As the year winds down and we say our teary goodbyes, we can’t help but look at the stacks of archived issues here in The Concordian office with a sense of nostalgia. Not to get all weepy on you or anything, but it is truly sobering to see all news and articles from this year all in one place. In case it hasn’t already been made exceedingly apparent, this year has been a wild ride.
This year has seen some of the biggest changes Concordia has ever experienced in a single year. After years of proposals, intervisitation was dropped with finality. The Christmas Concert was held somewhere other than Memorial for the first time in God knows when. We’ll have a renovated weight room next year, and the academic calendar has been boldly put forth as the next big thing to change.
Say what you will about this year, it has been a transformative one. Concordia remains in a sometimes discomforting state of transition, and things are going to start moving fast. This campus faces some real and formidable challenges, but we’re still in first gear. The academic calendar proposals unveiled an almost universal desire for change, albeit with lots of competing ideas for what exactly to change. But, if there’s one pattern we can coax out of these stacks of papers, it is that Concordia will change. A lot.
To prove that trend, we thought we’d compile a list of some of the most memorable stories from those dusty stacks of papers. Here are our top ten:
1. 1-3-3-1 proposal submitted and shot down
2. Visitation restrictions eliminated
3. Memorial Auditorium roof engineering analysis
4. Concordian newspapers stolen and student body reaction
5. Total hour cap affects students working on campus
6. Gender neutral bathrooms created
7. Concordia looks at optimal size of the school
8. Fjelstad to be repurposed and Intercultural Center closed
9. Drag show held for the first time
10. $43,000 allocated from SPIF fund for weight room improvements
And that’s only the top ten. Many smaller stories and changes have unfolded with less fanfare. At the end of the day, much like the graduates it is sending responsibly into the world, it may appear that Concordia may struggle to solidify its identity in the coming years. But if we Cobbers can be confident in one thing, it is the subtle but potent talent hiding on this campus. That undervalued potential will be the driving force that pushes Concordia forward.
As we wave goodbye to the 2013-14 school year, we see that these events have changed our campus and shaped it for better or worse into what it will be in the coming school year. It’s been an honor to keep track of everything that has happened and provide our unsolicited opinions on it all. It’s been a wild ride, and we couldn’t be more grateful to the people that have been with us the whole time, from readers to editors and on to our unforgiving but invaluable faculty advisor.
Finish strong, seniors. Everyone else, let’s do it all over again next year. Yee-haw.
