LFTE: the Spring Editorial Board is in Bloom!

Photo by Henry Kendrick

Welcome Back! We hope that your transition back to the college grind has been (relatively) painless, and that your crops are watered. 

There are quite a few new faces on the editorial board this semester! While Albert Kerelis ‘24 is returning as a copy and content editor, the rest of the Quest editorial board is newly sprung from the lush and verdant grove of the student body, lovingly nurtured into their positions by the green thumb of student democracy. Sajid Bin Mahamud ‘25, Sabrina Blasik ‘24, and Anshu Kotha ‘25 are blossoming as our fresh crop of content and copy editors, while Nina Gopaldas ‘24 has taken root as our new layout editor.

When Nina (she/her) isn’t pulling all-nighters laying out the Quest, she is pulling all-nighters reading all things Russian after drinking too many Yerba Mates. She has contributed to the Quest since coming to Reed in Fall 2021, bringing with her an excitement for news and feature journalism. Nina looks forward to developing the Quest as an inclusive space, where the voices of all stakeholders on campus are heard. 

Sajid’s (he/him) journalism is almost as hot as the “extra hot” mochas he orders from Canyon Cafe. As an editor for his military school’s yearly magazine, Sajid did not make requests; he commanded. As a Quest editor, he hopes to learn a gentler way of managing. He aims to attract a wide-ranging base of readership by facilitating discussions about issues of both local and global importance. One of his core ambitions as an editor is to encourage a stronger cultural diversity in student voices and engender more rigorous radical political discourses from the student body. 

Sabrina (she/her) is generally more of a tea person, aside from her addiction to Paradox vanilla iced lattes. She has been contributing to the Quest since her first semester at Reed, when she somehow stumbled into writing a silly little weekly column about birds, and since then her commitment to the paper has spiraled wildly out of control. She hopes to make learning about journalism easier for contributors, and is excited to bring her passions for investigative reporting, grammatical perfectionism, and the human skeleton to the Quest.

Anshu starts (she/her) the day with her famous cup of coffee and Red Bull. Her evening is spent contemplating that 3rd can of Red Bull from dinner. While being new to the Quest, she wishes to uncover new truths of “Olde reed” as well as the new Reed. Hoping to write and bring new stories to the Quest as she stumbles upon them around campus. 

Albert (they/them) wakes up every morning and feels a sense of moral superiority knowing that their coffee is better than yours. Despite the elitism of their coffee habits, they want to make the Quest a more accessible and equitable space for circulating campus information and projects. They irregularly publish a column that attempts to interrogate the overlaps, intersections, and analogies between science and the humanities. Most importantly, Albert is an essential asset for increasing the Quest’s sex appeal. 

This year we are committed to making the Quest more approachable and inclusive than ever. As editors, we aim for the Quest to serve as a public forum for students to share information, and to feature journalism which accurately reflects the needs of our community. The Quest also provides an educational opportunity for students interested in journalism, so we’re trying to hold more workshops, and make textbooks and educational resources available to our contributors. Most importantly, we hope to facilitate community, whether that’s in our little Quest corner of Reed or among whatever student groups and events we can promote. Under our watch The Quest will be a valuable hub of culture and belonging on our campus.

Since Spring semester of last year, the Quest has become more dependent on Funding Poll to make our newspaper happen. While in the past, the Quest got our whole budget before Senate looked over it, we now rely on Funding Poll to cover our printing costs. Thanks to your support, we’ve consistently been able to cover our budgetary needs for the last two semesters. If you want to be able to rely on the Quest as a source for journalism and as the only on campus news  outlet that is independent from administration oversight, don’t forget to top 6 us in Funding Poll. Voting closes Friday, February 11th at 11:59 PM (if you’re reading this right after publishing, that’s today). If you still haven’t voted, scan the QR code and get it done now!

Your Queditors,

AGK ‘25,

AJK ‘24,

NSG ‘24

SBM ‘25

SMB ‘24