Long before Tik Tok, Google, KRCU, KFVS TV, heck even KFVS radio, Southeast students were kept informed by their campus newspaper, The Arrow. Our paper has been dependably reporting the local, national, and international news, sports, opinions, and features from a college perspective since 1911; making it one of the longest-running student newspapers in the country.
To celebrate the university’s birthday, let’s talk about The Arrow.
Since that first printed edition on February 1, 1911, the newspaper – known originally as the Capaha Arrow – has kept Southeast up to date and trained generations of journalists.
Back then The Arrow was a pretty modest enterprise, consisting of a cover page and two columns. By 1916, the paper grew to four columns and then five in 1925 to keep up with Roaring Twenties. Reporting staff expanded too, adding photographers in 1937, to minimize duplicating pictures from the Sagamore yearbook. Coverage remained broad, but reporters crafted articles highlighting how the days’ biggest headlines – World War II or Vietnam – impacted the university and community.
Consider, for example, in the aftermath of Watergate in the mid-1970s, investigative journalists at The Arrow – following in Woodward and Bernstein’s footsteps – scrutinized irregularities in Student Government voting. Suspecting that students could “vote early and vote often” at multiple polling places around campus without being checked, Arrow reporters confirmed their suspicions by casting multiple write-in ballots for TESBI (This Election Should Be Invalidated). Their front-page expose in May 1976 hit the wire and was eventually picked up by the Southeast Missourian and other mass media.
