About Us
The Campus Citizen is IU Indianapolis’ only student-run independent media outlet, serving the IUI, PUI, and broader Indianapolis communities since 2011. Originally founded at IUPUI, The Campus Citizen continues its mission for honest, reliable and transformative journalism following the 2024 split of IUPUI into IU Indianapolis and Purdue University Indianapolis. We cover the topic areas of campus, culture, politics, sports, and opinion through written articles. Beyond the written word, we also serve as a distributor of other student media, including podcasts, photography, and videos.
Our Mission
Through our journalistic work, we aim to inform the students of IUI and PUI while also providing a platform for the diverse voices within these communities. We are committed to producing thoughtful, student-driven content that reflects the experiences and issues that matter most to our campus audience.
History
The Sagamore
The Campus Citizen traces its legacy as an independent student voice to 1969, when the consolidation of Indiana University-Indianapolis and Purdue University-Indianapolis created the need for a unified student newspaper. As a result, The Sagamore was born in 1971, out of The Component, an offshoot of Purdue West Lafeyette’s The Exponent, and Onomatopoeia, IU-Indianapolis’s combined student newspaper.
Sherry Bennett was the first editor of the paper, whose name meant “lesser-chief,” signifying the important but somewhat less-dignified role of IUPUI compared to its parent institutions.
A year later, genesis Magazine was born on the blossoming campus.
Early Troubles
These were troubled times, but the nascent publication thrived by reporting on long-standing issues of importance to the student body. Early on, much of this included inefficiency in the merger of the two schools.
Class requirements were changed. Enrollment statuses were altered. Students in certain programs were moved to a different school without warning. All of this on top of infrastructure issues including a lack of parking space and two campus locations in the city.
An Independent Voice
In the 1980s, the Sagamore investigated systemic issues with housing. Dormitories were destroyed. Lockefield gardens residents were evicted, and their apartments were turned into athlete housing for the Pan-American games. All of this as the campus continued to expand and take a more central role in the city of Indianapolis.
As this happened, The Sagamore successfully defended its existence as an independent voice from IUPUI administrative overreach.
“A free press must also be a responsible press, and that a responsible press makes a maximum effort to be accurate in the presenting of facts, objective in the reporting of events, impartial in the handling of disputed issues, it also seeks to exercise considered judgment in arriving at editorial positions, to take every precaution against the printing of libelous material and to be governed by the canons of good taste, holding the public interest paramount when determining what should or should not be printed” -The Sagamore (1971)
The Student Union Building, replaced by the Campus Center in 2008, played a central role in campus life and student protests throughout this time, as faculty, administrators, and students attempted to build a sense of belonging and unity in what was, and largely remains, a commuter school. And the Sagamore expressed the angry voices of students when it was torn down in the early 2000s.
A Period of Transition
Around the time of the Great Recession, administrative overreach and the high costs of local print journalism factored into the paper's shutdown in 2009.
Two years later, The Campus Citizen is proud to pick up their forgotten mantle of independent, investigative journalism.
“Thus, this newspaper is dedicated to the goal of providing effective communication, information, ideas, [and] criticism.… That the student’s world does not end at the boundaries of the campus, but also that news and comment of immediate importance and general interest to the University readership should have priority on the available space.” -The Sagamore (1971)
To explore our full history of coverage, visit our archive at https://digitalcollections.iu.edu/collections/k643cj69z?locale=en
Who We Serve
On July 1, 2024, the IUPUI split was finalized. As the two universities, now Indiana University Indianapolis (IUI) and Purdue University in Indianapolis (PUI), launched into an unprecedented era.
Although The Campus Citizen exists as an organization under IUI, we are still an independent news organization, and pledge to cover news that is relevant to both IUI and PUI students, as well as news that is relevant to the wider Indianapolis community. Since our inception in 1971 as The Sagamore, we have prided ourselves on being committed to serving our local community and providing coverage for students, created by student journalists.
Throughout its short tenure, The Campus Citizen has been able to uphold journalistic values by speaking out on corruption and unfair treatment, while also highlighting the diversity and community that make Indianapolis so unique.
After transitioning to an all-online media source in the Fall of 2015, and finally transitioning to the current site in Spring of 2022, we have been able to cut costs and market efficiently through social media. But our work is never over. We hope to continue growing to accompany the diverse audience on our campus of nearly 30,000 and ensure that new voices are able to be heard. All the while, never forgetting who we serve.
You.
“It seems altogether appropriate that a newborn newspaper, and particularly one leaking to unify the roles played by two preceding publications, identity the mission of the newspaper and set forth the policies to be followed in its attempt to fulfill that mission, that service to its readers is the primary purpose of any student press.” - The Sagamore (1971)
Site Conservation
Journalists act with the goal of informing and preserving our history and perspectives through writing and photography. The best way for us to be able to continue to reflect on our history as an organization is ensuring that our previous articles and editions are preserved long term.
In the summer of 2024, we worked with Denise Rayman, Director of Distincitive Collection, Stephen Towne, Associate University Archivist, and Emily Nejako, Digital Archives Processing Coordinator, to ensure that the content on our current website would continue to be preserved not unlike the physical editions from earlier decades which had already been scanned.
Now, all previous physical editions of The Sagamore and The Campus Citizen can be found on the IUI Digital Archive . All digitial archives we have released on this website can be found using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine if anything were to happen to this site.
Sponsors
In order for us to keep providing students and members of the Indianapolis community with high quality, timely content, The Campus Citizen has taken on financial sponsors to ensure our site is able to be maintained long term. We would like to thank our sponsors for their contributions to our organization, ensuring that we are able to keep providing IUI, PUI, and the greater Indianapolis community with quality jouranlistic reporting.
IU Indianapolis Liberal Arts Student Council
Denise Rayman
2025-2026 Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief: Abby Godsen
Campus Editor: Salsabil F. Qaddoura
Culture and Politics Editor: Melanie Contreras
Social Media Editor: Taylor Goebes
Copy Editor: Cristina Bueno
Copy Editor: Ian Janke