By Elizabeth Zakaim
Editor-in-Chief
It’s been a tumultuous year. As a campus, we’ve dealt with at least three incidents of racial bias, four student deaths, radical protestors and a controversy surrounding our school’s president.
That was more for me to handle in my senior year than during the rest of my time at the College combined.
It only seemed fitting that majority of these incidents happened during my time as Editor-in-Chief of the paper. This past semester has taught me a lot about working hard, being prepared and healing from wounds.
Throughout different interviews I’ve conducted with students and administrators, I can tell that the campus community has been hurting. But as spring makes its slow arrival, I can feel the same sense of rebirth happening on this campus, too.
I think what this year has taught me most is the idea that we exist for something beyond our own self-interests, and when we come together as a community to support each other, we are practicing that selflessness.
As editor of the paper, I worked with a diligent staff who understood that lesson. We put hours of work into digging into each story, each controversy and each tragedy to put together a comprehensive narrative for our community. I know I could not have done any of this without their time and help.
And, as I leave the College and begin my post-graduate career, I hope to revisit the school to find that it continues to carry out on all of the initiatives promised to its students.
I hope that we have learned that while we live in a world where we unfortunately can’t escape death and doubt and fear, we can nevertheless gather as a community and overcome those challenges.
I hope, perhaps most importantly, that I have done my best as editor to lead a select editorial staff and to serve what I recognize as beyond just myself – the beautiful community that has become my home these past four years, The College of New Jersey.
