My name is Mikaila Kraus, and I worked as a reporter and a producer for UCentral News, The University of Central Oklahoma’s student broadcast. As of Nov. 18, 2025, I have resigned from my position.
When I came to UCO in 2024, it was at a point in my life where I felt directionless and confused. I had an Associate in Arts and a realization that I did not want to pursue a career in illustration or animation after all. When I reported on my first story, it felt like shifting into the right gear for the first time in years.
My mother also attended the University of Central Oklahoma in the 1990s. She worked on the staff of The Vista at a time when female reporters were not made to feel welcome in the newsroom. I like to think that I am very like my mother, and I inherited a lot of the qualities that make me a good reporter and writer from her. This is why even though I was more involved in broadcasting for a long time, I always kept up with what the print side of the newsroom was doing.
I admired the students who worked on The Vista – many of whom are now my colleagues on The Independent View – deeply. It was clear to me that they were a passionate, close-knit group. A few of the staff members who had also been involved with UCentral became my close friends. I knew how difficult it was for them after George Lang, the previous advisor for The Vista, left. I watched them rise above those challenges and deliver an exceptional weekly newspaper. I knew how important that standard of quality was to everyone who worked on the paper during the 2024-2025 school year. I was lucky enough to be able to contribute two articles of my own during the Spring Semester, and those were some of my proudest moments as a journalist. It felt good to be surrounded by people who were all working towards a common goal.
Because of all this, I had a keen interest in the paper’s future.
I, along with other members of UCentral, was asked in August of 2025 by students who had worked on The Vista during the 2024-2025 school year to attend a meeting held by the Student Media Advisory Board. This meeting was about The Vista’s print publication being ended by the university, and how the university was withholding funds from both UCentral and The Vista until the Board gave in to the university’s demands. We were also asked to send emails to members of the Board protesting against this decision. I did both. I was the only UCentral member to do either.
I will be the first one to admit that I have always been a sensitive person. I can’t count the number of times I got in trouble as a child for bursting into tears over the smallest issue. Because of this, in my adulthood I have frequently let things that have hurt me go for the sake of not inconveniencing or irritating other people. I do not enjoy conflict and I try to make it a point not to get involved in drama.
The reason why I made an exception to this when it came to how the university and the Mass Communication Department treated The Vista and the students who worked on it last year was because that was not drama to me. That was a group of students being abused and mistreated by an institution and a department that was supposed to protect them.
It’s not that big of a deal, you’re acting like it’s the worst thing in the world, that’s life, if this is the worst thing that’s happened to you, you’ve lived a soft life, and I envy you.
Those were all things said to me by other students. Eventually I just stopped speaking out about the situation. After it became clear anyone who was vocally against the print ban wouldn’t be welcome working on the paper, there didn’t seem to be much point.
When I was invited to work for The Independent View, it felt like being thrown a lifeline.
The Mass Communication department is doing a great disservice to students who are genuinely interested in journalism as a career. Broadcast and print journalism are combined into the same major, Professional Media. Students are not taught how to make Open Records Requests, or that Oklahoma is a one party consent state when it comes to recording. Students working for The Vista and UCentral are put under an immense amount of pressure to pump out content so we can prove our “worth” to the university, in the hope that they won’t make further cuts to our program. This has led to a severe decrease in quality in both entities. Students are not required or encouraged to follow journalistic ethics when reporting, and are sometimes even encouraged to engage in conflicts of interest like reporting on events and organizations they are involved in. Worst of all, students are now being taught to go about journalism fearing retaliation.
I had someone at an event tell me recently that if I was scared about the potential retaliation a story might net me, I was in the wrong profession. That person was completely right. Journalism is the only profession protected by the First Amendment. Journalists constantly have to engage in legal battles to protect their ability to do their jobs. But student journalists at UCO are being taught to bend the knee and play nice.
This is why I have been increasingly disillusioned and disengaged with my role in UCentral. I feel it is no longer an environment that encourages student journalists to engage in their profession in anything other than a surface level way. A news organization that does not prioritize quality over quantity, that doesn’t view the act of journalism as a service to the community and makes decisions based on fear is not one I can ethically be a part of.
I spoke with some friends recently about what happened. I told them what I think is the crux of the situation – the students this happened to are good people. They didn’t deserve to have that happen to them. I think that applies to me as well. I did not deserve to be treated the way I was. I did not deserve to be treated like a fool and a liar. I should not have had to deal with my own university working against me during my final year of college. I should not be afraid to tell the truth of what happened to me.
What happened to my mother at UCO in the 90s, what happened to my friends last year when George Lang left and what happened to all of us on The Independent View this semester are all symptoms of the same disease. It is the disease of a department that is underfunded, understaffed and has no idea what to do with itself.
