For us at the Record, as for the rest of the Williams community, the past several months have been tumultuous. Since we departed campus, scattering ourselves around the country and globe, the Record board has been wrestling with how to provide trustworthy and compassionate journalism during a trying time.
Over the past two months, our publication schedule, our editorial process and much of our content has shifted. So much of what we would normally cover — news around campus, profiles of new clubs and organizations, arts performances, sports games — has become difficult at best to continue. We have had to adapt to an online audience, and in doing so build new forms of engagement with a community that had previously been able to simply pick up a paper in print around campus.
Our board has consistently been driven by the belief, however, that the role of journalism in connecting people remains centrally important. In addition to covering proposed changes to the summer and fall, we have examined COVID-19’s effect on classes, romance, comedy and art. We have reflected on our circumstances in light of the Vietnam War and the Spanish Flu of 1918. We have celebrated union and mourned loss. I hope that, through our efforts, we have helped in bringing together a community that has proven resilient in separation.
Nevertheless, the 2019-2020 volume of the Record is nearing an end as the spring semester concludes.
This does not mean that we will stop our work, however. Next week, we will publish a special issue on the experiences of this year’s senior class, commemorating the Class of 2020 and profiling their unprecedented semester and graduation.
Following that, we resolve to continue publishing, albeit in a modified fashion. Much will happen this summer, from the graduation of our seniors into an unstable job market, to the acceptance of rising first-years who face an unpredictable environment, to the work of several committees to reach a decision on the fall semester. We will continue to shed light on these stories, and we hope to be a consistent and reliable resource to all community members.
Over the summer, our coverage will re-center primarily around breaking news and investigative pieces. We hope in particular that our work will help elucidate the process and outcome of the administration’s deliberations on the fall 2020 semester, and, as always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback. If you have any critiques, questions, or leads, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected].
All my best,
Samuel Wolf ’21
Editor-In-Chief
