On October 20, co-presidents Quinn Chappelle and Justin Dynia had the honor of speaking with Boston Political Review founder Tyler Fields. Fields (Questrom '16, CAS '16) is from Redlands, California and is currently in his final year at UCLA School of Law. His other activities on campus included serving as the Senate Chairman on Student Government’s Executive Board, Class President and a Senator for CAS, Captain of the BU Mock Trial Team, and working as a Scarlet Speaker at the Undergraduate Admissions office.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Justin: Take us through the founding of the Boston Political Review. What were your motivations and how did it come about?
Tyler: Sustainability was one of my main motivations. I was in the GSU in my Sophomore Spring reading the Stanford Review and I got to thinking why don’t we have a publication like that? So that day in the GSU, I sent out the initial emails that actually set up the BPR. That’s when I got together a team of editors and we really looked at what space on campus we wanted to occupy. We wanted a publication that was modeled both after the Stanford Review--with that youthful fresh take on different issues-- and The Economist-- to look a lot deeper into an issue and really avoid that partisan left-right circus.
Quinn: What was the political climate like on campus back in 2014?
Tyler: The political climate back then was way way different back then. Questrom felt much more apolitical than now, but CAS was still a pretty hot button area for all of the current events. I remember that Obamacare was dominating the headlines at that time. Just a totally different atmosphere than right now.
Justin: What lessons did you learn as the founder of the BPR?
Tyler: I learned so much from all the different staff and all the different writers just from the amazing content they were producing.
Justin: What was your long term vision for the future of the BPR?
Tyler: We wanted to maintain the vision of deeper analysis, of looking at the issues in not just a nonpartisan way, but also an analytical way. We didn’t want to regress into the cave of only writing something that’s tweet worthy or can be clickbait.
Quinn: What are some of your observations about the current state of the BPR?
Tyler: Everything you guys are doing sounds awesome. I’m blown away with everything you guys have done. Absolutely blown away.
Justin: What’s one piece of advice you can give Quinn and I to further the growth and development of the club you founded?
Tyler: I like that you guys aren’t afraid to change things up and do things differently. There’s a really good vision behind the direction that the BPR is going in.