Each Editor-in-Chief comes into their position with a main goal in mind. That goal stems from what the organization desperately needs. When I took on this position, our organization was undergoing a reset. Every consistent writer, editor, and manager of The Stute were seniors, ready to begin the next chapter in their lives. With them ending their Stute journey, it was time for mine to begin.
That turnover time was like a dark cloud hanging over all of our heads; we were only waiting for it to start raining. I did everything I could to prepare for the storm. I did the meetings, I did the trainings, I created the ideas, but nothing would work unless we stuck to the game plan we spent the summer perfecting.
Cut to the end of September, I am writing this article in my living room, smiling at my dramatic paragraph above, and happy that it all worked out. We needed staff members like our lives depended on it! Every consistent writer we had moved up to MinorBoard, and they had barely anyone to take the articles in their sections. Luckily, the Class of 2029 truly impressed me with their enthusiasm and desire to be involved.
You may think, “So Jiya, if your goal as Editor-in-Chief was to replenish your staff, and you have technically done that, is that it? Is that all you had planned for The Stute?”
No! Absolutely not! Replenishing the staff was the immediate concern that has been taken care of; no more rain, just straight sunshine here! But a large part of my job is assessing why we were put in this time-constraining position in the first place. We stopped having “fun” general body meetings (GBMs), serving food at our events, advertising our GBMs effectively, creating engaging flyers, and connecting with other organizations. Must I go on? Our operations for getting the newspaper out every week are down to a science, but our engagement with the campus was forgotten.
If you have attended any GBMs recently, I am proud to say we went from an astonishing attendance of four to an average of 27 people every Tuesday. Now the hardest part is keeping it that way. We have begun running an ad with Impostos in exchange for free pizza, so those are now popular at our meetings every other week. We also don’t do the learn-how-to GBMs as much anymore. We most recently had a speed dating event, instead of a GBM, with Mamouns and Impostos, and I got to meet most of the new members in The Stute! We plan on doing more collabs with clubs like SITTV and The Link, because we want to keep growing our community. We operate just fine on our own, but this isn’t just about the newspaper anymore — it’s about us. We are the faces behind it; we are all human, we are all friends joined together as part of something bigger, but in the end, all we want to do is share that with more people on the outside.
Yes, we needed numbers, but the allure of The Stute has always been that we are a tight-knit family. Everyone knows everyone, and it’s a comforting home to come back to when you need it. With this increase, it has been hard to get to know everyone. This is exactly why we’re doing more events where we get to engage and interact with everyone. It’s not a lecture but a conversation, where we can all kick back and relax.
My time as Editor-in-Chief is going by faster, and if you read my article last week, you know it’s taking its toll. But the best part is when you can stand on the edge of a room and just look at everything you want in front of you. Look out for those collabs and enjoy the food, just know, this is exactly what we wanted.
