What a year it’s been.

As is tradition, The Maroon would like to take the opportunity to highlight a year of ups and downs.

Like everyone else on campus, we’re thrilled to be back in person. Here are a few highlights:

• We love the first floor of the Reg, where we run into all of the people we don’t want to run into.
• We love listening to our professors give in-person lectures, but we are especially grateful to the ones that have kept recording their lectures anyway.
• We’re excited about campus coffee shops reopening. We’re especially grateful to Ex Lib for always being out of iced coffee and to Cobb—we’re not always optimistic about your health inspection outcomes, but you will forever pass the vibe check.
• Our lovely dining hall provider, Chartwells, for setting up sneeze guards and letting us put our papers in your lobbies.
• Shout out to Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson—it’s been seven months without a superspreader event despite the best efforts of many Booth students.
• And we would be remiss not to give thanks to our newly reopened Maroon offices in the basement of Ida.

And now, for some people that have enriched our lives:

• We’d like to give a shout-out to the parents of the Class of 2025 for buying enough ads to keep our paper going for another year.
• Chancellor Zimmer for affirming that the University of Chicago is the only school with a city in its name dear to him (we get jealous).
• President Alivisatos, who broke tradition by giving The Maroon its first interview with a University president in many years. Here’s to groundbreaking leadership!
• University staff, from the maintenance teams to dining hall workers, from residence staff to librarians and security guards, thank you for everything you do to keep the school on its rails. We know we wouldn’t be here without you.
• UCPD for ensuring the Dunkin’ Donuts on 53rd stays in business despite COVID-19.
• Care Not Cops for making activism an aesthetic. “I thrifted it!”
• And The Mob for never being outthought.

Lastly, a few campus institutions near and dear to our hearts:

• We’d thank The Shady Dealer, but we think they should be thanking us for the content we gave them last year.
• Study abroad has returned! The Canada Geese take flight!
• Model UN for making us look like one of the more put-together groups on campus.

On a more serious note, the transition back to in-person life has been a complicated one for The Maroon. We’re excited about being back in print and thrilled that students, alumni, faculty, and friends are reading our issues on and off campus. We’re grateful to the professors who offer grace and flexibility amid campus tragedy and an ongoing pandemic and who continue to support their students in curricular and extracurricular endeavors—you guys are the heartbeat of campus.

Thank you to The Maroon business team, the incredible copy editors and designers who keep the paper running, our brilliant advisory board, and the grown-ups in the room, Ben Fuqua and Karen Pryor, for helping negotiate the contracts, draw up the route charts, and write all of the emails that made it all possible. And finally, thank you to the more than 100 new Marooners who joined our ranks this fall. You’ve been incredible, and we can’t wait to keep working with you.