Welcome back for another semester at UW-Eau Claire, and welcome back to another semester of being one of our loyal readers!

If you don’t already pick up The Spectator on a weekly basis, grabbing this issue was a good start. One thing that has always irked me about my fellow students at Eau Claire is the overall lack of interest in our university until it’s too late.

Don’t get me wrong, I love our school and think we have some of the brightest students in the state (and country), but we have a bad history of being relatively uninformed
about topics.

Most students like to blame Student Senate for their own incognizance. But the truth is, it is only their responsibility to represent us and then make their decisions public, not necessarily to promote them.

Obviously it would be ridiculous to expect the average student to attend every Student Senate meeting, or be knowledgeable about every topic related to our University. That is why The Spectator’s goal is to do that for you. We have one of our reporters at every Student Senate meeting, and provide coverage of any other topic that would be of interest to students.

Now, I would be the first to admit that there is the occasional story that slips through the cracks, and that’s where you as our readers come in. Believe it or not, but just about every one of the stories in our news section starts with a tip from our readers.

As Editor in Chief of our paper, I would highly encourage anyone with a story idea to send it our way. You can e-mail me personally at [email protected], and I will make sure it gets passed along. Or, an even quicker route would be to just stop by our office in Hibbard 104. Someone is in there just about all hours of the day, and would be happy to take down any ideas you might have.

Doing so would not only provide you the opportunity to have your thoughts heard, but it would also be a service to your fellow students who might not have found out about the topic any other way.

Not only am I excited about the thought of including even more ideas from our readers, but I am also excited to officially announce we will be launching our brand new
website on Feb. 7.

I kid you not, launching a new website is something I have heard about each of the past five semesters. I am incredibly proud to say that as a result of some very hard work by two students who have volunteered to design the site, the time has almost arrived.

This first two issues will appear only in print, but every issue from then on will be posted on our new website. Not to mention we post numerous stories on the days in between our weekly print issues. The URL remains the same, www.spectatornews.com, but you will notice a massive upgrade in layout and design. It’s something I think will provide a much more enjoyable experience for all of our readers, and will be much more multimedia intensive.

Don’t be confused if you check out the site now and notice it is unchanged or has a message saying we are working on the new one. I assure you, come Feb. 7, you will notice the night-and-day difference between the two.

I look forward to (hopefully) hearing from many of you this semester, and again encourage you to come to us with any ideas you may have.
After all, secrets are no fun unless they are for everyone.