Letter from the Editor

The walls of The Daily Princetonian newsroom at 48 University Place are lined with books of our community’s shared history. Each book holds one year’s worth of issues of the 'Prince,' and in them you can find columns, articles and photographs that document snapshots of the University’s history all the way back to our founding in 1876.

In the next week, the outgoing 139th Managing Board of the ‘Prince’ will add to this collection, officially recording the papers from this past year in print to our newsroom and digitally to our archive attheprince.princeton.edu.

I first wrote to you nearly one year ago, in the pages of our first issue, to introduce the 139th Managing Board. I wrote about the academics, activists, actors, artists and athletes who make up the community of Princeton, and I detailed our role as the archivists in the community. Today, I write to you in the pages of our last issue to elaborate on our role a bit more and to say goodbye.

At the ‘Prince,’ we not only seek to inform the Princeton community about what’s happening on campus today, but we also aim to accurately portray what Princeton was like during our time here as part of the first draft of Princeton’s history. Community means a lot at Princeton, and the members of The Daily Princetonian are honored to serve the community by keeping it informed of what is going on and by keeping a historical record of what happened during our time here.

In the past year of reporting on campus, we have learned a lot about the Princeton community and about community in general. From the Hose Bicker referendum to the Black Justice League sit-in, the Open Campus Coalition counter-petition to the Big Sean protests, the work of the Mental Health Initiative to the Hidden Minority Council, the Princeton community has shown that it wants to be an inclusive one.

Such events have caused us to reflect on the role of the ‘Prince’ in the community. While the ‘Prince’encourages inclusivity, and we constantly advertise for our readers to join us, our place in the community has always been more complex. Individually, we take the same classes, we eat at the same eating clubs, dining halls and co-ops and we belong to the same student organizations. Yet, as archivists, we also have to play the role of unbiased outsiders in the community.

This is how it should be since the ‘Prince’is an independent organization on campus. Our independence means that we receive no funding from the University or the Undergraduate Student Government, which allows us to honestly report on what is happening at the University without fear of being shut down. We pride ourselves on our independence, especially in the last year when non-independent newspapers faced funding cuts for publishing certain stories. We continue to operate due to advertising sales and we do not report to anyone at the University other than our own alumni Board of Trustees.

Despite our outsider status, we cannot do the work we do in a vacuum, so we try to work with the community as best as we can. You have sent us tips about events happening on campus, you have written letters or guest opinion columns, you have agreed to be interviewed for articles and you have done enough interesting things this past year that we have been able to print a paper with actual news in it every day. We have a responsibility to do everything we can to make sure we are telling the story right, and it is because of working with you that we are able to do so.

129 issues after I first wrote to you, I now want to say thank you for working with us and reading our paper this past year. Today, the 139th Managing Board passes the torch over to the 140th Managing Board, and we know that the newspaper will continue to live on in greatness under their leadership. I hope you will continue to work with the ‘Prince,’and perhaps even join us, over the course of the next year.

My year as Editor-in-Chief has certainly been the most challenging experience of my life, and I have a community of people to thank for their role in also making it the most rewarding one. This paper would not have been printed without the community of 28 editors who sacrificed a lot to make the ‘Prince’a better organization and the 200+ writers, photographers, copy editors, designers and staff who helped produce content every day. I am so glad I had the opportunity to work with all of you and have the honor to be able to call you my friends. Thank you to my team, and to the readers who have supported us this past year, I hope you will all stay in touch.

Anna Mazarakis, a politics major from Montclair, N.J., is the outgoing Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Princetonian. She can be reached atannacm@princeton.edu.