Last June, I sat down to write my very first letter from the editor. Newly elected and preparing to enter my senior year at Tulane, I was excited, overwhelmed and eager to start the process of improving The Hullabaloo.

In the months since, The Hullabaloo Board, staff and I have worked tirelessly to revamp our publication and reimagine the power of our voices. We added positions, won awards, got mentioned and republished by professional media outlets, increased our readership and improved our relationships with Tulane offices and organizations.

As always, there is room to grow. Even with the strides we have made in the last year, there are steps that must be taken to ensure The Hullabaloo’s organizational and financial sustainability and to address our own shortcomings when it comes to inclusion, diversity and representation. This ongoing journey to success will be challenging, but I am sure that The Hullabaloo’s incoming Editor-in-Chief and Board are well-equipped and well-positioned to take the next steps.

Rather than delve into the details of our accomplishments and challenges over the last year, I want to use my last letter from the editor to reflect on what The Hullabaloo has meant to me and my fellow staff members over the last four years. If this seems like grandstanding, it probably is, but this is the last thing I’ll ever write for The Hullabaloo, so let me be.

I joined The Hullabaloo during my first week of freshman year. It was one of many club sign-up sheets I would put my name on during the 2014 activities expo, and I had little idea at the time what a profound impact The Hullabaloo would have on my Tulane experience.

I found my people in The Hullabaloo’s Lavin Bernick Center for University Life basement office, I found my voice in the pages of our newspaper and I found my place in this organization that is so much more than a weekly publication.

But The Hullabaloo has not been an endeavor on which I’ve embarked on my own. Both my experience at The Hullabaloo and the product we publish each week are the culminations of hours upon hours of sweat and tears from hundreds of students who volunteer their time to be a part of this organization. These writers, editors, artists, designers, fact checkers, digital experts and business managers care deeply about making The Hullabaloo the best that it can be and about telling the stories of our readers and community members.

The Hullabaloo staff members that came before me laid the groundwork for the improvements and progress we’ve made this year. Their guidance, support and legacies have been invaluable to me and to this year’s staff.

This year’s staff members have been unparalleled in their work ethic and enthusiasm, and each and every one of them has helped shape The Hullabaloo into what it is. They are undoubtedly the most hard-working, passionate and supportive collection of people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. To all of you, I’ll save the tears for banquet, but I cannot thank you enough for your unwavering commitment to The Hullabaloo. I would be lying if I said you made this job easy, but you definitely made it worth the difficulty.

I am immensely confident that the staff members of next year and the years to come will have incredible leadership and direction from the incoming leadership teams, which are all comprised of students who are qualified, driven and more than ready to continue the work we’ve started. As my fellow Hullabaloo seniors and I prepare for the next chapters in our lives, it is my greatest hope that we’re leaving this organization and publication better than when we found it and that we’ve made our marks on The Hullabaloo, just like The Hullabaloo has made its mark on us.

For many of us, we will not soon forget the late nights in the office, the dimensions of photos required for the website, our website logins, whiteboard editing process, production night checklist, rack locations on campus, paper plate awards, angry emails from parents, the thousand passwords to the server and social media accounts, or the many eyes and ears jokes. Most importantly, we won’t soon forget the people we’ve met along the way, or the road back home.

Bye.