‘Best time of my life’

CNN anchor Jim Acosta reflects on his days as a Duke

that,” Acosta said.

By CHARLOTTE MATHERLY

The Breeze

Jim Acosta (’93) is arguably one of JMU’s most notable alumni. He became the face of CNN while covering former president Donald Trump, all the while bearing the brunt of the president’s war against “fake news.”

But as he sits in a Washington, D.C., cafe, recalling what he remembers as the happiest time of his life, Acosta is down-to-earth and casual. He’s wearing a knit gray sweater with a green vest and plain blue jeans, and he fiddles with his reading glasses in his hands as he speaks.

He doesn’t have long to talk, he says, because he needs to get home to walk his puppy, Duke — who, of course, he named after JMU. He hopes to one day bring Duke to campus on one of his many trips back. “I have visions of, like, bringing him out there,” Acosta says, once Duke calms down from his “rambunctious” puppy stage.

So why does Acosta love JMU so much? Maybe it’s the lifelong best friends he met there, or because it’s where he cemented the “news bug” and his desire to be a journalist. Or maybe it was just fun. When asked what word or feeling comes to mind when he thinks of JMU, Acosta puts it simply: “Happy. Happiness.”

“Not to sound like a brochure for the school or anything like that, but I always have that feeling about the school when I think about it or talk about it with other people,” Acosta said. “I wish I could be more profound than that but, you know, honestly, it was just a really fun time in my life. And that’s why I go back as often as I can. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, I just have that little taste of it every now and then.’

It’s a good thing.”

The early days

Acosta caught the news bug early.

It was 1981, right after former president Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, when his class took a field trip to visit U.S. hostages as they were released. A reporter from The Washington Post tagged along with the class and wrote an article about it — then-9-yearold “Jimmy” Acosta is quoted, saying, “I’m a movie star, I was on Channel 4 once and ABC twice and one of the hostages waved at me.”

Forty-two years later, Acosta still has a copy of the article hanging in his office.

“I’m pretty sure that’s, if you want to pinpoint it, that’s probably the moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do,” he said.

He wasn’t always sold on journalism as a career, though. Having grown up in the D.C. area with politics and government all around him, Acosta said he spent his college days torn between a career in public service and a career in journalism.

“I guess I was sort of caught between, you know, what do I want to do with my life? Do I want to go into public service and the government and that kind of thing? … Or do I want to go into news?” Acosta said. “And I ended up deciding to go into news.”

But at JMU, he experimented with both. He served as the news director of WXJM, the campus radio station. Meanwhile, he ran and lost a campaign for student body president and started a Latino Student Alliance on campus.

It isn’t quite clear why he ran for Student Government Association (SGA) president — “I’m trying to remember why I did that,” Acosta said. He ran on multiple promises in 1992 that have since taken hold at JMU, like making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a school holiday and upgrading the student health center.

There’s one campaign issue that, when you ask him about it, sends his hands to cover his face.

“Oh, my god,” he said, laughing. “Oh no, oh no.”

Acosta ran on an idea to put condom machines in residence halls. It actually gained a lot of traction, he said, because the AIDS epidemic and sexual health were big issues at the time.

“I’m sure in the back of my mind I was thinking, as a 20-something-year-old college student, ‘Well, this will get a lot of attention.’ You know, I’m sure I thought that,” Acosta said. “But it was also a very smart public health thing.”

He pointed out that there wasn’t anything “especially controversial about it.”

“I wasn’t calling for kegs in the dorms or anything like that,” he said. “Although that might have helped me win.”

Always a Duke

Acosta loves coming back to campus so much that he said he’s considered returning to teach broadcast journalism, political coverage and the works.

“Something like that would be amazing someday. If I could potentially come back, you know, retire from all this, I would consider

He sometimes comes back for football and basketball games, like JMU men’s basketball’s 52-49 victory over U.Va. in 2021. Acosta attended JMU during the golden era of JMU basketball and remembers the Convocation Center as “always a packed house.”

One day, he and his friends got “so crazy” that they shaved one of his friend’s heads.

But for all the fun times and experience, he said, he does wish he’d gotten one more thing.

“We shaved his head and painted it purple and gold,” Acosta said. “I think he got in The Breeze for doing that, which was like, mission accomplished for us … Yeah, those are some fun times.”

Acosta will return to JMU, at least briefly, on April 3 to participate in the Madison Vision Series, which will be a “fireside chat” with Dr. Anthony Fauci and a student, according to President Jonathan Alger’s Feb. 10 report to the Board of Visitors.

He jumps at any chance to come back to campus, in part just because he loves the scenic drive through the Shenandoah Valley, which he calls “the most beautiful part of Virginia,” and partly to grab a beer and catch up with friends, maybe a tailgate.

“You can’t quite relive your college days when you go back,” he said, “but you can sure as hell try, you know?”

CONTACT Charlotte Matherly at breezeeditor@gmail.com. For more JMU and Harrisonburg news, follow the news desk on Twitter @BreezeNewsJMU.