Dear reader,
Let’s talk about you for a moment.
Refer, if you would, to the map located above this column. The vast area in blue is you – it’s the place that brings you all together, where, for one reason or another, you gravitate. That little yellow smudge in the middle is us: the Daily Bruin.
If you read our pages (or more apt these days, our web pages), you hear a lot from us. Often, our columnists share their personal experiences to contextualize important issues on campus. Keep flipping through this issue, and you can hear about their trials and travails, from West Hollywood to the West Bank.
But it’s a little bit harder for us to hear from you. Firstly, there are a lot of you – undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff. But more importantly, there are a lot of different kinds of you – you come from around the world with different interests, passions, beliefs and attitudes.
You are the reason we are here. It’s our job to report on the issues that matter to you – to uncover every stone and peek into every black box and make sure your interests are being served.
Yet, for the reasons I mentioned before, we can’t always do a perfect job of it. We can’t be everywhere at once, much as we would like to be. For that reason, you will often catch things we miss. You’ll see angles we don’t see. That’s why we need your help.
If something matters to you, it matters to us.
I’ll borrow here from the playbook of soon-to-be University of California President Janet Napolitano. As head of the Department of Homeland Security, Napolitano oversaw a campaign with a slogan that, unlikely as it may seem, I will borrow here: “If you see something, say something.”
If you see an issue on campus that matters to you go unaddressed, say something.
If you see an institution run amok with your money and your trust, say something.
If you see the truth go uncovered and mistruth proliferate, say something.
Digital technology makes it easier than ever for you to reach us without ever leaving your keyboard. Like most other news outlets, we’re easily reachable on Twitter, both as an organization (@dailybruin) and a department (@DBOpinion). You can reach us via email and even stop by our office – we’re located in Kerckhoff 118, directly through the main lobby and set of double doors.
Starting now, you can also respond to our content and submit original content of your own by going to dailybruin.com/submit. You’ll find a digital form that makes it easier than ever for you to submit to the Daily Bruin and be heard by your community.
If you want to rail against inequity and injustice, if you want to tip us off to something happening on campus we should know about, or if you just want to tell me how your day is going, you can do that there.
Because that, ultimately, is why we are here – to help you be heard, to impassion you and empower you. We want to be your voice, and we hope you’ll let us.
With warm regards,
Eitan Arom
Opinion Editor