On behalf of this newspaper, congratulations on your acceptance to the University of Wisconsin, and welcome to the pages of The Badger Herald, your source for crucial, hard-hitting coverage of news, sports and entertainment at UW and in the downtown Madison community.

Many of you are coming from as close as Madison’s east side. Some of you are coming from as far as the East Coast. And still others are venturing across the Pacific from the Far East. Regardless, you have all made a great decision by attending one of the world’s top universities, located in the heart of a vibrant, fascinating city. I guarantee this place will give you enough memories to last a lifetime.

Let me tell you a little bit about The Badger Herald. We are entirely run by students, from the reporters to the advertising salesmen to our Board of Directors, making us one of the most unique daily publications in the United States. The Badger Herald is now in its 41st year of production, printing 15,000 copies a day.

We were founded in 1969 as a conservative alternative to the then-radical Daily Cardinal, a newspaper that, in 1970, published an editorial sympathizing with the criminals who bombed an Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall, killing one researcher who picked the wrong night to work late.

We have since largely shed that right-wing idealism, though you will still see some of the basic tenets of libertarianism pop up here and there. We’ve also grown in size, overtaking the Cardinal in advertising sales, staff size and circulation.

Although we take our jobs very seriously, we also know how to have fun — something you’ll notice each Wednesday when you read our Shoutouts (badgerherald.com/shoutouts) and each Friday when you see something absurd on this Opinion page.

For years we’ve made defending the First Amendment one of our proudest tenets. This includes being open to criticism. Got a problem with something our columnist says? Send a letter to the editor. Think we’re missing coverage of a major event? Get a hold of our news department at [email protected]. Or maybe you think you can do our job better than us? If you have any interest in writing, photography, comics, shooting or editing video, or pretty much anything to do with making a newspaper, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] or give me a call at 608-257-4712 x101.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and get ready for four (or five or six) of the best years of your life.