I think recent comments have been missing the mark. While it is true that being EIC isn’t a “silver bullet,” your reasons for starting the alternative paper seem to be based around free speech concerns. For instance, if your intentions truly were to become more critical of the school’s policies and your school paper wasn’t willing to be a forum for that, that’s not a school paper worth the EIC time investment.
If you can find an artful way to weave a free speech observation into your essay (when I say artful, I mean with tact and precision) then that could be an interesting item to include.