With the rise of students’ use of generative artificial intelligence for schoolwork, the Director of the Honors Program and Honors Foundation professor, Chad Timm, devised a unique final project to ensure his students would rely solely on their own critical thinking.
Timm tasked his students to read every edition of “The Simpsonian” from a given academic year in the 1960s and 1970s to determine how students reacted to historical events.
“The Simpsonian is valuable because it gives an insight into what Simpson students cared about, what was interesting to them, and what they decided to write about,” Timm said.
With the help of “The Simpsonian” and other archived resources, students were able to determine parallels between the past and present in both student reactions to national topics and how Simpson’s student media reported those perspectives.
First-years Emma Brown and Edward Kent were assigned to explore the academic years of 1972 and 1973, during which several significant historical events occurred, such as the end of the Vietnam War, Roe v. Wade and Watergate.
While conducting research, the two created a deeper historical understanding of Simpson.
“My biggest takeaway was the generational connection you could make with The Simpsonian,” Brown said. “Students were saying similar things about Nixon that people are saying now about Donald Trump. It made me realize past generations thought events were ‘the end,’ but we’re still here.”
During this project, Kent also utilized archived Student Government Association (SGA) minutes and saw something different.
“There is some disconnect,” Kent said. “In SGA, they talked a lot about racial slurs that were being used, and it was never talked about in The Simpsonian.”
He also highlighted curfews and dress codes placed on females. These were lifted during the mentioned academic year, but no coverage on this information could be found. Another issue the paper failed to cover was a Vietnam protest where students rang the Smith Chapel bell 49,000 times for each American killed, which sent FBI agents to the campus to investigate.
Kent said “The Simpsonian” back then was only representative of approximately 30% of the student body, and staff reporters at the time all had masculine-sounding names.
After the class analyzed the published work of “The Simpsonian,” they developed an understanding of why archiving historical documents, such as editions of “The Simpsonian,” can help future students, staff and faculty avoid making the same mistakes from the past.
This then made students critically think about how current editions of “The Simpsonian” will be analyzed in the next six decades. Kent and Brown said they fear the issues left out of issues in the 70s because it is just as concerning to recognize the amount of coverage and perspectives that The Simpsonian is failing to publish now.
Kent and Brown said “The Simpsonian” is currently in a worse state.
“The Simpsonian needs to encourage more student-led arguments, critiques and complaints that are actually what is talked about in school,” Kent said. “When SGA is talking about accessibility issues at Simpson and The Simpsonian is using an opinion piece to cover a movie, there’s such a big disconnect, and we need to see controversial takes.”
Timm said he, too, is concerned about how Simpson students are engaging with some current national issues, such as environmental issues, women’s reproductive health and free speech on college campuses. Timm said he has no idea what students are doing or thinking about these topics.
“Based on the coverage of The Simpsonian, you might still be left wondering what Simpson students thought,” Timm said about student media back then. Kent and Brown say it’s a relevant concern today as well.
“To inspire conversation, we need to create debate,” Kent said.
Both students agreed they would like to see “The Simpsonian” cover more controversial campus issues, local Indianola issues and topics students actively care about. They also stated students should feel encouraged to submit their opinions.
“I can confidently say if we covered local issues like the city considering cancelling their agreement with Kiya Koda, I’d be sending an editorial in because if you’re talking about something that inspires conversation and debate, which I think is what newspaper writing should be, people will interact more,” Brown said.
Both students said they are left questioning when things changed to exclude opinions, and when students on campus stopped feeling empowered to submit editorials.
“In order for this newspaper to be meaningful and instructive to the students, it requires that they actively participate in the functioning of the paper,” former staff reporter and graduate of 1976, Chuck Cannady, wrote in a 1974 edition of “The Simpsonian.”
The paper debuted a new column for students to air grievances about any issues on or off campus.
“The Simpsonian can be a valuable tool to the Simpson students. We can help you, but first you have to help us by bringing us your problems,” Cannady wrote.
This final project wasn’t just about reading old newspapers; it created a connection, raised awareness of student activism and highlighted the necessity for student media to reflect students’ concerns and empower a campus to speak up.
This was Timm’s first year administering this final, and he was thoroughly impressed by his students’ final projects, discussions and takeaways.
“My goal in Foundations is to encourage students to imagine the ways they might become civically engaged in order to improve their communities and our society,” Timm said. “This gave students more historical contexts to understand why we might still be wrestling with the same issues 50 years later. If we are going to envision a different tomorrow, we have to study how we got to today.”
“The Simpsonian” highly encourages any student on campus to submit letters to the editor by emailing Editor-in-Chief Makayla Paulsen at [email protected]. Everyone’s voices should be heard, and as Cannady said in ‘74, we can help you if you bring us issues of concern to investigate.
