On November 3, 2025, I, along with 14 other Abington Friends School journalists, had the opportunity to attend this year’s fall conference put on by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). The conference is an opportunity for high school journalists to spend a whole day on an Ivy League campus, learning about the many different disciplines of journalism, how to continue journalistic work into college and beyond, and even just how to understand the news as a whole.
This year was the 85th annual fall conference and the 100th anniversary of the CSPA, but the Blue and White’s first (but hopefully not last) time there. Though a small group of AFS students attended the National Student Journalism Convention in Philadelphia last year, that was just a matter of fortunate timing as it moves cities every year. The CSPA’s, in contrast, is reliably at Columbia University.
This conference was an experience I’m not soon to forget. Though I spent a lot of time stumbling through the unfamiliar college campus, I still managed to find my way to an event for every 45-minute time slot.
5:00 AM: I rolled out of bed to get to Jenkintown-Wyncote train station by 5:45. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, due to a mix of apprehension for the coming day and my cat bothering me.
I had gotten all of my things ready the night before to make getting to the station easier in the morning, so most of the morning’s preparation was just making sure I was ready for the day and then leaving.
Rainy Korein ‘27, another attendee, said she woke up an hour earlier, “got dressed, walked halfway to [her] local train station, realized [she] had more time than [she] thought, ran back home to get [her] charger, ran to the train station and got on the train that got [her] to 30th Street Station, and had a mini packaged coffee on the train there.”
When asked if she would do anything differently in retrospect, she said, “I probably would have remembered my charger in the first place and also probably had time to do my makeup at home. I was very panicked.”
6:00 AM: We departed via SEPTA for 30th Street Station.
As Solomon Fishman ‘26 said, “When we got on the train at Jenkintown-Wyncote, there were a significant number of empty seats and we were all able to sit in a seat. But as the train continued making stops, many people were boarding [it] and there were not enough seats… As more people got on the train and there were no seats available, the entire aisle was filled with a line of people, eventually so much so that they had to send passengers that were standing in the aisle to a different car.”
6:45 AM: When we got to 30th Street Station, it was darker and emptier than I’ve ever seen it. The full group got together, and we took an elevator down to the Amtrak train we would take to New York.
8:45 AM: We arrived at Penn Station in New York and headed towards the subway we were going to take to Columbia University. It was crowded, but that’s expected of a New York subway.
9:45 AM: The 17 of us rushed to Columbia University, only slightly late. I and a number of other AFS students attended a presentation on investigative reporting.
I learned a lot about options for information gathering, how to conduct interviews, and some of the legal mumbo-jumbo about the stuff. It was packed, so we had to sit in the back of the room on the floor, but it was still a valuable experience.
10:30 AM: The next presentation I went to was one on fake news, which Sam Calandra-Jayne ‘26 also attended. The speaker used an acronym— currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose (CRAAP)— to explain the things you need to look out for when you get your news. It was a new perspective on fake news.
Calandra-Jayne said, “I think that, a lot of times that people ask us to talk about fake news, it’s a lot about the grammar. Fake news is more than blatant. Sometimes it’s about misleading data or other things.”
11:15 AM: Lunch break. I went to a nearby restaurant (that was very popular among CSPA attendees) and got wonton soup. I forgot to get any utensils, so I took a plastic spoon from a cafe on campus.
12:30 PM: This presentation was more of a one-man panel, as the speaker was simply answering questions about collegiate-and-beyond journalism and communications work.
1:15 PM: I stumbled around campus for some time trying to find the building and floor where the next presentation I wanted to go to was. I eventually tracked it down with the help of Helene Mogul ‘27 and Molly Taylor ‘28, who went to a different presentation in the same building.
The presentation I eventually found was The ABCs of L-I-B-E-L, a run-down on the laws surrounding libel (defamation through print) and how to publish information in a non-libelous way.
2:15 PM: The next presentation happened to be in the same room. It was a panel about covering protests as journalists and not getting in trouble with police, especially applicable in college journalism and beyond.
The panelists were a journalist from Barnard College and the lawyer from the previous presentation, and they went over examples from Columbia University that caused a lot of worry for journalists. It had quite a bit of AFS representation, with a decently large percentage of our group being there.
3:00 PM: We regrouped at the building we entered through, got a photo of all of us together, and headed back to the subway.
3:45 PM: After getting to Penn Station, we had a bit of time to kill before the train arrived. I took the time to get some late-in-the-day coffee because the 5:00 wake-up was getting to me, and I intended to do some more homework on the train.
4:30 PM: I did not do any more homework on the train.
6:30 PM: We arrived at 30th Street Station, and the group planning to go back towards Jenkintown-Wyncote station departed.
7:15 PM: I arrived at Jenkintown-Wyncote station and drove home.
7:30 PM: After I got home, I used an hour or two to catch up on work, but I was so drained from the day I couldn’t really get much done.
