Dear Readers,

Like all semesters before, I want to begin my letter with a congratulations on finishing the semester. Even without a mid-October fall break and a funky finals schedule, we’ve reached the end.

The Exponent continued to grow and learn this semester! I am incredibly proud of our staff for their efforts in writing about the campus community concerns, like the annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Lecture, coverage of the dining dollar system, our coverage of various visits from politicians and the closing of in-person class delivery at UW-Platteville Richland Center.

Our roster has been changing as well. We had three interns this semester: Kim Niehaus, Lisa Chu, and Justice Corpora (serving as Chief Layout Editor). We elected Abigail Shimniok as our Assistant Graphics Editor, Melanie Bisbach as our Chief Photo Editor and Zach Johnson as our Circulation Manager. We are saying goodbye this semester to Kim, Lisa, Justice and Melanie.

We’ve also continued our newly developed tradition of the Raven Revived, our creative works publication that aims to highlight and showcase the written and visual artistic endeavors of the student body. This is our second semesterly issue of the Raven. We featured 17 different creators and 49 pieces of work!

I want to highlight the efforts of three people in particular: Natalie Downie, the Chief Copy Editor, Nick Wagner, the Managing Editor, and Justice Corpora, the Chief Layout Editor. Our aptly named Advance Strike Team would show up before production nights on Tuesdays to ensure our files were ready for the onslaught of production.

Before the pandemic, layout editing had been primarily conducted by the Editor-in-Chief and the Chief Layout Editor. After the pandemic, we started training and distributing layout editing to those who were interested. 

I am especially grateful to Natalie and Nick as they began to pick up senior editors’ duties. Each editor has their own superpower. We discovered this semester that Nick’s superpower is annoying Natalie and Natalie’s superpower is enduring Nick. In the end… I wish I could say that it made the office a “better place” and let us “grow as individuals” but really it just made meetings funnier.

Thank you all for a great semester! I look forward to the spring.

Sincerely,

John Rodwell

Editor-in-Chief, The Exponent