This issue of The Tulane Hullabaloo marks our 116th year of operation. We have spent the past few months completely restructuring our operations to function in the age of coronavirus and we are thrilled to be back in the basement of the Lavin-Bernick Center and serving the greater Tulane community as your eyes and ears. 

It is the responsibility of publications like ours to be able to respond to moments of extreme importance, moments of which there have been no shortage in recent months. This has been a historical year, between the life-altering pandemic, the ongoing battle for racial justice and the impending presidential election, and on a daily basis we are witnessing the impacts of larger national movements on our campus.

In the past couple of weeks alone, we have seen community members calling for the abolition of the Tulane University Police Department, graduate student workers fighting for better healthcare and support, and students moving for the disbanding of Greek life at Tulane. 

As always, The Hullabaloo is here to bring the most relevant, timely and bold content straight into the hands of you, our readers. Now more than ever we have a responsibility to you to provide that content.

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I am so proud to be leading The Hullabaloo as the Editor-in-Chief this year, but an editor is only as good as their staff. As a team we have worked tirelessly all summer to bring you the best content possible, rebranded and redesigned our products, created an intensive training for our editors and built a more adaptable business model so that The Hullabaloo can remain your independent student-led news source. 

Within The Hullabaloo we have also been tackling another, much larger issue of white supremacy as it manifests itself both in the media and on our campus. White supremacy is perpetuated in a variety of institutions — newspapers, even student ones, are no exception. 

The Hullabaloo is committed to taking anti-racist action within our organization and through our publication, and beginning this semester we will be mandating intensive anti-racism training for all Hullabaloo members. We will be actively taking strides to create an inclusive newsroom for marginalized voices on campus and to foster meaningful relationships with marginalized groups at Tulane. As always, we welcome feedback from our readers and peers. 

By taking these steps, we aim to increase representation of marginalized communities in both our staff and our reporting. We know that this will take time and a lot of thoughtful action, but these goals are at the forefront of our minds as we continue to grow as a publication. 

The year ahead of us is guaranteed to be filled with unforeseen and exciting challenges, but as the leader of The Hullabaloo I promise to our readers that we will do our jobs to the best of our abilities, with compassion and integrity.