Hello students, 

Allow me to add mine to the chorus of voices welcoming you to Shippensburg University for the Fall 2019 semester. My name is Jon Bergmueller, and I am the editor-in-chief of The Slate for the coming school year. We are very excited to deliver your news to you. 

This summer, Managing Editor Hannah Pollock and I doubled-down to redefine what The Slate’s identity is and what our purpose on this campus is by revising our organization’s constitution. We kept in mind the lessons of the past and what our predecessors, Jenna Wise and Molly Foster, taught us before hiring us for our roles. We added a few things, changed the wording here and there, and removed outdated parts. We talked a lot about our identity as a college newspaper.

The Slate has been, is and ever shall be an independent student-run on-campus newspaper. Our job is to inform the campus and town about what is going on in their community. We do this out of a sense of duty to improve this institution before we leave it by educating the people who go here.  

In my time at The Slate, the organization has published a great deal of wonderful stories about extraordinary people and things going on. We love sharing good news! But with that comes the duty of writing sometimes not-so-good news. If it happens here and affects the people who spend their days here, we’re going to be here to cover it. Understand we have a job to do. 

During my summer internship with Shippensburg University Magazine, I did some research at the library for the “From the Vault” segment, which required me to look up interesting things that happened on campus decades ago. The individual I spoke with at the library, without knowing my affiliation to this paper, explained that one of the first places they point researchers looking for historical information on campus is The Slate. 

This goes to show the value our newspaper has to this campus — quite literally, we document history for future generations. Myself and my fellow “Slaters” can leave this institution knowing that historians may someday read our stories to know what it was like during the late teens and early 20’s of this century. Hopefully we will have done a good job of it. 

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for reading this issue of The Slate, especially in an ever-tumultuous landscape of “fake news,” and “alternative facts” where printed news is receding. If reading paper news isn’t your thing, why don’t you take a look at our website, theslateonline.com? We upload all our written stories, and you can also find exclusive videos and galleries there as well. 

Just remember — It is the continued support of this community that allows us to document the history of this campus, one byline at a time. 

I’ll end with a quote from a mentor and dear friend of mine, Joseph Naughton: “Every year is a process, and every process is different.” He also said something about open-mindedness and patience, and probably accompanied all that with a silly pun. It’s advice I’m going to stick to, and I encourage everyone reading this to keep his words in mind as well. 

Have a good semester, and if you see me or any of The Slate staff around campus, please feel free to say “hi,”

Jonathan Bergmueller

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