Photo by Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27
Above, Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ’25, Tara Monastesse ’25 and Emily Tarinelli ’25 sit on the beloved newsroom couch they’ve known for the last four years. Below, their letters reflect on their time as student journalists working on Mount Holyoke News.
Tara Monastesse - Editor-in-Chief
observe think question
star thus soar through arid bluff
with bold ivory concept
I wrote this poem with word magnets on a filing cabinet in the newsroom during my first semester at Mount Holyoke College. Counting the syllables out, it’s not quite a haiku like I intended it to be; despite the creative writing classes I remain a journalist, not a poet, at heart. But it captured exactly how I felt as a first-year, starry-eyed at having discovered a new sense of purpose after an incredibly difficult time in my life.
I had finished my high school career by limping over the graduation finish line. Most days, I had languished in COVID-19 isolation depression, skipping classes for days at a time; for weeks I had considered dropping out entirely. I was rejected or waitlisted by twenty colleges. Instead of opening Google Meet to go to calculus, I would drive out to Oakland Beach and stare out at the water and wonder what the hell I was going to do next.
Then, I got accepted to Mount Holyoke. After reading my acceptance letter I immediately ran into my mother’s room, curled up in her lap and sobbed with relief. I don’t know what made the admissions office take a chance on a basket case like me, but I am endlessly glad that they did. Within weeks of getting that letter, I had reached out to former Editor-in-Chief Declan Langton ’22 over email to ask about joining Mount Holyoke News’ staff. Once I began writing stories as a staff writer for the news section that fall, I knew I had found my calling. The community and support MHN gave to fragile, late-teens me renewed my passion for writing, something I thought I had lost forever. Thank you for saving me, MHN.
Shortly afterwards began my four-year Machiavellian plan to one day become editor-in-chief, which somehow worked. While many dreams fail to live up to what we imagined them to be, being editor-in-chief this past year has been every bit as fulfilling as I hoped. I am endlessly grateful for all of our amazing staff members, whose talent, skill and dedication have made me fall in love with journalism all over again every time I sit down to edit.
That magnet poem is still there on the filing cabinet, despite it all. Even though I am nowhere near the same girl that wrote it. Even though sometimes a word gets filched to make another poem and I have to selfishly steal it back. Even though a few weeks ago, I accidentally knocked the word magnets off the filing cabinet door and they scattered like exploding stars at my feet. I knelt down with shaking hands and raked all the battered words into a little poem-pile, then painstakingly rewrote the stanza from memory. Someday that poem will be taken down for good, and it’ll disappear into my memory just like all the 4 a.m. publishing nights and Slack memes and jokes the publishing team told one December night in the Texas Roadhouse parking lot. It’s been hard accepting that I have to find a new dream, but I feel incredibly lucky to have loved this newspaper so much that it hurts to say goodbye.
As much as I will miss MHN, I’m tired of looking at spreadsheets and ready to pass the torch. Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27, you are quite literally the perfect editor-in-chief successor. I trust you to continue fighting for MHN’s integrity, independence and proper em-dash usage. Rachel Adler ’26, thank you for stepping up and being the sole reason this paper prints. You’re like the publishing team’s Tom Brady. (Please never retire.) Emily Tarinelli ’25 and Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ’25, my fellow battle-hardened MHN seniors, thank you for being such amazing friends, colleagues and confidants through it all. Sophie Soloway ’23, Emma Watkins ’23, Ali Meizels ’23 and Mariam Keita ’24, thank you all for showing me what kind of cool MHN senior I could aspire to be. Jendayi Leben-Martin ’24 and Eliška Jacob ’24, thank you for the sage older-sister-style advice that still rings out in my head daily. To Kate Vavra ’26, Cal Smith ’26, Gabriella Rodriguez ’27, Abigail McKeon ’26, Aoife Paul Healy ’26 and Scarlett Han ’25, thank you for bringing nothing but your best to our Executive Board this year and never once letting me down when I needed you most.
To Annabelle Katz ’25, Jules Camargo ’25, Sarah Bell ’25 and Becks Anacheka-Nasemann ’25: Thank you for being my best friends since our first semester at Mount Holyoke, and for putting up with my endless newspaper talk. One day when we’re not all broke we’ll take that postgrad roadtrip/hike/vacation we’ve been amorphously planning for months now <3
MHN, I gave you everything I had. At least one article for every section (including horoscopes), aching fits of laughter, all my sleepless nights. I’ll be headed back to Warwick this summer to begin my first full-time job in journalism as a staff writer for the Warwick Beacon: The very same newspaper where I learned to love journalism as a fifteen-year-old reporting intern. I wish nothing but the best to our next publishing team; I’ll still be reading, so mind the Oxford commas.
Emily Tarinelli — Managing Editor of Content
How much of a nerd am I, you ask? Well, I daydreamed about joining Mount Holyoke News as soon as I committed to Mount Holyoke College. Before I even got to campus, I had already navigated to the “Apply to MHN” section of MHN’s website, where I obsessively watched a short promo video showcasing MHN's Publishing Night: The evening spent designing the paper, making final edits and sending it off to print. I watched that video on repeat, eager to be one of the reporters scribbling edits in the copy margins while sipping coffee from an MHN mug. It was my first glimpse of the Newsroom, a location that would soon become a staple of my time at Mount Holyoke.
Four years later, I have my mug, I make my edits, and I’m always in the Newsroom. In Fall 2021, I joined the paper as a staff writer for the sports section. I chose Sports because I wanted to write about gender issues, and I was also a varsity swimmer, so the sports section seemed the best fit. As I walked away from my first pitch meeting, story assigned and notepad in hand, I felt invigorated. At the time, MHN published on a weekly basis, and from there I produced articles almost every week. It thrilled me. There’s nothing quite like the adrenaline that comes with a fast-paced news environment.
From there, I went on to become Sports editor in Spring 2022, and continued to lead the section throughout my sophomore and junior years. Somehow I still couldn’t get enough of MHN, so in July 2023, I took on an additional role as a copy editor. Then, after my semester abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland, I returned to MHN as the Managing Editor of Content, where I have had the privilege of working with a team of talented, passionate section editors to generate quality, campus-centric content.
My time at MHN would not have been the same without many incredible people. Thank you to Gigi Picard ’22, my former teammate, first editor and eventual co-editor. She was the first person to welcome me to the Newsroom, and supported me as a scared little first-year on both the swimming and diving team and MHN. Evie Zahner ’26 and Kate Vavra ’26, the sports editors who came after me, put their all into keeping the sports section alive. Working with them made reporting for Sports one of my favorite parts of MHN. I always loved a good MHN rant with my teammate and former copy editor Kamlyn Yosick ’25 before swim practice, and my late night Newsroom study sessions would not be the same without Books Editor Isabel Dunn ’27. I will forever think fondly of Publishing Night with Rachel Adler ’26, Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 and Gabriella Rodriguez ’27, where many a goofy InDesign draft made me laugh so hard I cried. I have always been inspired by my fellow senior Jesse Hausknecht Brown ’25’s immense contributions to the growing multimedia aspects of our newspaper, both in layout and in audio. Lastly, my time at MHN would have been incomplete without Editor-in-Chief Tara Monastesse ’25, who I think would sell her soul to MHN if given the chance. I am in constant awe of her passion for journalism and her drive to succeed, and it has been a joy working alongside her and the rest of the Executive Board in producing this important publication.
Mount Holyoke News taught me many things: To take initiative, to ask difficult questions, to work on a deadline, to dig for a story, to always set up multiple recordings for your interviews lest you forget to save the audio and embarrassingly request to talk to your source again, but most of all, it has inspired a sense of purpose in me.
There’s a purple tapestry draped on the Newsroom wall reading, “Don’t Give Up the News.” As I send my last article off to print, it’s time for me to give up Mount Holyoke News, and enter the next chapter of my journalistic career. In September 2025, I will move out west to pursue my master’s degree in journalism at Stanford University. I know that soon enough, it will be time for my next article, my next interview, my next pitch. Stories won’t wait to be covered, no matter where I go.
This newspaper, and its people, have meant so much to me over these last four years, and have been a constant throughout my time at Mount Holyoke. While this publication marks the end of my time at MHN, I know that my fellow seniors and I leave it in good hands.
Jesse Hausknecht-Brown – Former MEL / Features Editor
Entering my first semester of college at 17 years old, I was planning on switching my life around: No more newspapers, back to the swimming pool. The previous three years had been marked by my commitment to student journalism in a hostile high school environment where our newspaper often became the site of political debate and bigotry. I was tired and ready to leave it behind. However, by the time I was on campus, I had realized it was not in the stars for me to return to swimming (awesome Emily Tarinelli ’25 has been holding it down as our resident student journalist x varsity swimmer) and I wasn’t sure where I was going to fit in at school. Luckily, I received an email in early September 2021 from Declan Langton ’22, who, in cahoots with Mariam Keita ’24, inquired about my interest in writing for the features section of the Mount Holyoke News. For my freshman self, personally receiving an email from a college newspaper’s editor-in-chief was definitely a Very Cool Thing. I, clearly, was never actually planning to leave journalism behind. This email was compelling given that Mariam and I had gone to high school together, worked on the paper there and somehow both wound up in Western Massachusetts. I became a Features editor that first semester and found my first home on campus, my first community, my first set of role models and mentors.
I was reunited with an old best friend, InDesign. As Managing Editor of Layout during my sophomore year, I got to experience the massive joy and utter exhaustion of printing a college newspaper weekly. The late Thursday nights spent with the publishing team (huge shoutout here to Sophie Soloway ’23, Ali Meizels ’23, Emma Watkins ’23, Lenox Johnson ’25 and Lydia Eno) were some of the best parts of my college experience. I found a little niche on campus that reminded me of my family: People who laughed at punctuation-related jokes and debated the connotations of different headline options, who were dependable and fun and loved to giggle as much as they loved to write. These publishing nights structured my entire weeks; no matter what else was going on, I would always be in the Newsroom on Thursday night into the early hours of Friday morning. The detail-oriented nature of page layout was grounding and confidence building. The methodical nature of checking, double-checking and triple-checking the miniscule space between lines of text was soothing even as we stressed about how everything was going to fit in the paper’s eight pages.
I carried my color coordinated final checks pages into my junior year. With a new publishing team, we created new traditions and switched to publishing every other week. Texas Roadhouse has never made my stomach feel so weird as when I was there during some liminal time that we managed to pull out of thin air on publishing nights. Jendayi Leben-Martin ’24 mediated an HR intervention so iconic and hilarious, it is memorialized on the wall of my dorm room (shoutout Tara Monastesse ’25, the comedian you are). Additionally, Eliška Jacobs ’24 taught me how delicious a diet coke with lemon is, and for that I will be forever indebted to you. That semester, I learned what it feels like to not leave Blanch for 15 hours, which is more fun than it sounds. If you are working on publishing a newspaper all night, you can catch the athletes at breakfast in the morning!
Senior year rolled around and I passed my well-worn MEL baton to the lovely Rachel Adler ’26, who I have to thank for bringing MHN back to print this fall. While sophomore year me would never have imagined not being on the publishing team as a senior, I am so incredibly proud and happy to see someone so skilled (and as obsessive about spacing as I am) lead the layout team through this school year. There is a kind of peace that comes with taking a small step away; I get to see something I love so much be taken care of by a new team of wonderful and talented editors, many of whom are going to carry MHN into the next school year. Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27, Paige Comeau ’26 and Kate Vavra ’26: I am so thrilled to have you lead MHN as Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor of Content and Publisher next year, you all are so dedicated and wise and funny and I know you are going to do a spectacular job. To all the current Executive Board members: You guys may not know it, but I think the world of y’all :) Thanks for taking care of the little newspaper that so strongly shaped my first three years of college. To next year’s board, I know you are going to continue to hold it down and, Kate, I am so excited to read your emails from Queens, New York (where I will be getting a job very soon?).
Ali, Sophie, Emma, Mariam and Declan: Thanks for being such awesome role models and helping me relearn what a newsroom can look like. I am forever grateful!
MHN seniors Tara and Emily, I am so honored to call you my friends and colleagues! You know how I’m always so stressed about the state of journalism in the hellish world we live in? Knowing there are about to be two more cool, compassionate, chic reporters out there doing the hard work helps me sleep at night. I’m so excited to see everything you accomplish and Tara, please keep sending me journalism related memes. I’m not super sure what I would do without them.
Future MHN people, ideally I would love to not have my identity stolen re: logging into the server, but you know it makes me feel special so if push comes to shove on a publishing night, you know what to do <3
