Texas A&M Alumni and Students React To 129 Year School Tradition Ending

A Texas A&M tradition will be coming to an end after 129 years.

According to the Texas Tribune, the student newspaper will be ending its weekly print edition after the end of this semester.

The Battalion is currently online as well as in print, but after the spring semester ends the weekly newspaper will be online only.

The President of the University, M. Katherine Banks, said that eliminating the printed version would focus the journalism department in a digital direction.

“Times have changed and we want The Battalion and others interested in journalism as a profession to be at the forefront when they graduate,” said Banks.

The paper's editor-in-chief said the change does not address the paper's future.

“We’re still going to look into the merits of the administration being able to stop us from printing at all, but now we have a little more time before they want to implement that,” said Myranda Campanella, The Batallion editor-in-chief.

Some students and alumni did have mixed views of the paper going digital but the main problem with the decision to go digital was mainly the journalism department was not informed of the decision till the rest of the campus was.

“We were all blindsided,” said Angelique Gammon, a journalism instructor at the university. “No one seemed to know that this was going to come. There was no problem that we knew of. We were all shocked.”

Gammon said she was reassured by the university president that the paper would be allowed to be printed for the rest of the semester, but she stated concerns about the paper's independence in the future.