Hey everyone! I’m Doran Kennedy, and I’m a Sophomore here at Eastern Mennonite University. I will be serving as one of the Weather Vane Co-Editors along with Isaac Spicher this semester. I have had one year of experience already here on the weathervane and I’m very excited to be bringing the best possible paper for everyone on or off campus. I also serve as the paper’s web editor, so I upload all the articles to the Weather Vane website (you can check it out at www.theweathervane.org). I am a Biochemistry major and a Digital Media minor and despite my busy class schedule, I can say for a fact that you won’t see the Weather Vane slacking anytime soon! I’m very much looking forward to this semester, in terms of academics and what myself and Isaac can bring to the Weather Vane!
What’s up, EMU? I’m Isaac Spicher, a Senior biology major on the pre-med track, and I’m looking forward to serving you this fall as your second co-editor, working alongside Doran. This paper has been an EMU institution for many decades, and I hope to honor that rich history by promoting fair, objective, and independent journalism. I want this paper to be reflective of the diverse community of thought which exists on our campus, and will make every attempt to get multiple perspectives on each and every story. Like Doran, I have a busy year ahead, but I can promise that I’m going to give this paper everything I’ve got!
Though we, the editors, plan to stick with the overall organization of past papers, we will be trying out a few changes this semester. While the paper you are currently reading is approximately eight pages long, we have decided to release the majority of subsequent issues biweekly, with substantially more content in each issue. We believe that this will allow fuller development of the big stories on campus, with time to conduct more interviews, do more research, and provide a more polished final product for the EMU community.
You’ve probably noticed that we are both majoring in the life sciences. Using the increased size of our papers this semester, we want to provide greater coverage to global events, student research, and academic achievements in the STEM fields than has been given in past years. We recognize that not everyone at EMU shares the level of interest that we have for the scientific world, but we believe that STEM has been underrepresented in the past, and we want to cultivate a diverse paper which reflects the entirety of the student body in a semi-proportional manner.
During past years, the Weather Vane has suffered from being just one or two articles short on production night, and editors of the past have scrambled to try and find something to fill that space. With a longer paper coming out less often, we believe that we can almost completely eliminate this problem. With more time to work on it, we are sure to bring all of our readers a higher quality paper than ever before! I know when I was on the Weather Vane last year, we spent sometimes up to an hour or two shifting a few pages around just trying to get everything to fit in a nice way. Hopefully with a longer production time, we can get a lot better work done.
In addition to both being life science majors, you may also notice that we are both white males, which sometimes isn’t great for promoting diversity within the paper’s staff and in the content that we cover. However, I would request that you don’t let this take away from your reading experience. Isaac and I will do our best to remain unbiased and try to foster as much diversity in our news sources and stories as possible. Plus, if we get too big in the head, I know for a fact that there are many members on our staff who are willing to yell at us and get us back into shape. We promise to both do our best and we’re looking forward to a great year!
