Ivan B. Obias

Editor-in-Chief

Ivan Obias approaches journalism with a simple premise: the student press should not merely record what happens—it should ask why it happened, who is affected, and who should be held to account. A Computer Engineering student who found his footing in the newsroom, Ivan is drawn to stories where institutional decisions meet ordinary student life. His reporting has spanned campus governance, university policy, student affairs, and controversies that are often easier to ignore than to report. He sees journalism, at its core, as public service. For Ivan, editorial independence is not an abstract principle but a working condition: reporters must be able to pursue uncomfortable questions, editors must be willing to challenge convenient narratives, and the publication must remain accountable to its readers rather than to those it covers. During his term as Editor-in-Chief of ThePILLARS Publication, he brought that philosophy into the newsroom—not as a pursuit of neutrality for its own sake, but as a demand that advocacy be grounded in evidence, fairness, and rigorous reporting. Beyond the byline, Ivan sees the student press as one of the university's few spaces where power can be questioned without asking permission first.