This is it. Today’s Trinitonian marks our last for this semester. Our next issue will come out on Jan. 24, but for the next 63 days, your favorite student-run newspaper and its journalists will be taking a much-needed break.

Over these past 12 issues, a staff of 52 students and one long-suffering faculty advisor (thank you, Daniel!) have logged over 3,500 hours putting together over 200 articles, columns and editorials about life here at Trinity.

That is a monumental achievement, and I am so proud of our incredibly talented, dedicated and hardworking staff for pulling it off! Trinitonian staff members, take a moment to celebrate a job well done, and Trinitonian readers, thank you for supporting student-run journalism.

We’ve accomplished so much as a publication in just one semester, but there are always things we can do to improve. In that spirit, here is my early New Year’s resolution, editor-in-chief edition: to hear and publish more community voices.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at past Trinitonian issues for inspiration and guidance, and the biggest thing I noticed is that entire pages used to be filled with students, professors, parents, alumni and staff members sharing their expertise on topics, responding to pieces published in the previous week’s edition and even replying to other’s responses.

This semester we have published seven guest columns and letters to the editor, and I am so thankful to the four students, two alumni and one faculty member who took the time to contribute their perspectives. Your contributions make our newspaper better.

While seven contributions are great, I want to fill the pages again. If you read an article, opinion column or editorial in the Trinitonian and you have something to say about it, send us a letter to the editor with up to 300 words reacting to it. If there’s an issue you have additional insight on or that we haven’t covered at all, write a 500-750 word guest column and email it to us. If you have even more to say, email us anyway and we will figure something out.

We have some pretty talented columnists on our staff who write thoughtful opinion pieces every week sharing their takes on the issues facing our campus. Yet, these columns are only meant to help kickstart a much longer and broader discussion of these issues that we want you, the Trinity community, to participate in.

Please continue the discussion, start new discussions and otherwise contribute to this public forum that is the newspaper. Trinity community, this is your paper, and we need your voices. To get you started, here are some questions you can ask yourself:

Do you disagree with something one of our opinion columnists wrote?
Do you have more to add to something we reported on?
Are we doing a good job?
Do you want to share words of support?
Are there ways that we can be better?
Are you graduating and want to share parting words?
Did we get something plain wrong?
Is there something that has been on your mind?
Did a guest speaker say something you want to respond to?
Do you want to respond to a response we published?

These are just some examples of the many things you could write about. To share your thoughts to the community, however, we first need you to share them with us. There is nothing we can do if you don’t reach out, so please email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, reactions, feedback, opinions and ideas, and we will do our part to give them a platform.

Let’s fill the paper with your words.