Because I am better than Josh, I won’t start with a cliché. Also, to further differentiate myself from my co-editor, you probably don’t know me as anything. If we were in seminars together, I was probably wearing a facial expression that failed to betray my interest, not saying anything at all.

I first came across Josh in one of these seminars, looking bored out of my mind as he beguiled the class with his intellect and his deep knowledge base- “ach this guy knows a lot of stuff.”

This was last year, when I came to Trent as an exchange student. As I navigated the culture shock in the beginning, I became acutely aware of Trent’s open and engaging community spirit. This is the beauty of Trent. I was pretty darn fortunate to explore this community working for Arthur, and this coming year Arthur will harness Trent’s great spirit in all that it does.

We want you guys to be a part of Arthur. We want you guys to get involved in what we are doing and to see Arthur’s value in: facilitating debate; bringing the community together; channelling and challenging you; and keeping you informed. Arthur will reach out to bring you into the fold in various ways, just as Trent did with me and many other international students.

This year, Arthur aims to start holding events, with ideas including public lectures, nights out, picnics, bbqs, open mic nights, debates, roundtable events and much more. We’ve already begun talking to bars and cafés downtown about this and we are really excited about them. Have you got an idea for an Arthur event or want to host one? Please, get in touch! The more we empower students, the better; the more people we have involved, the better that Arthur can serve the needs and wishes of Trent and Peterborough.

The events will also give us the opportunity to try out new ideas and ways of practicing our beliefs.

In this generation’s most high pressure political times, it is important that we are coming up with new ways of protesting and resisting. Rather than just reacting, it is far more important that we are coming up with new ways of acting and thinking for ourselves. We may be entering a troubling epoch, but acting in favour a different world is fun, exciting and best done together. We want you to be a part of it.

As we continue to reach out, Arthur will be much more active on social media. Can’t be there with us? No problem, we’ll bring it to you. We will be increasing our online presence, with live tweets on Arthur’s Twitter and livestreams on Facebook when possible. We may even get our own Snapchat profile, too.

Our job is to serve you on campus and in the community. This doesn’t just involve channelling your voice, bringing the community together and letting you know what’s going on. It is fundamental to our role that we hold the Trent Community and its individual members to account as well.

The majority is not always right, nor is the dissenter always an honest rebel; insulated majorities get carried away while ‘rebels’ are sometimes just dickheads.

We are really looking forward to getting up and running come the new academic year. There is great value in Arthur and we reckon that with a bit of help and input from you, we can take it onto the next level.

Good luck with exams and don’t work too hard! See you at the end of the summer.

-Dan Morrison

And so it begins, another chapter in the leftist rag that is Arthur Newspaper. My name is Joshua Skinner and you may know me as the person that talks too much during seminar, or the person that talks too much during radio interviews, or the person who talks too much in general. This is going to change over the next year. As editor, I am going to ensure that Arthur is a platform for others, not myself. Arthur is going to be unapologetic with the voices and dialogue it establishes.

Trent University is going through major structural changes, both in its’ physical features and philosophical orientation. The addition of the Trent University Research Park and the Student Center alongside the absence of Bata Library are going to dominate the news next year. Student’s will either adapt or resist to these changes, and Arthur is going to be there to document these stories.

Trent also plans on becoming a big university by its own standards, with expressed interest in raising enrollment to over 10,000 students. Will Trent University be able to accommodate these young adults and offer them the same small class sizes and student to professor ratio that has been offered in the past? Arthur is going to be examining the experience of students in their first year and attempt to quantify whether or not this great school is living up to the high standards it has established for itself.

The makeup of the Trent Central Student Association  has also changed dramatically. With a new president and only two returning board members, it will be of the utmost importance that Arthur documents shifts in the governing body at Trent. The TCSA as it is currently constructed is inheriting a campus with dwindling space and burgeoning enrollment. This landscape could constrain the ability of the TCSA to be politically active and force them to be a provider of services instead of a voice of the students. Arthur will be there to document this.

That being said, Arthur’s ability to cover everything is going to similarly constrained by our current financial realities. The fact that there is only space in the budget for 12 staff in total, all working just 7 hours a week will hinder what we can and can’t do. Over the next year, Arthur is going to have to draw on the strength of the community and the groups at Trent to volunteer time and resources to cover events. We hope that the community understands the position that Arthur finds itself in, and that students find their voice in the Newspaper the way that so many have done in the past.

We also need Trent staff and professors to buy into the newspaper, and give incentive to students to write for the Newspaper in the form of small bonus marks. Students are expected to juggle tens of thousands in debt, full time course loads, and doing laundry regularly in exchange for an often milquetoast guarantee of employment after university. In this context, it is transparent that submitting articles to a student newspaper is not as beneficial to a student’s post university prospects as serving on a board or student cabinet may be. Professors and Arthur Newspaper need to team up and make contributing to Arthur an option that improves prospects of students through improving grades.

There is so much more that Arthur Newspaper plans to do and be over the next year. To do all of these things, we need buy in from the community and a renewed sense of what Arthur can offer to the students at Trent University.

-Josh Skinner