Our Nation's Founding
Happy Independence Day. Each year on the Fourth of July, we celebrate everything that makes living in the United States of America great. Every one of us is blessed and fortunate to be in a country where we have enumerated rights including, but not limited to, freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and conscience as well as the right to vote and the preservation of powers not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution, for the states and people.
Our Declaration of Independence from a tyrannical government includes the immortal phrase, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These words ring ever so true today as we navigate how much power the people allow the government to wield in an ever-evolving, technology-reliant society.
This Independence Day, we encourage our readers to re-read our nation's founding documents and rediscover the importance of their legacies.
The Liberty Jacket's Founding
The Liberty Jacket was founded by Christopher Kitchens and Nathaniel Greve as first-years in February of 2021 to give students from all perspectives a platform to articulate their ideas and publish to a website recognized throughout campus.
It wasn't long before they recruited Micah Paul Veillon, opinions editor from the official school newspaper, to be the Editor-in-chief.
Our Year in Review
Now, at the conclusion of The Liberty Jacket's inaugural year, we would like to reflect on our successes. Since its inception, The Jacket has published 40 articles from a dozen writers. Our site has been visited over 3400 times by 1846 unique readers. We have readers from 47 States, with the most popular after Georgia being Florida, Virginia, California, and Texas. After the United States, The Liberty Jacket has been read from the United Kingdom, France, India, Canada, and Brazil, followed by 26 other countries.
The most successful article of the year was "Thank You NCAA: A Mother's Response to the Women's Swimming Championship.” This exclusive interview given in the wake of the controversy surrounding Lia Thomas’s competition in the women’s NCAA swimming championship was read nationwide and was even republished by Campus Reform.
"Matt Walsh, Michael Oakeshott, and Jean-Paul Sartre" by Micah Paul Veillon preceded the thought-provoking speech made by Matt Walsh on campus that was strongly protested by many students.
"Call Gov Kemp: SGA Encourages Students to be Instruments of the Abortion Cause" by Angela Hill explained a by-laws violation committed by the Student Government Association upon their publication of a "Reproductive Health and Advocacy" guide that did not provide fair consideration to the viewpoint of one side of a national debate. The guide has now been removed from the SGA Facebook and website.
"The Freshmen Housing Dilemma: East or West Campus" by Nathaniel Greve introduced nearly two hundred new readers from the Class of 2026 to the website. The article shed light on the most common question among incoming freshmen: which side of campus is the best to live on.
"Diving Deep into the Topic of Transgender Athletes Competing in Women's Sports" by Josh Polevoy featured interviews with a former D1 athlete and a transgender college student reflecting on Lia Thomas’s competing in the women’s NCAA swim division. Many readers reported that the interviewees' responses were surprising.
"SGA Presidential Platform Takeaways" by Logan Putnam objectively broke down the platforms of President and Vice-President candidates for the Student Government election and discussed the problem of increasing student apathy in the organization.
"Tech's Declassified Freshman Survival Guide" was a collaborative article where current students provided advice to new students on how to remain grounded in their values and be successful in their academic endeavors at Georgia Tech.
What's Next
Providing a more suitable format for students to discuss ideas and come to a better understanding of those who think differently than them is the essential goal of The Liberty Jacket. We are constantly striving to foster civil and productive debate on campus, give a voice to students who often go unheard, and provide an outlet for students of all political outlooks to articulate their position and engage with differing opinions more honestly. You can help us build a better future with deeper conversations in several ways.
In this coming year, we hope to grow our writing staff and article output significantly. Writing for TLJ as a student is simple. Fill out our ‘Join Us’ form to declare your intent to become a writer. For those wishing to publish one time, you can submit an article or write a letter to the editor through our contact page.
Finally, for our readers, the best way to support us is to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. Each time we publish a new article, we send our subscribers a link to their email so that they can be the first to read it. Sharing our articles with fellow students, family, and friends helps us expand our reach.
Thank you to all who have supported this project. We are so proud of what we have accomplished together this year, and are looking forward to even greater achievements in the coming year. //
TLJ Editors