Note: This article appears in Synapse’s 70th anniversary print edition, produced to mark seven decades of student journalism at UCSF and available in print at locations across campus.
In my junior year of high school, I wrote what I now think of as my first investigative piece about a local radio station. After interviewing historians, librarians, and journalists for guidance on how to approach my project and interpret research materials, I found old tapes of broadcasts, newspaper clippings, photographs, funding documents, and meeting minutes among other materials.
Through this process, I learned that the radio station started out as a student-run college news outlet. Then, following various student-led anti-Vietnam War protests and collisions with university leadership, the station lost resources from the university and was absorbed into what is now the current local NPR station.
At the time, student meeting minutes insinuated this was a concerted effort to silence student concerns. I remember the excitement I felt gathering and using this research to piece together a largely unknown and long-forgotten local piece of history that spoke to larger national trends at the time of free speech and dissent.
In preparing this 70th anniversary edition of Synapse, I thought often about that experience and how the country is once again fixated on student speech in particular. Like that radio station, Synapse was established as a place where students could investigate, question, and advocate. But unlike that station, Synapse fortunately endured, remaining student-run and deliberately protected as an independent voice from UCSF administration.
In 1956, Don Swatman from the School of Dentistry founded Synapse as a student newspaper. What began as a small operation mostly specific to the dental school quickly grew. With the added support of now ironic advertisements for tobacco and soda companies, printing and distribution reached farther across campus and into surrounding neighborhoods.
Over the decades, UCSF hired professional journalists to support Synapse, preserving separation from administration and maintaining student leadership while facilitating student and organizational growth. This structure of students reporting and editing with guidance from experienced professionals allowed Synapse to evolve without losing its core purpose: elevating student voices and holding systems accountable.
In this anniversary edition, you will hear from prior editors-in-chief who challenged the university through Title IX action or advocated on behalf of staff unions, alongside other pieces that reflect the political and cultural stressors shaping student writing at the time. Together, these stories show how student journalism has responded when institutional pressures demanded clarity and courage.
Now, possibly more than ever, we need scientists to speak for themselves through trusted platforms. We are living in a moment of unprecedented scientific advancement alongside an equally unprecedented spread of misinformation. Research is distorted, politicized, or dismissed entirely, often with real consequences for patients and communities. While the nation is led by an administration that threatens freedom of speech, questions the authority of rigorous research, and limits the care providers are allowed to give patients, silence is not an option.
The UC system, and DEI programming in particular, is under attack. Vaccination programs are being rolled back by the U.S. Secretary of Health in ways that are not backed by evidence, contributing to measles outbreaks. Patients travel across state lines for essential abortion care. Medi-Cal has rolled back coverage of evidence-backed weight loss medications this year. When our institutions are under this kind of stress, lapses and compromises on issues that matter are inevitable unless they are challenged. We cannot let up.
In a country where free speech is promised as a right, it increasingly feels like a privilege for many. We must therefore take advantage of the privileged position we find ourselves in, with access to platforms, professional guidance, resources, and the credibility that comes with being scientists, researchers, and health care providers, to speak out.
In another seventy years, students will look back through the Synapse archives, curious about how students responded at a time when both science and journalism were under such scrutiny. The question we will reckon with is whether we spoke clearly, responsibly, and courageously.
I foresee this year for Synapse marked by renewed urgency, setting the tone for an era defined by curiosity, rigor, authenticity, and action. This requires you to ask hard questions, insist on truth even when it requires digging, and speak when it would be easier to stay quiet.
