First of all, to the first year students reading this paper, whether you stumbled across it by chance or pulled it out of your shiny new ISW bag, welcome to Trent University!
You’re about to take your first brave steps into a world of administrative politics, budget cut-backs, system-wide metrics, bureaucratic dysfunction, and (if you’re lucky) a smattering here or there of honest education.
Although you might not feel it just yet, your educational experience has already begun.
Whether you’ve been up to your eyeballs in introductory seminars and ISW activities, exploring the many corners of downtown Peterborough, or sneaking into the drumlin with some friends and a bottle of gin, your education is founded just as much upon what you experience outside the classroom as what you learn within it.
So what is this mess of pages that you hold in your hands? And, more importantly, why should you care about it, let alone read it?
Well, Arthur Newspaper was created in 1966 by a group of feisty young Trent intellectuals who sought a space on campus where students and Trent community members could report on and discuss campus affairs.
In their inaugural editorial, Arthur’s first editors declared that the intent of this newspaper was “provide reporting and comment on [university] events… and to act as an organ of communication… for individuals and organizations.”
Suffice it to say that in the forty-eight years since those words were first typewritten (by hand on individual sheets of white A4 paper) Arthur has become so much more than that to the Trent and Peterborough communities.
Over the past five decades this paper has been this university’s news service, its bulletin board, its soapbox, its diary, its punching bag and even, on rare occasions, its dating service.
Through it all, Arthur has remained a newspaper driven by the passionate contributions from the community.
In this issue alone there are more than twenty volunteer submissions ranging from a useful ‘how to’ piece, to poignant musings on life and education, to arts and culture coverage, to a comprehensive guide of student life and community activism pages.
Occasionally scandalous, frequently controversial, Arthur is your student newspaper.
It is your platform, Trent student, to engage with and debate the issues you care about, to showcase your literary and artistic talents, and to broadcast your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your university experience.
Put simply, this paper is yours to make of what you will.
As co-editors of Volume 49, Pat and I are along for the ride. We can’t wait to see where you will take us.
