As a female former managing editor of The Daily, I applaud Medill Asst. Dean Roger Boye for recognizing that something is wrong at the campus paper. But, at least in the past five years, the problem has not been a glass ceiling that prevents women from assuming the position of editor in chief.

In the fall of 1996, a slew of overeager freshmen – most of us female – joined The Daily before New Student Week had even ended. We all wanted to be editor in chief someday, and we volunteered for any assignment the editors would give us. We did not realize we were a dying breed at the Medill School of Journalism.

By Spring Quarter of my sophomore year, I was The Daily’s city editor. For six consecutive quarters, I had spent anywhere from 40 to 80 hours a week in the newsroom. More times than I care to recall, I went there straight from class and did not get back to my dorm until the sun was rising the next morning. Sometimes I did not get back to my dorm – and did not sleep – at all.

I was no longer afraid that I would not be selected as editor in chief the following year. I was afraid that I would be.

I decided to remove myself from the running by signing up to spend two quarters of my junior year studying abroad. A few months after my arrival in Spain, Jeremy Mullman was selected as the next editor in chief. I thought I was through with The Daily.

Then one day my host mother told me I had a call. It was Jeremy, begging me to come back as his managing editor for the first two quarters of my senior year. I agreed – not because I wanted to pad my resume, but because someone needed to put out the paper.

Every year, fewer aspiring journalists are joining The Daily. Those who do have to work ever harder to compensate. They are burning out and quitting. The paper can barely find enough people to sit on its editorial board, much less report, copy edit and design enough stories to fill its pages each day. The Daily no longer has a staff of more than 100. The total number of regular contributors is less than half that. And, in recent years, virtually the entire production has been the work of fewer than a dozen.

Why? Medill’s admissions standards have changed. The students getting in are now those with top grades and SAT scores – not necessarily those who are passionate about journalism. The students who are most likely to devote themselves to The Daily are those who were devoted to their high school newspapers. And students devoted to their high school papers are often not those getting straight A’s.

Medill’s professional standards have changed, too. There are few professors left at the school who encourage students to join The Daily.

For many students, Medill is now a stepping stone to an elite law school, not to a newspaper, magazine or television station. Boye cites the high percentage of women earning academic honors, which are important for students who want to continue their education after Medill. But they are of little significance for students applying for jobs in the media. I’ve seen students on academic probation get internships at The Washington Post.

A statistic I believe is far more significant: Two of the past three editors in chief have run unopposed. It just so happens they were men. None of them started on The Daily as early as several of their female peers – perhaps delaying their burnout. In all three cases, many women would have been serious contenders had we chosen to run. We never felt our gender was an obstacle. But we realized that the physical and emotional toll of being editor in chief simply was not worth it.

If the position of editor in chief is to become desirable again, The Daily needs to attract a newsroom full of young journalistic talent who will compete for positions from the bottom up. That will not happen unless Medill takes a hard look at its admissions policy.

And if Medill is truly concerned that Daily editors in chief are disproportionately male, it should set an example within its own administrative ranks. While The Daily has had 13 female editors in chief, four of them in the 1990s, Medill has never had a female dean.