Welcome back students! It’s time for another year of trudging to classes, usually on little-to-no sleep. It’s time for another year of cheering for our respective sports teams until our lungs give out. Another year of, ahem, reading The Collegian perhaps?

This year, Fresno State’s centennial, it is our goal to publish stories that you, the reader, care about. And that includes this issue, with coverage of Fresno State’s move to the Mountain West conference, the new furniture in the library and the tragic death of Mass Communications and Journalism student Kassie Lee.

Expect many hard-hitting, well-written stories over the course of the next two semesters, focusing on interesting topics that students will actually want to read. No puff pieces or press releases from us””that is our aim for this year.

Another emphasis this year will be more editorials, likely once per week. We as a student body should take a stand on the issues we care about most, be it the school’s and state’s fiscal crisis or school-wide politics, and there is no better voice than The Collegian.

As a student-run newspaper, we have a very eclectic group of writers””conservatives, liberals, independents, moderates, sports fans and band fans. We have no official political persuasion on this newspaper. But we understand that there may be times where we take positions that leave out part of our readership. That’s where you come in. We want your voices heard! Send in your letters-to-the-editor and comment online. Tell us how right we are. Tell us how wrong we are. We don’t care, we just want your opinion!

And don’t forget about our special inserts! This semester we will have four: The Football/Fall Sports insert on September 9; the Centennial insert on October 15; The Stressbuster’s Guide on October 20 and the Basketball/Winter Sports insert on November 3.

We have a brand new redesign of our website up-and-running at fscollegian.com. It’s sleeker, cleaner and meaner! (It’s actually not meaner, I just had a thing going with the rhyming.) It looks amazing. And there will be new content online daily, thanks to the leadership of new Multimedia Director Allie Norton. Our online team has even been posting during the summer! It will be another great component of our award-winning newspaper. But don’t take my word for it””check it out for yourself.

Speaking of award-winning, last year The Collegian won 11 awards from the California College Media Association, including second place in the category of General Excellence (you read right; we were voted the second-best college newspaper in all of California). And though that is fantastic, we have a little bit of healthy ambition. We want more. So this year, it is our commitment to keep churning out good stuff for you so we entertain and inform the reader, winning some more awards in the process. Because who doesn’t like awards? Let’s go for the gold this year! And take down the Trojans of Southern California, who bested us in the General Excellence category.

But above all, we want to put out a product that you, the reader, can be proud of. One that you can’t wait to read on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, instead of just using it to do the Sudoku or to cover up your adopted son’s pee (yes, I just watched Big Daddy). One that is interesting and that educates the reader in an age when most news is uninteresting or uneducated. We strive to be different. We want what’s best for you.

And that’s our goal for this year.