Homecoming is an occasion that has always held a special place for me, especially in regard to the publication that you are currently reading. Three years ago, in 2015, I had only barely taken over The Mustang as Editor and, along with my brand new, untested staff of student journalists, we took Homecoming 2015 by storm, covering the week of events that culminated in the traditional WNMU Homecoming football game. Our team got massacred unfortunately, but the overall experience was still a lot of fun and remains one of my fondest memories at WNMU. The following year, at the Homecoming Game in 2016, we took our very first staff photo, something that we would continue to do every few months as the staff continued to grow and change.
Now, it’s at Homecoming 2018 that I write my last article for The Mustang. I graduated this past May and now I’m an alumni currently enrolled in a Master’s Program and I’m getting married in about eight months, so it feels right to let the paper go as I embark on this new journey. However, in honor of Homecoming Week, the new Editor of The Mustang, Eve Thomas, asked me to write one last piece.
The last editorial I wrote was in December 2017, and it came from a much angrier, more frustrated place due to how I was feeling at the time. That’s not the note I want to go on. Instead, I want to write something positive and share what I’ve learned running the paper, as well as say thank you to those who embarked on this three-year journey with me and ultimately tie a bow around my time with this publication.
The Mustang has always been driven by passion and creativity. The paper has never had a terribly solid foundation, unlike some of the other organizations within the University. It isn’t like a club or a student government, where the positions are already in place and there are handbooks to direct people on what to do. A lot of my work on the paper has been through improvisation and lots of trial and error. Trying new and different ideas and finding out what worked and what didn’t. Running this paper was never a very clinical process and it would be almost ludicrous to make the statement “I had running the paper down to a science,” because it was always growing, changing and evolving. None of the three years I worked on the paper were like the other. Mass-media is a shark in water, and it always needs to keep moving in order to survive, and it needs individuals with passion and creativity to keep it moving.
Keeping The Mustang moving wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a number of students, all of whom have now moved on to bigger and better things. The ones that stuck with the paper the longest are Marissa Aguirre, CP Thompson, Anna Daggett, and Katia Ibarra, all of whom not only proved to great colleagues, but also great friends. I’m proud to have known and worked beside each one of them.
It feels weird putting all of this behind me and moving on to the next chapter, but it’s something that must be done. Fortunately, I’m leaving the paper in excellent hands. I have high hopes for the new editor, Eve Thomas. She has the heart and mind of an activist and has the potential to really take this paper and make it something special. I wish her all the best. Running this paper will be some of the hardest, yet most rewarding, work of her life. It certainly was for me.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this article and I hope you check out what Eve has already written as well as the articles to come. It is readers like you that also help keep this paper moving and thriving and I appreciate each and every one of you, whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or are just checking us out right now.
See you later, everybody, and as always, thank you for reading!
Eric Lowe,
Class of 2018
Former Editor of The Mustang
