About the Rustler

In the fall of 1966 Golden West College began its first semester and began providing a higher education for the Huntington Beach community and greater Orange County. Along with providing an excellent education, Golden West College also provided its students with a campus newspaper — The Western Star.

The student-run newspaper ran successfully for 52 years and was read by tens of thousands of students and faculty. Unfortunately, during the 2010s community colleges around the nation began seeing a decline in students enrolling in journalism courses or pursuing journalism as a degree. Presumably with the emergence of marketing degrees focusing on social media, traditional print media dramatically declined.

It has been 8 years since the last publication of The Western Star and the students and faculty are yearning to know what is happening around campus. The Rustler is once again a student-run newspaper, covering campus news, sports, clubs, and the people who make our community what it is.

Our mission is to give students a voice and keep the campus informed with honest, independent reporting. Every story is written, edited, and published by students.

We also believe the newsroom shouldn't belong to students alone. The Rustler welcomes professors and faculty as writers too — not as authorities given special treatment, but as contributors on equal footing with everyone else. A faculty member's piece goes through the same editorial process as any student's: our student editors critique it, fact-check it, and make sure it lines up with our standards and policies. If changes are needed to make it publishable, they're made — no different than if a student had written it.

Take sports as an example. We could ask the athletic director or a head coach for a quick written statement and run it as a snippet. But there's something better than a snippet. When a coach writes their own piece, they get a real platform — a way to speak directly to the campus and organically build their own audience. We'd rather hear a coach's genuine excitement about the season ahead, in their own words, than a few sentences passed through a reporter. That's the kind of voice this paper can give people.

Interested in joining the staff or pitching a story? Reach out to our editorial team — we're always looking for new writers, photographers, and editors, students and faculty alike.