Here at The Bucknellian, our job is to stay in the know. We keep up with campus news, chase after campus sports updates, review the campus events, and seek the latest opinions from student writers. Following news at a liberal arts institution has its highs and lows; but on a campus as small and close-knit as ours, news certainly travels fast.

This semester, we as a student body have experienced many University changes. We have adopted a new University Diversity Plan; added a few new stops to our Downtown Shuttle system; hosted a variety of speakers, advocates, poets; discovered new scientific findings from cutting-edge research in our labs; started a few “first-evers,” including Student Philanthropy Week and a Student Film Festival; and much more. With a semester of many positive firsts, we also experienced some important lows. We saw an increase in campus theft; mourned the loss of a first-year student; denied changes to our Student Government constitution; and discovered hazing on the men’s lacrosse team, to name a few.

This semester especially, student life seemed to be dominated by social media. Between Facebook posts, Tweets, YikYaks, and Instagrams, students at the University used the Internet to communicate with one another. Whether good or bad, what was posted then became permanent for all to see. While social media certainly fostered miscommunications between individuals and created low points for some students, the popular Bucknell Compliments highlighted the personalities and actions of our peers each and every day.

Bucknell is a place unlike any other. As students, we’re constantly creating, working, improving, destroying, enjoying, communicating, and fighting for what we believe in. We make decisions-perhaps sometimes prematurely, perhaps sometimes without knowing what may come next-but our community offers support and guidance to help us walk proudly through the Christy Mathewson gates. For some of us, that moment is right around the coner; for others, we still have many semesters to go. No matter where we’re headed, we know that at Bucknell, we ride the highs and lows together. And this, faithful readers, is what it means to truly belong to a campus community.