This week marks the 147th time the Gazette has issued a year-end goodbye to its readers.
As per tradition, I’ll acknowledge that not everyone was pleased with everything that passed through these pages this past year. If you had a problem with the editorial choices, the humour, or the points of view presented, take solace in the knowledge that people have been complaining about the very same things for the past century and a half. In the words of medieval English poet John Lydgate, “you can please some of the people all of the time, and you can please all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.”
Remember, as always, September is a fresh start—if you feel something is missing from the paper, we’re always looking for new contributors!
“A Critic”
Volume 60, Issue 20 – March 23, 1928
In this week’s issue appears a letter from a former Dalhousian and an exmember of the Staff of the Gazette. In this letter, “M. A. B.” gives us an idea of her impressions of the Gazette and its contributors during the present year. It is rather unfortunate that the letter appears in the last issue of The Gazette as it gives no opportunity for Gazette contributors to defend themselves against the criticisms offered.
The aim of The Gazette during the year has been to express student opinion and thought and to chronicle student activity.
It has endeavored to become an outlet for any literary endeavor that has come to the surface during the year. Does “M.A. B.” find these thoughts, opinions and activities so different from those in vogue at Dalhousie away bark in 1926 that she must lament the passing of manners and of standards? Does she feel that we “youngsters” are not old enough to express opinions and have ideas that arc not altogether of the 1926 model? Let her remember that most of the boys on the staff arc old enough to wear long trousers and the girls to wear short skirts; that some few of us had attained the use of reason before the Great War and have still retained it.
Our critic feels that too many attempts at humour have been published in the columns of The Gazette. Let her remember that The Dalhousie Gazette is a student publication, published by the students and for the students. The “attempts at humour” were relished and openly enjoyed by the majority of the students and, if they helped to make brighter the life about the campus, if they brought a smile to the face of a few of the students, they have served their purpose. Let them drop into the depths of obscurity. For one fleeting moment they occupied the centre of the stage—far more than many a heavier, more serious article would have accomplished.
We thank “M. A. B.” for her kindly interest in the college paper which, to us, has been a sacred trust during the year. We appreciate her criticism but we felt that our contributors who have been so faithful to us during the year should have something said in their defense.
(…)
Finally, to our successors we extend best wishes for a successful 1928-29. May they succeed where we have failed. May they add to the merit of the “Oldest College paper in America.”
“FAREWELL”
Volume 1, Issue 6 – April 5, 1869
This issue of our paper is the last that we will lay before you this term. For the last three months much of our time and energies has been devoted to the duties devolving upon us in our editorial capacity—duties by no means light nor sometimes pleasant. As we looked only for a reward to public-sanction and approval, we have been most amply paid. To those gentlemen who have so far aided us by their advice and contributions we tender our warmest and most hearty thanks, and “ we hope for a continuance of the same favours” when the Gazette re-appears in a new and enlarged form—on the first Monday of November next.
We would earnestly ask all our Student friends to use all their influence during the ensuing summer to promote our success and increase our circulation next Term.
Space, that inexorable master of all editors, forbids us saying more. We can enter into no rhapsodies on the subject of parting—no hopes, no prayers, can now emanate from our pen, but we must conclude by again expressing our gratitude for that aid and assistance, which “Has cheered our hearts,
Amid the toils of duty.”
“It’s not the end of an era” – Katie May – Volume 140, Issue 25 – April 3, 2008
Don’t worry, I won’t drag you with me on some kind of pathetically nostalgic mental journey about how I went from tentatively writing one news story a year ago to pulling allnighters in the office and waking up to the puzzled expressions of facilities management staff at 7:30 a.m.
Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out exactly how that happened.
I won’t tell you how The Gazette has changed my life this year, how I didn’t feel as if I was part of the “university community” until I was part of this paper, how I’ll never for the rest of my life meet another group of individuals so varied, so inspiring, so passionate and so fanatical as the nine brave, heroic souls who toiled relentlessly by my side for 26 weeks, churning out a labour of love we like to call our own little Gazette.
Let’s not kid ourselves – that last part isn’t really true. Sure, I could go through the whole spiel about all the great people I’ve met here. But at The Gazette, the people don’t make the paper as much as the paper makes the people. Next year, Room 312 of the SUB will be the hot-spot for a new bunch of inspiring, passionate fanatics.
Sure, we’ll still have our free pizza and our privileged beer nights. We’ll still lounge around on our cushy couches, eating said pizza and wishing we had some of said beer, telling all of our inside jokes and pulling all of our juvenile pranks.
But no matter how much we may want to carve our names into the desks—which we’d never do, because a prank’s a prank, but that’s just vandalism—The Gazette will never belong to its staff.
The Gazette belongs to all students. Like those of you who glance at it while you wait in line at Tim Hortons, our experience with this student newspaper is also too brief, regardless of how long we’re here and how much we complain.
Just as The Gazette belongs to all students, so do its bountiful office amenities. Just think! You too can be an insider and gain full access to the free pizza, the beer and the couch—just dust the pizza crumbs off first.
As for the jokes, there’s no guarantee. That just depends on how clever you are.
And once you’re in, you’re in. If you come in and stay awhile, you’ll have to come back.
I don’t know what it is; there’s just something about this place. You can even get published on this page. It’s not that hard.
Trust me. I’ll be back next year.
Hope to see you then.
“Finale foolishness” – Ryan Stanley – Volume 125, Issue 24 – April 1, 1993
It says something about our society (all right, I don’t know WHAT it says, but it says something) that we only have one day a year dedicated to celebrating humour, and an unofficial day at that (meaning it doesn’t make the Boy Scout calendar).
I don’t know whose clever idea it was to put April 1st at the beginning of April. If there is any time of year when most students don’t feel much like mirth, it’s now, as we race down the Death Valley of preexam week, careening into the walls of dwindling personal finances, heightening summer job anxiety and, if we’re trying to be creative writers, increasingly mangled metaphors.
We at the Gazette are students, too, and so it is with some wistful angst, but mostly a hearty “good riddance, let’s hit the books”, that we bid thee all farewell from our final edition of the year, an issue which we hope will lighten your mood for a mere moment, a minute, or an hour, depending on how thoroughly you peruse these recycled pages.
Judging by our never-empty mailbox and our near-empty newsstands, we know that Dalhousie’s student publication has a regular and faithful readership in the thousands. Some of the most exciting material that we print comes from readers with a response to something we’ve written. If you’re like me and flip to this section before any other, you’ll know that reactions run the gamut from foaming-at-the-mouth outrage to eyes-rolled-back ecstasy, passing through sober contemplation and simple head-scratching bewilderment along the way.
Anyone who writes a letter is a staff member waiting to happen. It’s no good huddling over a computer screen, tapping out a mean-spirited, non-constructive string of words (with apologies to J. Munro) and furtively slipping it under the office door. The Gazette does not require an “Angry Against Society” membership card to walk into the office and write a story, take over a page, or coordinate a section. The faces are different every year.
So, at the risk of sounding unforgivably cliche, the paper is what you make it. One beef, though (which reminds me- you don’t have to be vegetarian to join either, but I’ll like you better): spare us the head-above-the-clouds moralising about objectivity and presenting both sides of every issue. No professional journalist worth her laptop computer will tell you that objectivity exists. And we’re not even amateur journalists: we’re volunteers with no training simply trying to provide a voice to students who wish to speak their minds.
And as for the “both sides of the issue” thang, Miriam Korn’s page 3 story points out that 90% of the Globe and Mail’s sources are male. Is that balanced treatment?
But I’m slipping out of the tone of levity. So consider this a seed planted in your mind for next fall. The Gazette can bring you many joys, and free pizza every Tuesday night. In the meantime, ace your exam and have a sunny summer.
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