Delayed welcomes

Honestly, I forgot how transitioning to university felt as a first-year. There was a certain uneasiness and anxiety that came with it. Feelings of leaving old times behind and not really knowing what next week, let alone five years from then, would have in store were mixed with good times and new friends. The last few weeks may be a sensation you will never experience to this degree again.

While support for incoming students was strong when I started, it has increased over the years. The number of events and services dedicated to helping the first few weeks of adjustment has grown consistently since. A countless number of dedicated volunteers and staff to help incoming students have somehow grown into an even larger number with no signs of stopping.

We have not done enough to be included into that group.

With everything that has been happening in the community, the paper and the lives of the staff, it slipped my mind to reiterate the importance of understanding what our readers may be going through.

The last issue had a lot of useful information, but that should be the norm anyway. We had “Congratulations — Welcome to Mac” on the cover, but that is not necessarily new or useful in a long list of welcomes given to new students.

Most of our welcomes have been self-serving. Attracting people to the paper and getting volunteers to contribute to our sections have been a few of our many priorities. Reinforcing why we do what we do has not been one. While attempting to improve the paper is nice, it is difficult to do without keeping its purpose in mind.

If we are not doing our best to serve you as the reader, then we are not living up to our objective or potential.

While this is generally in the form of making sure your voice is represented and heard and keeping you informed about McMaster related issues, it should also take the form of understanding your thoughts and feelings about the university. Our articles often have overlap with this, but some sort of sincerity should have been explicitly expressed.

We are not the best resource for support by any means. We are not specialized in mental health, running events or academic considerations. What we can do is make sure that we express our appreciation for you and make sure you are comfortable with the media that serves you.

It should not matter if you read the paper a single time or if you never volunteer for us. If you have been here for less than a day, multiple decades or any period in-between, we would like to welcome you to the university for the start of the academic year.

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