Valentina Rojas

Valentina Rojas
She/her/hers
Brookline High School ‘17

Time on The Sagamore: three years
Job(s): Breaking News Managing Editor

What is your favorite Sagamore memory?
I really enjoyed production and feeling like I was part of a team trying to accomplish a common goal. Also, I felt that I was able to form close relationships with faculty and administration which was cool.

What are you doing now?
I’m about to start my senior year at Barnard College! I was on Columbia’s newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, for two years but left and pivoted from an interest in journalism to one in public health!

What did you gain from being on The Sagamore?
I credit the Sag with giving me the work ethic that has really helped me throughout college. It also ignited a passion for journalism for me that led me to join my school’s newspaper and although I didn’t stay on it for long and I’m no longer interested in journalism, I met my two best friends there!

What was something challenging about being on The Sagamore?
I think one of my biggest challenges while I was on the Sag was that I tried in many ways to fight systemic powers of oppression that kept both our content and staff mainly white with small solutions. I graduated feeling a little defeated and feeling like I hadn’t made the impact on the newspaper that I had wanted.

Do you use any of the skills you learned in The Sag in your current day life? If so, what?
How to confront people who hold authority and speak up for myself, how to communicate clearly, how to be a part of a team, how to lead and mentor, how to work under deadlines, and, most importantly, how to have fun and shake off stress when it feels like deadlines are coming at you!

What is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned from The Sag?
Journalism’s role is to hold systems of power accountable, and, if done well, small school newspapers can play an incredibly important role in this. But, journalism, and each organization that attempts to do journalistic work, also has a lot of things it needs to work on and priorities they need to set in order to adequately represent and inform their intended audience.