Members of the Whitman Community,

There are certain moments in the course of a publication’s history that feel especially significant. For The Whitman Wire, January 2017 is one such moment. Throughout the past calendar year, we underwent the hiring of an entirely new editorial board, we updated the newspaper’s name to reflect the student body’s commitment to respect and inclusion and we covered plenty of challenging stories.

Many on our staff and in our community have expressed concern and uncertainty about the future. Drugging incidents of late last semester, the unsettling election of a president whom few in our community support, the passing of a dear friend-we know firsthand the scope and size of the challenges the student body has faced throughout the past year.

With acknowledgement and acceptance of the difficult year ahead, we on The Whitman Wire are shaken, but not shook. We will strive to cover all the news that the Whitman community values through increasingly accessible means.

To do this successfully and appeal to our increasingly online readership, we plan to expand our on-site coverage through new media tools like Facebook Live. We will also expand our community engagement through more interactive reporting and community forums, the first of which will take place during the Power and Privilege Symposium. We will also seek and look forward to increased feedback from the community about how to do our jobs even better. As always, we want to hear your thoughts on the contact section of our website or in the form of letters to the editor.

Through these efforts, we hope to better engage our readers and keep them connected to the stories that matter at Whitman and in Walla Walla.

Yours in Editorship,

Marra Clay and Mitchell Smith

Publisher and Editor in Chief