Editors’ Letter – “Comment Sense”

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his feels bittersweet. What you are about to read is my final edition as Comment Editor and it seems only natural to peer back at the first time I looked at these pages as a writer and see how far the section has come since I wrote my first article.

It was my intention to leave it in a better state than when I started and hopefully I have managed to do that. The Comment mantra has always rung true: ‘Be provocative, not offensive’ and we have lived by this ideal for the past two years.

The increase in membership, engagement and variety of topics has been humbling.

It has now distilled into the perfect cocktail of controversy and thought-provoking content.

We have stopped talking about the US Congress and focused more on Warwick’s campus because these pages are supposed to represent you.

It hasn’t been without its critics. We have had a lot of backlash this year for some of the editorial decisions we’ve made, but the important thing is that people are still having these conversations and we welcome the feedback. Every day we are striving to be a better organisation and this can’t happen unless we listen and respond to the things that contributors are telling us.

However, for me, the most important thing to remember is how hard the individuals on this paper work every week to make sure there is an issue that you can pick up and flick through. The Boar machine is underestimated.

There are nearly 60 individuals involved in this process, but it is easy to gloss over that when a paper comes out, regardless of all the stress and turmoil that goes into making one. That is the ‘comment sense’.

When you read about bullying in student council, harassment on campus, restrictions on freedom of speech, representative sabbatical officers, the human rights forum and even the blue and black (not white and bloody gold) dress, all in the same issues I might add, I know that we are doing something right. We are breaking stories that rock the foundations of this university every day and it will be my privilege to manage it next year.

I am the new Editor-in-Chief and for the small amount of people that are inevitably reading this, I am going to let you in on a secret.

This next year is going to be the biggest the Boar has ever had.

Comment is just the beginning. With more people watching and reading us than ever before, now is the opportunity to really make an impact locally and globally. Now that’s just ‘comment sense’, isn’t it?
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Photo: flickr/JonS