“No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away,” Haruki Murakami wrote in his 2002 award-winning novel Kafka on the Shore.
Throughout our extensive research for this historic edition of ROAR magazine, I struggled to find a way to summarize the contents of the ensuing pages. In those moments, I decided to do what journalists do: quote an expert.
Taking up the mantle to be editor of The Daily Helmsman is never an easy decision, and the choices one makes during his or her tenure don’t disappear after their departure. I have the honor to sit where 90 years worth of editors sat before, with the same responsibility to amplify the voices and stories of students who came before me.
It would be easy to throw in the towel during such a difficult time. An international pandemic, the likes the world hasn’t seen since 1920, has been hanging over us all like a sword, after all. But I’m not the first editor to deal with difficult circumstances — giving up would just make me the first editor to allow those circumstances to shutter The Daily Helmsman.
From hand typing news and posting it to a campus bulletin board during World War II to a First Amendment fight with the university just under a decade ago, editors have stuck by this independent student paper through thick and thin. Those who began the operation 90 years ago built more than the foundations of the news organization I inherited this year — they built a legacy to maintain and grow.
Through our countless archives, they have – sometimes unknowingly – provided past editors and me the strength to stand by the spotlight of truth in what could have been, and in some cases were, the darkest spots in our university’s history.
Some of those stories you read about throughout this edition might seem as though student journalists through the ages have a hatred for the University of Memphis, but, to quote legendary student editor Chelsea Boozer, “One of the things that I fought a lot at the time was that perception that I just hated the UofM. It couldn't be further from the truth. I had so much school pride, and I was so proud to be from here and still am. So the fact that I use words like, ‘We were fighting,’ and similar phrases, I was fighting for the betterment of this university. That's what I believed and still believe.”
From your current editor-in-chief, let this magazine commemorate the nine decades of truth-telling done by the hundreds, even thousands, of student journalists. Their careers may have grown beyond campus boundaries, but many began in a tungsten-lit room at the Edward J. Meeman Journalism Building.
This may read as a tribute, an in-memoriam or even an obituary, but rest assured that The Helmsman’s history doesn’t end here. Journalism is history as it happens, after all. As you read this edition, I ask you to join me in raising a glass to celebrate those who came before, are here currently, and those who will etch their bylines for years to come.
