Yes, the shout-outs are in the back. But before you dive into those anonymous rants on the merits of Coasties, take note of the seven pages of content that precede them. That’s the Opinion section, and it’s one of which we, Eric Schmidt and Sean Kittridge, are extremely proud. As the new sheriffs in town, we’re ecstatic to take our political views — Eric’s unabashedly leftist (anarcho-syndicalist) and Sean’s paranoid and hypocritical beliefs — and mix them with the myriad ideologies of our more than capable writers, producing something that hopefully represents the attitudes of the Madison community.

But seriously. Now that the Wisconsin State Journal has lapsed into the far vestiges of irrelevancy, the Badger Herald Opinion page ranks among the most consistently relevant sheets of newsprint published in Dane County on a daily basis. Blogging earlier this summer, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz even expressed his impatience for the student papers to start publication again, since we’ve historically been the best at holding city (and, for the record, campus) officials to account. And he’s right. This year, BH Opinion will continue to be relevant for you. We want to be the place you go to catch a whiff of the zeitgeist, to get an accurate picture of how students are thinking about issues that impact you directly. We’re even getting a blog off the ground — “Muckrakers” — to extend that goal.

We emphasize state, city and campus issues because we don’t want this page — as has been occasionally the case — to be a dumping ground for students’ opinions on national and international issues. The campus political groups do a good-enough job expressing those opinions as is. We’re a local paper, and we’ll stick to local stuff.

This isn’t to say we abhor national news. If President Obama decides to invade Greenland, we’ll be ready with our notepads in one hand and our “Mission Accomplished” banner in the other. But Madison is a unique town, one with a backbone of 40,000 students, and we owe it to all of you to constantly be in the know. We promise you that.

But we’re not stopping there. We’re devoted to not only offering a variety of perspectives on local issues, but also to constantly delivering fresh, insightful, entertaining writing. You may feel we’re consistently right or you might see our page as more off-base than the alleged “moon landing,” but we promise that BH Opinion will never be dull.

And then there’s our most important promise. BH Opinion has a long and proud history of supporting free speech on campus. Our writers have, on certain occasions, barricaded themselves in our offices against angry censorious mobs gathered outside. This is what makes our status as an independent campus newspaper so important: We print whatever we feel matters. And if some — or all — of it offends you, there is nothing you can do about that besides registering your discontent on our comment boards. Throughout the year, various columnists and editorial board statements might offend you. Really offend you. We promise you not to censor one word to make anyone feel comfortable. Here we defer to John Stuart Mill: “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”

Here’s where you come in. We are always scouring for new writers. If you’re passionate, committed and able to correctly identify all the gerunds on the front page, we want to give you a voice. Both our print edition and our born-again blog need new blood, and we know there is no shortage of politically informed Madisonians. E-mail us ([email protected]). Come into the office. We want you to help us ensure this newspaper remains Madison’s defining voice.

So whether you come to the Opinion section to learn a few new things, raise your blood pressure or test out the ink in that pen you just found, enjoy it. We do.