It is often hard to classify student media organizations. They operate much like any other group on campus, yet they also provide a public service. In most cases, entire curricula are built around student involvement, yet they are at the heart a business that depends on ad sales and underwriting in order to persist.

Most of us are paid to do our work, yet there is a certain component of learning that makes up for our wages’ shortcomings. Our working relationship with the Communications department keeps us on the cutting edge of the industry, as well as empowering individual students to seek careers in a wide variety of fields.

The goals of the student media and university leaders are ultimately the same: the advancement of our microcosm of society toward lofty ideals and mutual successes. As observers, we have the benefit of hindsight, and are quick to shed light when those ideals are not truly met. College administrators across the country wrestle with the notion that they support student groups that are not always supportive in return.

Every week, our newspaper staff strives to put forth the news that UTM cares about. Moreover, we strive to disseminate information that the campus community needs to know, no matter how unpleasant it may be to some. It comes down to the strong desire for unified success by refusing to ignore the problems.

While over the years the motto “For the students, by the students” has disappeared from our official nameplate, it does not change that we are committed to UTM. We have done much in our first 77 years of that commitment, and look forward to a bright future.

As observers, we recognize that our work is under the microscope more so than subjects on which we report. Our efforts are far from perfect, but we are and have always been accountable to the campus community.

We are your student newspaper.