Editorial: Keeping Growth Relevant

Innovation does not stop with an idea. The first step, first draft, first rehearsal, first anything is nearly never enough.

In the first editorial of the semester, we called on the campus community to “keep ‘new’ relevant.” We asked students to continue the momentum that came with changes made at beginning of the semester, including a new assortment of food at the Bison, a complete redesign of The Bucknellian, and the shift in organized on-campus dialogue on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Luckily, we can now say we kept “new” relevant. Later this semester, members of the Undergraduate Executive Internship Program hosted the first Back Up the Bison Spring Tailgate in support of the men’s lacrosse team. The spring served host to yet another inaugural event—the first Bison Sound music and arts festival. It also saw the initiation of one of the largest, recent social movements on campus in response to not only the comments made via a WVBU radio show, but the campus climate in general.

One commonality within all of these events and initiatives is that each was contrived, planned, and executed by students. Catalyzing change on a university campus, regardless of whether it is a change in culture or a change in events offered, is difficult for all members of the campus community to implement collaboratively. Student initiatives, however, are enticing to other students in a way that differs from those of faculty and staff. Those who function in and perpetuate the campus climate seem to know how to alter it best.

While all of these firsts are fantastic ways of getting the ball rolling, they are nothing without iteration and improvement. And there is no better way of improving than receiving feedback and running with it. Although we have stressed this before, student feedback and discourse are imperative.

On that same note, everyone on the receiving end should consider the feedback seriously, and those individuals should seek to implement appropriate changes. Similar feedback saw students complaining about a lack of live music on campus that resulted in the creation of Bison Sound. It saw constructive dialogue that catalyzed the Solidarity Ceremony. It saw the instigation of change.

This feedback, however, needs to continue. It needs to remain as the agent for continued development of these ideas—it needs to continue to fuel innovation, allowing these firsts to develop into long-term traditions.

All of these points remain relevant to students returning in the fall, those who will graduate but remain involved in the continued growth of the University as alumni, and those who will join our community as the Class of 2019. Let’s consider this semester just a first draft. In our last editorial of the year, we would like to call on the campus to keep growth relevant throughout the summer and into the following year.

 

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To sign this editorial off, I wanted to touch on the evolution of this newspaper over the course of the past semester. It has been nothing less than an honor to serve as the Editor-in-Chief of this publication not only during the complete redesign, but also as the paper transitioned into serving as a tool for discourse during the solidarity movement. Looking forward to the fall, I am eager to see how my successor, Doug Hendry, will continue to grow the publication, how I can continue to stay engaged with campus development while abroad, and how the community will continue to generate growth at the University. —Avid Khorramian, Editor-in-Chief

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