Editor’s note: The Daily’s editorial department acknowledges that this article is premised on a conflict of interest. This article is a special feature for Commencement 2024 that does not represent the Daily’s standard journalistic practices.
A former executive arts editor of the Daily, senior Maeve Hagerty sat down with current executive arts editor Nate Hall to discuss Hagerty’s experiences with the Daily and reflect on her four years at Tufts. Hagerty, who grew up in Bethesda, Md., is a history and political science major with a minor in English. Hagerty has been writing for the Daily since her first semester at Tufts in fall of 2020.
Hagerty reflected on how she ended up joining the Daily as a first-year.
“When I came in freshman year, I wanted to be an English major, so I knew I wanted to get involved with the writing scene on campus,” Hagerty said. “I met Megan [Szostak], who was … at that point the arts exec, and she recommended that I join the Daily.”
Hagerty immediately bonded with Szostak, who also took history classes and played viola in the Tufts Symphony Orchestra. With Szostak’s encouragement, she became more involved in the Daily. Although the Daily operated virtually during her freshman year, Hagerty still felt like a part of the community.
“It was one of the few campus organizations that was really still functioning, even though it was all remote,” Hagerty said. “I started off by writing a column my first semester — it was all about music — and then my second semester I became an assistant editor, and I started writing more articles, and I worked my way up.”
As a first-year, Hagerty wrote “Maeve’s Music Mondays,” a column that explored trends in the world of music, but she quickly branched out into album reviews, television think pieces and on-campus stories. After spending two semesters as an editor, Hagerty served as executive arts editor during the spring of her sophomore year. Hagerty described her experience as an arts executive, sharing the highlights and challenges of the position.
“It was an amazing experience. It was probably the hardest position I’ve ever held, partly because of the time commitment,” Hagerty said. “Also feeling like you’re carrying the weight of the Daily on your shoulders is a little bit intimidating. But that also came with a flipside of feeling a lot of pride in the work that you’re doing. … It’s a very nice feeling to see all of that come to be.”
Hagerty describes the close-knit community she found in the Daily during her sophomore year.
“There were a lot of people in the section my sophomore year who I’m actually still friends with outside of the Daily,” Hagerty said. “So I think that especially within my own section, it was a really nice way to meet people but also just to interact with people I would not normally have met otherwise.”
Outside of the Daily, Hagerty has kept busy at Tufts. She is the principal violist in the Tufts Symphony Orchestra and has participated in theater department productions as a stage manager. She is also a Sex Health Representative, a Point Writing Fellow for the StAAR center and the 2022 recipient of the English department’s Morse Hamilton Fiction Prize. She spent her junior year abroad at the University of Oxford and will be returning to Oxford in the fall to research modern Irish history, a topic that she explored in her senior thesis.
Of the 30-plus articles she’s written for the Arts section, Hagerty singled out a few of her favorites, including interviews with singers Ella Jane and Veronica Stewart-Frommer of Melt, both of whom attended Tufts, and a breaking news article announcing the Spring Fling lineup in 2022. Reflecting on her own experience, Hagerty encouraged younger arts writers to be proactive and cover as many on-campus and local events as possible.
“You should definitely keep an eye on those things, because some of them end up being your favorite things to write about,” Hagerty said.
Hagerty’s commitment to the Daily and the arts scene on campus is admirable, and aspiring arts writers can look to her as a model for their own journeys at Tufts.
