DS VIEW: Thank you

Last weekend, the Dakota Student was awarded fourth place among four-year weekly newspapers at the Associated Collegiate Press’ Best of the Midwest College Journalism Convention.

I would like to thank everyone on staff for their hard in work in making this happen. Several students, as well our advisers and support staff, put a lot of work into this paper in order for it to be published twice a week.

The award made me think about the ups and downs of the paper, as well as the potential for improvement in contributing to campus life here at UND.

My brief time as editor of the Dakota Student has provided some insight into the nature of the paper on campus, as well as the role it should play in shaping discourse in a university setting. A college newspaper primarily should, of course, serve as a way to keep students and other members of the community informed what is going on around campus, but there is more to a paper than that.

The Dakota Student has been published bi-weekly since 1888. In a time before the Internet and social media, the paper was able to provide the news to an area of Grand Forks that was relatively far away from downtown.

The continuation of the campus newspaper since the late 19th century puts it in a relatively unique place in campus. The paper provides a way to create an archive of the events happening around the university, city and state through the perspective of students.

Even more so than just providing the news, the Dakota Student provides an outlet for students to share their thoughts and opinions with the rest of the campus. In my mind, a student newspaper should provide a medium for communication at the university. It should play a role as a part of the institution in facilitating discussion about what matters to the students and other members of the community.

In some ways, this should be the role of any newspaper, regardless of the size and scope the community they serve. Obviously they function as a way to objectively inform the public about what’s going on around them, but they also provide a way to exchange meaningful ideas about timely topics.

So as the spring semester starts to come into full swing, I would like to thank the staff here for the modest success we achieved, and I look forward to improving the paper in ways that help make the UND community be a better place to live and study.