Editorial Looking back, looking forward

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For most Middlebury students, Winter Term represents a cherished exercise in relaxation. Free afternoons afford ample opportunity for skiing, snowboarding and exploring the surrounding Vermont hinterlands, while a diverse array of eye-opening workshops allow students to develop new skills or hone existing ones. Here at The Campus, we welcome this interruption to the typically frenetic pace of the academic year as we bid farewell to a dedicated group of mid-year graduates and anoint the new leadership of our Spring 2009 editorial board.

These administrative changes also mark the beginning of an aggressive plan to fully transform our presence on the Internet. At a time when print media organizations have begun recognizing the importance of multimedia and immediate reader feedback, we have responded by enlisting some of our knowledgeable peers to design and bring online a new, more robust Middlebury Campus Web site that will offer support for streaming video, bloggers, extensive commenting and more.

Yet, even amid the excitement of this ambitious project, we have not lost sight of our foremost responsibilities - to preserve Middlebury history, to provide an expressive outlet for students at the College and, as always, to ask tough questions and offer incisive reporting. As part of an effort to better fulfill those duties, we look forward to expanding the reach of our content and being more proactive in communicating with other students.

In this issue, we unveil a new and improved Opinions poll that will incorporate more detailed replies than in the past. In the months ahead, we will also strive to feature a wider range of community members on our pages and to shed light on evolving but unexplored topics through special investigative series.

One of the most invaluable resources we have as editors is the feedback we get from friends and fellow students every Thursday morning, in the dining halls and in class. Ultimately, the barometer of our success is the trust and loyalty of our readers, so tell us what you think - what you most enjoy reading about and how we can better tailor this newspaper to your interests - by sending an e-mail to campus@middlebury.edu or by filling out one of the surveys we plan to distribute in the near future.

As we move ahead into the new year, your responses will help The Campus turn over a new leaf. Let's get cracking.