A love letter to Viewpoint

Not to be horribly cheesy, but Viewpoint was always my first love at The Observer. 

As much as I love our other departments, in my eyes, Viewpoint was always the most interesting department. When I first became a copy editor sophomore year, I was fascinated by the hot takes we published, but I had no idea how much I’d grow to know and love this department.

To me, Viewpoint is discourse at its purest, a place where anybody can find a platform to share their ideas. From students, to professors, to alumni, anyone could submit Letters to the Editor or apply to be a columnist. We have everything from well-researched thoughts on the future of the Republican Party to in-depth reviews of new campus locales. Where else can you find members of our Editorial Board espousing their love for Timothée Chalamet or analyzing the dichotomy between drinking fake milk and eating real cheese? Viewpoint is a unique place where anyone in the tri-campus community can share their thoughts and find a platform for their voice, no matter who they are.

But Viewpoint is so much more than just the opinions we publish. 

We’re a department of 28 students working to represent the views of the tri-campus community. Viewpoint is the columnists themselves, coming up with unique topics every other week, researching their ideas and coming up with some of the most sophisticated takes I’ve ever read. Viewpoint is our copy editing team coming in every night to fight with our computer in the South Dining Hall basement and design print pages. Viewpoint is the Letters to the Editor in the Viewpoint inbox about every topic under the Dome. It's everything from the three sentence anonymous emails that never get published to the 1500+ word soliloquies on student government. It’s our podcasting team, amplifying students’ stories across the tri-campus community. It’s our Editorial Board, scrutinizing the tri-campus community and urging it to be the home we know it can be. Viewpoint is more than just what anyone can read on our website; it’s the people that create, edit and publish the content, making it possible for everyone else to read hot takes during lunch and tweet about how Viewpoint really just publishes anything these days (yes, we do see all the tweets). 

It’s been almost a year since I took over as Viewpoint Editor, and time has moved so fast. As I move from Viewpoint Editor to Assistant Managing Editor next week, I know I’ll always be a Viewpoint fangirl at heart. From the columnists who come up with ideas that I couldn’t even dream up, to the readers who comment on every single Viewpoint piece, to our illustrator who designs beautiful artwork for columns, Viewpoint is a massive effort of showcasing the opinions of our tri-campus community, and I couldn’t be prouder to have played a small part in amplifying voices across our campuses this past year. 

To the Viewpoint department: Thank you for giving me an incredible year as your Editor; I’ve loved every minute of it. I can’t wait to see what you all do next.