Dear readers, 

It’s certainly been an interesting final quarter. Any other year, we would desperately be cramming for finals and saying our goodbyes to teachers and students as we leave for the summer. Needless to say, the final week of school this year looks nothing like what it normally would. 

Rather, our country is fighting a war on two fronts: versus COVID-19 and versus police brutality and institutionalized racism. We have reached a crux, a year that will infamously go down in history. In fifty years, I bet students will analyze 2020 the same way we currently study 1968. We are living through one of the ugliest moments in our country’s modern history, with a complete lack of leadership and police officers who are actively trying to exterminate black people, all against the backdrop of a global pandemic. It’s a perfect storm of chaos. 

But it’s chaos that needs to be memorialized, to be remembered, to be commemorated. And The Blotter has the perfect platform to do just that. We have a website, and we are working on increasing our social media presence. We have a small but devoted staff. We will try, to the best of our ability, to capture and record these tumultuous times. 

Next year, in my role as editor-in-chief, I hope to catapult The Blotter out to a wider range of readership: parents, alumni, middle school students, teachers, and of course, high schoolers. A key component will simply be to cover the issues that are the most important to our viewers. In other words, we are going to cover big stories from a local perspective. What does this mean in terms of articles? Well, rather than publishing articles about the most recent goings-on in the presidential elections, we will be writing about the most recent BC Talks. We will be reviewing the school plays. We will be providing advice for how to survive American Studies stress. Like I said, we have a platform to speak on the topics that directly address our community. 

Another of my goals for the coming school year is to expand our mediums. We have already begun this process, but I hope to further it. As social media, videos, and photographs become the primary way of sharing information, especially amongst Gen-Z, the content that The Blotter creates should reflect that shift. This means more videos, more cartoons, and more images. We know that high school is stressful, and reading a long article (perhaps like this one) is not the most appealing thing to do at midnight after finally finishing all your homework. So it’s our hope that these new mediums will make our content more digestible and engaging for all. 

With race, racism, and police brutality justifiably dominating the national conversation,  it is only right and necessary to address diversity and inclusion within The Blotter. The Blotter does not have the best track record when it comes to engaging BIPOC amongst our staff. In fact, we have a remarkably poor track record. Since The Blotter went online-only, we’ve never had a black editor-in-chief, and next year will be the first time we will have a black assistant editor-in-chief. We need to do better. Moreover, we have a journalistic obligation to cover the issues that impact 100% of the student body, not just the 63% that is white. And I will try my absolute hardest to make The Blotter an entirely inclusive space at BC.

Lastly, without further ado, here is the editorial staff for the 2020-2021 school year. They have all worked immensely hard, and I’m looking forward to working with them next year!

Assistant Editor-in-Chief: Asa Khalid and Joseph Gordon

Sports: Sam Otley

Student Life & News: Kemi Iyageh

Arts & Entertainment: Simon Korotzer-Mariani

Humor: Mac Fabens

Opinion: Asa Khalid

Social Media: Owen Marcinek

Photo editor: Ryan Issa

This has definitely been an interesting final edition of the 2019-2020 school year, and an interesting first edition in my role as editor-in-chief. I hope to see you all in person next September and as always, I’m looking forward to seeing any and all contributions. 

Have a fantastic summer, 

Moya