The Loquitur editorial board for the 2023-24 school has been chosen and we are looking forward to taking on this incredible leadership responsibility. As the future Loquitur Editorial Board, we are excited and nervous about stepping into new leadership roles. We look forward to honoring past traditions while also blazing our own paths as leaders at Cabrini. Our staff plans to expand our reach on campus next year so that every student, professor, and administrator knows our names. One of the things we seek to achieve is to build stronger relationships with the Cabrini community.
Student leadership on a college campus is critical to the success of the school and its students. The best leaders are those who place themselves on the same level as the ones who look to them for guidance. A great leader is someone who can be humble and empathetic towards those who follow them. They’re someone who never gets full of themselves or demands of others what they wouldn’t do themselves. In the setting of campus organizations such as the Loquitur, these traits drive our publication.
Loquitur provides leadership
Being a part of the Loquitur means choosing what is written about on campus and in the community. Our duty as the Loquitur’s Editorial Board is to encourage decisions, influence change and shape public opinion. This year, Cabrini has been through monumental changes, and the Loquitur covered them all. Being a student-run newspaper means we have the opportunity to be the voice for every student on campus. We hope you’ll see yourselves in our coverage and let us know what we’re missing if you don’t.
The Loquitur editorial staff proves its leadership every year by discussing impactful campus topics. Some of these include “The Loquitur is free press,” “Professors battle for token retirement benefits,” “U.S. immigration’s road to nowhere,” and many more award-winning stories that shape our community and campus.
Being a part of the Loquitur can become complicated because Cabrini is small. This is why emotional intelligence is significant in leadership. According to an article from the Harvard Business School, having emotional intelligence as a leader helps build self-awareness, self- management, social awareness, and relationship management.
Leaders are made
As a society, we have always had the idea of leadership. The Great Man Theory of Leadership, established in the 19th century, says that leaders are born, not made. They will arise when needed and have certain skills that set them apart from others. The 20th century challenged this idea, due to the growth in behavioral science studies, and we now believe that leadership skills are taught and learned. Universities such as Cabrini integrate many of these skills to prepare students for the real world.
We need empatheticanddiverse leaders. Empathy bridges people together, and diversity keeps people together. Diversity is important in leadership because through it, we can recognize and achieve a plethora of perspectives, ideas, and solutions.
Diversity is key
Diversity in leadership comes in many forms and refers to having people from various backgrounds. The three main categories are gender, race, and age, but the idea of diversity has now been expanded to encompass qualities including sexual orientation, religion, economic status, political motivations, and more.
According to McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, “Businesses with ethnoracial diversity practices are 36% more likely to perform better than their peers and by 2025, employees from underrepresented groups would hold 30% of leadership positions.” Every person is shaped by their unique experiences, and diversity in these experiences create a better environment. On the Loquitur staff and editorial board, we make it a point to have everyone’s voices be heard in making decisions to ensure a wide variety of experiences be shared.
Leading in silence
Being a leader isn’t about recognition or getting praised in front of a crowd. True leadership happens when nobody’s looking. The Loquitur epitomizes leading in silence with the work that goes on behind the scenes in the newsroom every day. As journalists, we are responsible for being a reliable, facts-driven source of information for those on our campus and in the local community. As we step into our new roles as leaders, we look to make the Loquitur the best source of information it possibly can be.
