We’ve heard a lot of Drake failures this year. And last year. And in lots of other years past. My first year, the drama surrounded SJMC’s publication funding. My sophomore year, it was the possible removal of certain academic programs. Right now, who knows? Everything and anything: Iowa universities that are struggling to make sense of their future DEI programs, budget crises every which way or maybe the decreasing amounts of college goers. 

One of the journalist’s core jobs is to report on and hold people in positions of power accountable. That much is necessary and clear. But something that I think some of us are forgetting is this: It sucks to be a leader right now.  

And that goes for leaders everywhere, wherever they’re situated. Whether it’s for publications, universities, businesses or government states across the globe. Leaders everywhere are struggling.

I’d like to be clear that this is not a defense of Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump, so please excuse them from the definition of leaders. Those two are the ones who are solely responsible for creating the current mess that other leaders now find themselves in.   

Leaders are struggling to make ends meet, to keep everyone who works under them happy, to try and get everyone paid, but there’s only so much that they can do. They can’t wave a magic wand and fix the healthcare system. They can’t make Musk not fire people. And they most certainly, individually, can’t lower the cost of eggs or halt an oncoming recession. 

Drake University’s president, Marty Martin, is not trying to hurt educators and students by removing academic programs. He’s trying to make sure that Drake University can financially survive well into the future. Target CEO Brian Cornell, I don’t think, was evilly plotting to roll back DEI initiatives throughout the company. He’s trying to avoid a target (see what I did there?) on his back by the ongoing DEI hate campaign. 

Are these measures cowardly? Are they the easy way out? Maybe, but that’s not the question I’m trying to answer. You are well within your rights to react to their actions however you choose.

By vilifying leaders who don’t have explicit political power, we spread out the blame when it truly lies with Trump. 

Leaders are scared and are trying to walk the Trump tightrope, and it’s not as simple as it seems. With the president of the United States making sweeping claims and supporting federal legislation that aims to hurt people, leaders are struggling to follow suit with new standards and stay afloat while also attempting to stick to their own and their organization’s morals. 

Leaders are making conservative choices in the face of conservative governments, hoping that the platforms that they have and the organizations that they lead won’t crumble under their feet. No one wants to see something they’ve been tasked with protecting die in front of them because of their inability to adapt.

I’m not saying that I approve of the direction leaders are taking the organizations they represent, but I am saying that, when you’re in a position of power, difficult choices sometimes have to be made. Those choices inevitably reverberate down the ropes of leadership and employees. 

I think leaders everywhere (please excuse President Trump and Elon Musk from this sentiment) would agree that they don’t want to see people out of work or working paycheck to paycheck. They’re just trying to do what they can within the means of what they’ve been given, handed down from the leaders before them. And that’s a bigger institutional problem, one that I think is very worth fixing, but is not straightforward.

Your boss works for someone who works for someone who works for someone who has goals separate from the boss that you directly work under. Drake publication leaders fall under the SJMC leaders, and the SJMC leaders fall under the Drake administration leaders, and the Drake administration leaders fall under…you get the idea. It just goes on and on. Leaders everywhere fall under a tall scope of other bigger leaders sifting through the current economic downturn.

So, while all of us middle-class Americans are trying to resuscitate our savings and retire in our late 90s, remember where the blame really lies. Not with your boss who continues to say that they can’t give you a raise right now, but the economic struggles that we now find ourselves in thanks to the tariff leader himself, our nation’s president.