Dear Emerald Readers,

Happy 2020-2021 school year! We at The Emerald are committed to bringing you comprehensive coverage of events and developments that are of interest to the SHC community as a whole. Although we are currently in a completely virtual format, this commitment has not changed. You can expect articles regarding students’ thoughts on “virtual” school, our nationwide reckoning on race, the COVID-19 pandemic, and so much more. 

We’ve assembled a team that is second to none. I’m proud to have Safia Jaleel as our Managing Editor, who is in charge of the flow of content and our publishing schedule. Ava Brasch is responsible for our Publicity & Social Media efforts: we plan on being extremely active on social and digital media platforms this year. Misao Didion heads up our layout and design team. Margot Mitchell is our Head Copy Editor; she is responsible for the mechanical and grammatical accuracy of all our articles (including this letter!). Margot Hart is our Assistant Editor-in-Chief, responsible for planning meetings and other initiatives. I’m especially grateful for our moderators — Ms. Julie Phelan and Ms. Lucie Duffort — who consistently provide us with high quality advice. Finally, our outstanding section editors have already demonstrated tremendous initiative and I can’t wait to see what they produce.

We have many goals for this year. We strive to produce content that is interesting to read. We strive to be a forum for students to share their views on contentious issues that pervade our community. We strive to publish content on a consistent basis — you can expect a new article at least every Friday (if not more often). We want to build a following on social media so that we can meet students where they are (follow us on Instagram @shcpemerald). We want to build a culture of journalism at SHC. Although we are not on campus, we want to get freshmen interested in our program. We will give presentations to the class as a whole on “Freshman Fridays” in order to build interest. These steps will together increase our readership by at least double compared to last year.

As always, we are extremely receptive to any feedback you may have — just email me at [email protected]. If you’re a current student and would like to get involved, join our schoology group: the access code is 6RP92-K3S4B. If you’d like to submit an article, you can email it to the specific section editor (find him/her here) and/or myself and Managing Editor Safia Jaleel ([email protected]). 

I’m looking forward to a successful year in partnership with you, our readers.

Eric Coestad ‘21, Editor-in-Chief