chill, funny, talented writers. 

Thank you, Arthur and Cal and Ana, and Rafi and Etai and Madelyn and all the other Herald editors who brought me into this community. Thank you Richard L. So, YC ’87, and Steve Lange-Ranzini, YC ’86, for recognizing that the YDN is an insufficient publication, and that this campus needed another one. Thank you, our editors and designers, for keeping on their legacy this year and making my and Oscar’s silly dreams a reality. Thank you, Julia and Abigail and Grace for being my friends nearly as long as I’ve been a Heralder, and for hopping on and joining the team this year. Thank you, Eva and Cameron and Amber and Emma, for your incredible devotion to this little project, and for keeping me and Oscar in check. Thank you, Oscar, for needing to be kept in check with me, for being as silly and unserious as I am but also caring so, so much about making as perfect a product as we possibly could. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in this project.

And thank you, Hudson and Angel, for taking on the mantle next year—you’ll be incredible. It’s your Herald now: dare to make it in your own image, and the image of your team. Just keep up the good vibes. 

~ Will Sussbauer, JE ’27, Editor in Chief

***

Last year, I told my friend to submit hate mail about me for The Yale Herald’s Sex Issue. The Sex Issue presents the opportunity for the magazine’s readers and staff to submit valentines to their significant others and friends. I remember my friend suggesting to me, “wow wouldn’t it be so funny if I just wrote a Herald valentine telling you, ‘I hate you.’” I enthusiastically agreed. 

“AN, SM ’27: I hate you,” would appear amongst all the affirmational words and love letters. It was just a passing joke between my friend and I, but I looked forward to seeing it in print nonetheless. 

On February 13th 2025, the Herald’s Sex Issue was distributed to the fourteen residential college dining halls. I picked one up, and while flipping through the Herald valentines, my heart sank. Someone on the Herald’s managing editorial board had censored my friend. I then came to a sobering realization—someone thought I was being bullied. That was really embarrassing, and I’ve lived with that shame ever since.

Now that my time with the Herald is coming to a close and I have some time to reflect, I first want to use this letter to formally let people know that I wasn’t being bullied. And second, to thank everyone who was involved in making this magazine possible. Thank you Oscar, Will, Eva, and Cameron for not only being exceptional editors and writers, but amazing friends as well. Thank you to all the section editors, copy editors, designers, and of course the readers.

And last, although I hate you, thank you whoever amongst the Herald staff was concerned enough about me to try to protect me from my hate mail.

~ Amber Nobriga, SM ’27, Managing Editor

***

I joined the Herald with revolution on my mind. 

Sitting in my cushy dorm room in Tokyo after a year-long exodus from Yale (aka study abroad), I wrote a mock pitch for a fashion politics column I was dying to write. I wanted to build some grand ideological framework for aesthetic critique, inspired by my love of Jacques Rancière’s “The Distribution of the Sensible.” But the application terrified me. It was my first ever club application in all four years of Yale. 

Not being a joiner was a huge part of my identity during my beginning of Yale. I recall a Fro-Co meeting where all of us first-years filled out a google form to answer questions like “have you ever been sexually harassed?” and “how many clubs have you joined?” Looking back, they are weird questions to ask in the same meeting. With the question on extracurriculars, a majority of my peers had joined three or more, and I stood as the only data point under “Zero.” I wondered, to myself, why is everyone so involved already? And, why am I not?

After some long reflection, I came to the conclusion that my distance from Yale clubs was, at its core, a political critique. I detested the affective politics which unfold in moments of congregation. I felt that groups can be quite insidious, which is why I considered the YDN as evil as the Unification church. When I was confronted with the academic fair, I found myself held back by this unruly faith in myself: You won’t make me fill out some application to do community service, or audition to join your lame cooking club. I will never grovel and beg to be your friend. I have nothing to prove. 

So I spent my first three years quite alone. I focused on my language skills and my passion for anthropology. I occasionally joined the ranks of a student organization, making costumes for one theatre production and momentarily designing for MAISON. But through it all, I never stood for disrespect. When people seemed cliquey and a space wasn’t for me, I was quick to do an Irish goodbye and never be seen again. This meant my social circle stayed small, and I found myself feeling lonely quite often. 

But during my gap year in Japan, something special happened. I found community with other Japanese Americans learning the language: An edgy, punk-rock ethnobotany student named Kai. A flower-loving lesbian friend called Kiku. A girl named Natalie who annoyed me like a little sister. They revived my passion for life and showed me that my existence was neither unique nor tragic. And finally I began to feel like “community” was earnestly possible. 

So, returning to Yale, I joined The Herald both to write some interesting articles and see if this supposedly “daring” club had any community to offer me. And I was not let down. I leave The Herald feeling that I have become a better writer, collaborator, and person. 

In this one year, through my column “Ripped to Shreds!”, I set out to prove that appearances are not only skin deep. Ignoring the weird eugenics-undertones of Sydney Sweeney’s jean campaign will not erase the white-washed history of American denim. Andrew Cuomo, and his policies, will never be cvnty, no matter how many runways he walks. Karoline Leavitt’s fashion crimes may be nothing more than a distraction from the Trump Administration’s greater injustices, but they are still worth speaking to. Even in Yale’s own fashion clubs, among our dear friends, questions of representation and justice are ever-yet pertinent. These aesthetic issues beg us to give serious attention to the way things look; not as a matter of vanity, but one of substance. 

We are implored to interrogate the ugly and question the beautiful. To take up the magnifying glass and investigate both the threads of our clothing and the fibers of our character. To attend to race and the racialization of bodies. To be happy to look a mess. Gaudy and gauche. Tacky and kitsch. Classless and camp and free. Working toward a future where everyone can sparkle. In short, the world needs more pretty-boy proletarians: bold individuals who stand against the status quo, never mistaking aesthetic critique for vanity. I hope my time at The Herald has inspired a twinge of this spirit of “aesthetic daring” within you.

So, I bid you farewell, my pretty-boy proletariat. I leave Yale for redder pastures. But I ask you to never hang up your bedazzled sickle and hammer. Do not abandon your grossly overdecorated Mao suit. March on proudly in your custom tabis. For there is merit in being an ornamented revolutionary.

~ Jaxon Havens, TC ’26, Arts Desk Editor

***

Before senior year, I was disciplined, calculated, and determined—determined to prove something which still remains unknown to me. This landed me as none of the above. Over the course of my senior year, I have come to recognize that this past version was never truly me—she was an illusion of safety that I clung to and someone who survived off of fear. 

I grew up as the child who ran through Walmart in pink tutus and dumped ice-cold water on the mean boys who sat in front of her on the school bus and played Sumo Wrestler with her older sister until she got her first two teeth knocked out. This is the girl I am again—she was, is, daring and lives her truth. For  a while, I forgot that this girl existed. Somewhere along the way, she became someone who smiled in efforts of hiding her tears and fell captive to an illusion of control. 

I thought senior year would be just like those before it. I thought it would be bittersweet to leave behind the safe haven of Yale, that I would keep writing pieces which never captured my true opinions, and that I would be stuck waiting for the same people who’d proven they wouldn’t stand by my side. 

This is not what happened. 

I am graduating not as the person who entered Yale but as the younger version of myself, the one who dressed in tutus and was brave enough to be a master Sumo Wrestler. I am now the girl who publishes essays on her insecurities and fears, who both smiles and laughs openly. I used to be the girl who surrounded herself with people just so that she wouldn’t be alone. I am now the girl who loves living in a standalone single and who found a profound loyalty to and love for her fellow editors who never fail to make her laugh.  

I never considered myself particularly good at writing but senior year wasn’t actually about the writing itself or any one final product; it was about showing up for the people who never made me feel questioned as I went through the most challenging of months. I used to be the girl who thought writing was only meant for the creative and particularly-bright. I am now the girl who thinks writing is an outlet for truth, vulnerability, and connection. 

We often hear that senior year is the last of the best four years of our lives. I’d like to reframe that narrative: senior year, to me, was the very first year I truly lived. It was the year I said goodbye to fears and safety. Senior year was one last shot—reinvent myself now and risk losing nothing or finding everything. I chose the ladder. And for that, I thank myself for the bravery and, perhaps, realization that rock bottom is not the end of the road. I thank the new friends I found at Thursday productions and Saturday copyediting sessions who made me believe in joy again and realize that all I needed was to laugh at a few bad jokes. And finally, a bittersweet thank you and goodbye to the illness which challenged me and distorted my reality—I hate you but you made me who I am, you gave me the courage to become my childhood self again. 

~ Eva Kottou, MY ’26, Managing Editor

***

Listen to new slayyyter. Never order off the Burger King breakfast menu again. God loves us and our hair is perfect.

~ Cameron Jones, BF ’26, Managing Editor

***

I’m a sucker for lists, so here it goes. In no particular order, the things that matter most to me in this life are: the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers championship run, the 2016 XXL Cypher, Kobe Bryant’s last free throw in his 2016 farewell game, the year 2016 apparently, the first 1:52 of “Pictures of You” by the Cure, grammar, James Harrison’s response after receiving a $75,000 fine, David Cross in “The Audition Sketch” sketch, John McPhee’s A Sense of Where You Are, lightly fried spaghetti with ketchup, my friends and family, Poland Springs water, Kyle Korver’s shooting form, tuxedo cats, and salmon swimming upstream. 

This might be the first time in human history all of these things have appeared together in the same paragraph. And of course it’s happening in this final issue of The Yale Herald. The magazine is, and will continue to be, one of the few places on campus where writers are encouraged to look into the deep crevices of not just the world around them but also themselves—the collection of memories, music, words, styles, preferences, and ideas that, however small or random, make them tick. 

I first joined the Herald my sophomore year because the editors let me try to find myself on the page. Not to be the oversentimental guy at the goodbye party, but there’s a poem by Stanley Kunitz called “The Layers” I’ve been thinking about recently as this year’s iteration of the Herald comes to an end. A section from the middle of it reads “Oh, I have made myself a tribe/out of my true affections,/and my tribe is scattered!” Towards the end, the speaker gets advice from a cloud, who tells them: “Live in the layers,/not on the litter.” 

In that spirit, to all of the editors, designers, writers, and readers who came before Will and I—thank you for building something beautiful that we’ve been lucky enough to care for over the past year. I’m proud to have been part of a magazine as people-driven and eccentric as this one, where readers can dive into pieces on topics ranging from the cooling industry to slang words for food—all written by students who trust us with their work each week. That foundation is a direct result of the labor our predecessors put into making the Herald an accessible and welcoming environment for the past forty years. 

To our current staff, we owe the success of this year to you. Amber, Cameron and Eva—thank you for your constant support, dedication, and resilience. I am so happy to call each of you my friend. Section editors and copy editors—thank you for giving each piece your time and care. None of this would be possible without you. Designers—thank you for breathing life into our magazine and shaping our image. Emma—I am forever grateful for you. You have put in a ridiculous amount of effort throughout the design process of every single issue. I’m in awe of your creative brilliance, and the strength of your work ethic. Will—where do I begin? You are pure joy. It has been an unbelievable honor working alongside you and seeing your innate ability to bring people together firsthand. Thank you for laughing at my jokes, loving this magazine, and being a role model for me in every way imaginable.

To the new editors-in-chief, Hudson and Angel—you both fill me with so much hope for the future. Thank you for believing in the Herald. I’m incredibly excited to see where you take it next year. Keep on daring. 

~ Oscar Heller, ES ’26.5, Editor-in-Chief