|
It would have been easy for the small team of student journalists at The University of Texas at Dallas to just crash. Administrators had been throwing obstacles in front of them since October 7. But the students forged a new path. A path riddled with craters, bumps, and sometimes stars. And as for administrators…
“University administrators are not competent. They are career bureaucrats. … They’re not there because they are the best in their field. They’re there because they had good political maneuverings to get into their position. … They’re there because they make the school look good sometimes. So if there is pressure on you, it’s not because they know the law. It’s not because you did something wrong. …They will do their violations and they will move on. You’re just another student to them unless you stand up for yourself. And I think we really show that you can stand up for yourself and be successful.”
That’s a quote from Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, editor-in-chief of The University of Texas at Dallas’s first guerilla newspaper, The Retrograde.
Maria Shaikh is the editing manager.
Shaikh is an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Dallas, — which she and Gutierrez frequently abbreviate to UTD — in her final year studying biochemistry. She became interested in student journalism during her first semester, when the school newspaper was covering a series of bizarre tragedies surrounding students and alum. Noticing the expertise and care the paper put into discussing these crimes, Shaikh decided to apply — starting as a copy editor before moving up in the editorial team. Gutierrez joined the local paper for similar reasons. He’s currently in his third year, studying political science and philosophy as a pre-law student.
The paper they had both joined was called the Mercury.
The Mercury had been the official paper of The University of Texas at Dallas since 1980. When Gutierrez joined their staff, the Mercury had been delving into investigative journalism.
“The first thing that they asked me to work on was reaching out to the people on the sex offenders registry on campus,” said Gutierrez, “… I learned a lot about that, just how that operates on campus. Then I covered a car crash where someone just drove their car right through an apartment building on campus. I got to walk onto the crime scene, allegedly snuck under police tape to go and get closer pictures.”
By the middle of the fall semester, Gutierrez was part of the editorial team — and the Mercury faced its first hurdle.
“We had some Spirit Rocks on the university that students would spray paint. They’d been doing it for decades. I think they put them there in the early 2000s. They’d been there for over 20 years for a variety of different causes,” said Gutierrez.
The rocks had been a space for students to share their political opinions, however controversial. Students thought it would be no different when it came to Palestine/Israel.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing more than 1100 people and taking roughly 250 people hostage.
Israel began an unwavering bombing of Gaza, killing journalists, aid workers, and an enormous amount of civilians — many of whom are children, and destroying the majority of Gaza’s infrastructure, including hospitals and schools. Two years later, the military offensive remains ongoing, and has been characterized by both Human Rights Watch and leading scholars as a genocide.
In the early days of Israel’s attack, people across the country protested, many calling for an immediate ceasefire. For students at The University of Texas at Dallas, this manifested in painting messages on the Spirit Rocks.
“It was all very peaceful. At one point, the university sent out an email commending everybody on how the political conversation on the rocks was going peacefully,” said Shaikh.
“We had students expressing support for Zionism. We had students expressing support for Palestine’s liberation. And they were going back and forth,” said Gutierrez.
But some of the graffiti began to attract attention, including one piece of graffiti where students had painted: “Zionism = Nazism.”
 Photo by Katherine Ho, Courtesy of the Mercury
Zionist students painted: “We Are Winning.”
Over Thanksgiving Break, the administration had the rocks removed. They justified the removal in an email, claiming the rocks were being used for “extended political discourse.”
The university had previously emphasized their openness to diversity of opinion, belief, and identity; and their respect for student journalism. But with the removal of the Spirit Rocks, things began to change.
“It symbolizes UTD beginning its censorship regime on campus,” said Gutierrez.
“Let’s just get rid of this long standing forum of free expression,” Gutierrez continued, “and then after that, what do we see? We see protests get cracked down. We see student expression limited. Students are now banned from using chalk on campus.”
“A conditional ban,” Shaikh chimed in, as the ban is only enforced on students chalking in favor of Palestine. According to Shaikh and Gutierrez, far-right Christian groups have been chalking on campus since the ban, without any repercussions.
“This is not in any of our policy either. This is a guideline that is not publicly available until you violate it. And that’s the kind of stance that UTD has really adopted…” Gutierrez continued. “They’re still doing their PR response to the people who reach out to them whenever this issue comes up again, saying, ‘we love student expression, we love student journalism.’ But their actions since the Spirit Rock removal have screamed the opposite.”
News agencies outside of the school began to take notice.
The Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression used the Mercury’s coverage of the Spirit Rocks’ removal to critique the university as a clear violation of the First Amendment. State-wide news agencies picked up the story too, including the Dallas Observer and the Texas Tribune, citing the Mercury in their stories.
The school responded by telling administrators not to speak directly to the Mercury anymore, a ban that Shaikh and Gutierrez only found out about when they attempted to cover a routine piece on the school food pantry.
“[W]e met a level of resistance that had hitherto been non-existent. It wasn’t just ‘Don’t talk to us, go to the office of communications.’ It was ‘You may not talk to us.’ ‘We will not do anything with you,’” said Gutierrez.
Interviewing university staff became nearly impossible after that, with staff directing them to the Office of Communication for comment on any article.
But things hit a thundering crash with the creation of the “Gaza Liberation Plaza” on May 1, 2024.
Students gathered on Chess Plaza, dawned with food, signs, and makeshift walls, with over 100 students joining throughout the day. The encampment at The University of Texas at Dallas came as a wave of encampments swept the country.
But no sooner was it built up, that it was violently taken down.
12 hours after the encampment began, the cops showed up.
“May 1, there has never been anything like it. Over 60 police officers from over five different agencies, including the DPS of Texas coming in with full riot gear with snipers posted. That has never happened on campus before, and it hasn’t happened since,” Gutierrez said.
 Photo by Surjaditya Sarkar, Courtesy of the Mercury
And the Mercury was there to cover everything, from the start of the encampment in the early morning, to its violent demolition by 4 p.m.
“We now had to write another story,” Gutierrez confirmed, “because the police had violently raided the encampment and fully dispersed it with armored vehicles, tear gas launchers, riflemen, snipers on the roof, police helicopters flying around. It was very, uh I guess, reminiscent of Brown Shirts in Italy or the Nazi SS just walking in, rounding up peaceful people, violently removing them, putting them in armored vans. So it was an exciting first day for us as journalists.”
Gutierrez called it their “first day” because May 1, 2024, was their debut in upper management.
It was Shaikh’s first day as the managing editor of the Mercury, and Gutierrez’s first day as editor-in-chief — and it was during this major event, that they had to hold the reins of the student paper for the first time.
The Mercury documented the encampment to its conclusion. Police violently destroyed the encampment, and arrested 21 people including students, professors, and community members, using force. The Mercury even waited outside the jailhouse, with some student reporters choosing to sleep outside the jail holding those arrested from the encampment. By May 20, 2024, the Mercury published the Protest Issue, an all-inclusive special edition.
And the crackdowns kept coming — two days after they released the Protest Issue, Jonathan Stewart, the Mercury’s advisor, was demoted; ostensibly due to a lack of oversight during the May 20 Protest Issue. No procedure was cited for his demotion. And their new advisor, Jenny Huffenberger, accused Shaikh and Gutierrez of journalistic malpractice.
“I am told…that my head is next on the chopping block” says Gutierrez, referring to a conversation between him and his demoted advisor.
And it was. By the beginning of the next semester, Gutierrez was fired.
The firing came after numerous attempts by Shaikh and Gutierrez to get the school on the record for their conduct during the month of May. The administration refused to comment. Frustrated, Shaikh and Gutierrez filed a public records request for documents relevant to the school’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests between April 29, 2024 and May 3, 2024. A decision the Mercury was advised against taking, as it might anger the administration.
So in July 2024, they filed a public records request. In response, the school levied a $9,000 fee for obtaining the records; reduced to approximately $3,000 after negotiation. The students fundraised, and the records are now theirs.
But the fight was only beginning. By the beginning of the next semester, things became worse.
On Sept. 14, 2024, Gutierrez was fired. He filed an appeal with the Student Media Operating Board, citing numerous violations of the Student Media Bylaws. But despite his attempts, the Board refused to reinstate him.
And the Mercury went on strike, refusing to publish non-strike related material until their demands were met.
“Reinstate Gutierrez as editor-in-chief immediately, amend the student media bylaws so they cannot be egregiously used and twisted to penalize students with no real evidence or due process ever again, and democratize the way the editor-in-chief of the Mercury is chosen,” said Shaikh..
But instead of reinstating him, the administration had other plans. On Oct. 1, 2024, the Board fired everyone at the Mercury, leaving the newspaper without staff.
This mass firing came in the wake of soaring readership. Readership of the printed issue is gauged by the rate at which readers pick up the newspaper at kiosks around campus. The pickup rate before Shaikh and Gutierrez took over was, on average, 60%, according to documentation they’d inherited. After taking the reins of the Mercury in May 2024, the paper’s popularity grew in double digits.
“Our first issue, the May 20 issue, had a 99% pick-up rate. Our second issue, which was in the middle of the summer, notoriously low, had a 95% pick up rate. Our issue when we were back on campus, 98% pickup rate. And those were the three issues we had prior to the strike issue. The strike issue had a 100% pickup rate,” commented Shaikh.
They did not want to see their work go to waste.
“We’d agreed pretty much since the day we went on strike that if the [administration] does not meet our demands, we do not want to stop doing journalism,” recalled Shaikh.
“We went ahead and we launched the Retrograde. We got the website built and we were posting by the thirty-first of September,” Shaikh continued, “ … So the September 16 issue was our Strike Issue and we didn’t miss a single cycle. We were right on top of it, publishing two weeks later, just as the Retrograde.”
“After that, our student government passed a series of resolutions recognizing us as the official student newspaper on campus and that so long as strike demands were not met, they would not recognize a Mercury if it was reformed as a scab paper,” said Shaikh.
The resolutions cemented the Retrograde the unofficial official newspaper of The University of Texas at Dallas.
Since then, the Retrograde has continued to grow, publishing online bi-weekly. While they cannot afford to print every issue, they continue to sell advertisement space and print when it’s most effective.
It hasn’t been easy. When they worked for the Mercury, student journalists received monthly stipends and payments per story. Today, the Retrograde relies on crowdsourcing and Patreon.
“We’re doing what feels like objectively more work because now we have to worry about finances, filing as a 501c3 and all that other legal stuff, as well as like actually procuring advertisements … And while it’s a great challenge … I love having editorial control and you know, just being free from the whims of the administration. Even despite all the hard work it takes, it’s so, so worth it. I don’t regret it at all,” said Shaikh.
Since then, the administration has tried repeatedly to impede the Retrograde — from demanding that Shaikh and Gutierrez return the Mercury’s old social media page to lambasting the paper during cross-department meetings. According a recording from the students provided to Unicorn Riot, Gene Fitch, the head of Student Affairs, opened the April 23, 2025 meeting of the Committee on Student Media by accusing the Retrograde of a “smear campaign” via a “barrage of articles and emails that have attempted to criticize and vilify those associated with student media.” While the Retrograde was not directly named in the quote, the allusion to the guerilla run paper was obvious to Shaikh and Gutierrez.
“Every time they have an opportunity to, they do some insane thing, [some] clear violation of the first amendment. And it’s just all part of like making sure that we’re not successful,” said Gutierrez.
But the Retrograde consulted with lawyers and support groups at every turn.
“As the Retrograde, we took the social media for ourselves,” Shaikh said, “after consulting with different lawyer people at the Student Press Law Center to just get an insight into how Texas property law works. Whoever created the social media is the original owner of it. That was made by a student. Whenever they transferred it to another student, that was the new owner. So because it was made by a student and passed by students, it was ours.”
Today, the Retrograde’s social media has crossed 5,000 followers and exceeded a million views.
And the Mercury? Since firing their entire staff in 2024, they have not published anything. While there are rumors that Student Media has hired new leadership for this fall, the future of the former school paper remains uncertain.
For now, the Retrograde has become the newspaper of point for The University of Texas at Dallas.
And perhaps that speaks to the power of students.
“Administrators think that we are children in a very literal sense. They do not think that the average college student has the ability to stand up to them, to question what they’re saying … to talk to lawyers, to talk to the press, to talk to mentors outside of the university. And because of that, they have grossly underestimated us so far, and they continue to. They have made a lot of mistakes so far, and they continue to. Frankly that is the best tool at our disposal, being able to always have the upper hand by virtue of always being underestimated,” said Shaikh.
Shaikh is in her final year at the university. In addition to her work as the editing manager at the Retrograde, she was recently elected president of the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. As the new president, she plans to promote hard-hitting student journalism across the state. Why? She believes school newspapers play an irreplaceable role in local journalism, often publishing news at a professional level for towns and cities that otherwise would not have a paper.
Gutierrez is in his third year at the university and will continue on as the Retrograde’s editor-in-chief.
Cover image by Aeffia Feuerstein
Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization:
Follow us on X (aka Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky and Patreon.
 The post RIP Mercury, Hello Retrograde! How Administrators Failed to Stop the Presses at The University of Texas-Dallas appeared first on UNICORN RIOT.
2025-09-06 12:32:40 UTC
|