New staff, new beginnings
Your voice will make the Skiff better
COMMENTARY
Jacque Petersell

It’s that time again.

Students, faculty and staff are dragging back to campus after a nice break off. It’s still too cold for my taste. And a new semester of the Skiff is hitting the bins around campus.

This semester, I come before you as the editor in chief of this newspaper and since what you read in the Skiff has to get past me and my staff, you deserve to know who I am and some things about the staff.

I’m not an arm of the administration. And I don’t even think the journalism department agrees with me a lot of time. (After all, I helped put the drag queen picture on the cover of Image magazine last spring.)

I’m here to help train some fine young journalists and provide the campus with the happenings of the day. Or, sometimes, the lack there of.

I’m a senior, graduating in May, and have spent the past 3 1/2 years with the Skiff and Image, doing just about anything they would pay me — or not pay me — to do.

I consider myself a moderate and a Christian.

However, I don’t like to follow all the rules and I do like controversy.

Angry letters to the editor make me smile. I’m hoping to get another one saying that God won’t read the Skiff. In my opinion, He stopped reading it a long time ago.

I sing to myself, am afraid of the dark, still believe in unicorns and love to watch the Dallas Mavericks.

But we all have our quirks. From a fear of alligators to constantly singing in the car, everyone on this semester’s staff has something to contribute. Some smoke cigars, many have dogs and one editor even owned a hedgehog. Even the reporters have their quirks, anything from being obsessed with fonts to enjoying deer hunting to an odd liking for license plates.

Feel like you know us yet? Maybe a little.

Well, it’s a start. We tend to hide in our fishbowl, claiming we have too much work to do to get involved with life on campus. Sometimes we hide behind our “objectivity” sign and say we have to tell the story and not be a part of it.

And then, sometimes, we regret not being able to get involved.

It’s tough to draw the line between who we are and who you are. But for us to do that, we need to know who you are.

So this column comes with a homework assignment. A semester-long assignment.
Talk back to us.

Consider the Skiff like an English class. Read the newspaper and write a response — anything from “That was a good article; you really inspired me,” to “You’re an idiot, I can’t believe they let you be editor.”

That’s the great thing about living in this country. Anything (truthful) you want to say, you are allowed to say. And there is space on the opinion page for it.

We’ve saved a whole spot for you. Do you see it? No? It’s because no one has written yet. But it’s there. Use it.

The Skiff is meant to serve the TCU campus. And it’s something I’m looking for it to do even more.

So open up to us. Tell us some secrets. Let us know your quirks. Let us write your stories.

I know there are stories. And I know your fellow students would enjoy reading them.
Maybe we can even get God to start reading the Skiff again.

Editor in Chief Jacque Petersell is a senior news-editorial journalism major from Houston.