Welcome, readers, to the new school year and a new start for the Emerald. As editorial editor, I’ll oversee the space you’re reading now. The Commentary section is in many ways unique: It’s the space where writers not only report the news, but interpret it in the context of their own worldview.

The editorial board will sound-off Monday through Thursday about issues ranging in scope from campus debates to international conflicts — anything that interests or affects students. Five columnists, myself included, will write about trends, hot-button topics and anything else that interests them, hopefully alerting and informing readers in the process. Look for your favorite columnist on the same day each week.
Most importantly, this space is for the Emerald’s readers — students; faculty and staff; and members of the local, national and global communities — to voice their opinions and to reply to ideas seen here or elsewhere.
That being said, not all opinions are created equally. The language of debate is more frequently a weapon of prejudice, deceit and name-calling, and less often a dialectic of reason, lucidity and tolerance. Part of this, it turns out, stems from the unrelenting pace of the modern age. The time constraints of busy lives, not to mention the sheer mass of ideas available to the public, can compel consumers of information to ingest ideas in less time than a full and fair understanding and analysis of the facts often requires.
Such a circumstance is certainly not ideal, but it is probably often unavoidable in today’s world. This situation becomes a problem when, in an effort to further an agenda, demagogues or other intellectually dishonest zealots — of potentially any political persuasion — take unfair advantage of the busy public’s trust and short attention spans, disguising gross oversimplification as simplicity, and unthinking passion as rationality. They may label anyone who disagrees with their agenda as “racist,” “unpatriotic” or worse, regardless of whether the term legitimately applies — trying to exclude their adversary’s ideas from the realm of discussion by labeling them insensitive or otherwise inappropriate.
Many places in the media have devolved into forums where uninformed rants and ideologically incestuous nonsense run amok, often times leaving little room for rational, tolerant discussion. This space is not one of those places. Given the highly charged — and sometimes fiercely polarized — political atmosphere of recent times, it is more essential now than at any time in my memory to be skeptical of half-considered sound bytes and propaganda.
Finally, the rest of the Emerald staff and I want to hear from you. Tell us what you think about our news stories, our editorials and our columns. Write us a letter to the editor or a guest commentary, or come to our office in EMU Suite 300.
Stay informed, think for yourself, and have a great year.