Dear readers of The Concordian,
Due to irreconcilable differences with our board of directors, The Concordian’s editor-in-chief Andrew Haig resigned over the holiday break. His devotion to this newspaper has been of inestimable value. Rest assured, a great amount of preparation has been done to ensure there will be as little disruption as possible. We look forward to accomplishing a great deal in the coming four months.
The role of an editor-in-chief is to implement an editorial vision, bringing cohesiveness to the newspaper’s different facets. As The Corcordian looks towards the future, we will strive to continue with our vision by offering Concordia students the most relevant and timely news, and by readjusting the role we play on campus to better serve our readership’s needs.
Luckily, Andrew’s editorship has left us with a piece of the puzzle from which to build upon. What he has brought to The Concordian is a commitment towards stimulating the minds of those around him through his spirit of debate. His vision as editor-in-chief was not only to produce a newspaper of the highest journalistic quality for students, but to educate through well-developed ideas and sound arguments.
Education by means of debate is perhaps most relevant in a university environment where students are exposed for the first time to a gamut of social issues. Andrew strongly believed The Concordian could complement academia with a real-time world view and could become a much needed arena for discussion.
His nature was to challenge those around him by questioning the merits of their opinions and inviting open debate. His exchanges, whether the forum was within our opinions section or outside the newspaper’s printed pages, taught us to rid ourselves of our false sense of security in assuming any righteous cause would be met on campus with a sea of consensus. He deliberately challenged the status quo set by students on politics and social issues, forcing us to re-evaluate our role as rigourous reporters who will cut through rhetoric and clearly present the facts.
Andrew’s contentious style illustrated that individual intellect will not advance, and at worse will devolve, when we are constantly surrounded by like-minded individuals. Entrusted with the gathering of information, we at The Concordian should be even more wary of this pitfall, and will endeavour to better our diversity in opinions.
Over and above his editorials and news reporting, Andrew led various debates in our newsroom as a means to adopting a critical approach towards the topics we cover in our newspaper. His tireless passion spurred on our experience as burgeoning journalists and as students. For this, we owe him our thanks.
The Concordian staff
