What a wild year it has been.

As 2019 draws to a close, that is a sentiment shared among people all over the world, including on Wake Forest’s campus. The end of 2019 also marks the end of the current executive Editorial Board’s reign at the helm of the Old Gold & Black. Editor-in-Chief Lillian Johnson, Print Managing Editor Ren Schmitt and Online Managing Editor Amanda Wilcox will pass the torch to a new set of executive editors for the new year.

But, first, we would like a moment to say goodbye to our beloved Old Gold & Black.

This year has been an incredibly difficult one to run the student newspaper at Wake Forest. Our campus made national news several times for racist incidents, including the surfacing of photos of deans of admissions in front of the Confederate flag and for a racist Instagram a student was featured in. Reporting on incidents such as these was never easy; our Editorial Board agonized over decisions of how to cover and discuss them in our pages, as we consider ourselves both a news source and a space for student voices. We’ve dealt with pushback from our readers across all sorts of levels and think about how to listen and respond in thoughtful ways. We’ve stayed up late every Wednesday night with our staff to put out a paper we confidently stand by each and every week, proud to see it hit the newsstands a few hours later. We can’t regain the hours of sleep lost and we can’t undo the stress we were (and put ourselves) under.

But we wouldn’t have had it any other way.

For us, the Old Gold & Black is not just a physical newspaper, or even just a space where we came together with people we would not have encountered otherwise to practice the art of journalism. It’s a feeling, one that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Leaving the office for the last time as executive editors will be a weird feeling. It’ll be sad, but we know that we have served the Wake Forest community in the best way that we know how — by providing a space for students to express themselves and by providing the best obtainable version of the truth. We are forever indebted to the Old Gold & Black for allowing us the opportunity to do that and for giving us a feeling that is so hard to say goodbye to.