Happy New Year and welcome to the first issue of the semester. As the new editors of opinion, it’s our goal to make the opinion section into a gift for you. A surprise gift, at that.

To achieve such a goal requires us to connect more with our readership (you), to keep our minds and eyes open to what’s creating a buzz and to accept more columns on a variety of topics.

With that, we encourage you to hop online and leave comments on articles while also taking the time to overload our respective email inboxes. Whether it’s to share an idea of a story you want to write or to share your opinion of how the editorial page is running under this new guidance, we’re here to communicate (that’s why we took this job).

We’re also happy to say that our focus on more diverse columns benefits you. It means you don’t need to be a journalism student or a political science major to send an article to us. As long as you have an opinion, we’re listening and ready to publish.

This semester, there is a different means to express opinions rather than just the standard 600 to 800 word column. We’re excited to implement a new banter category to the online opinion page. This page will contain 200 to 300 word articles, which will be characterized by their snarky stances and multiple graphics, that will be written by a hand-picked team of opinion writers. We are hoping that this new feature will better engage our audience, while providing at least two minutes of entertainment to a single reader.

As for the printed columns, we’re eager to see what you have to offer us and your fellow students more than we are about putting boundaries on a column. If you have any ideas you would like to pose for an article, feel free to send it our way. We can’t promise monetary compensation, but we can promise fame. Lots of fame.

Drop us an email ([email protected] or [email protected]) to introduce yourself, find out when and where the new writers meeting will be and to share what you’re interested in writing about.

As the opinion section’s new editors, we also felt obligated to give you a bit more information about ourselves, aside from our apparent dedication to The Badger Herald and all that it stands for, which you’ve most likely already deduced.

I’m Garth. To create, connect and complete is my mantra for this New Year. I love to bash on higher education and the status quo, but not without providing a legitimate and creative call to action. I’m also very blunt.

I’m Briana. I’m all about literary merit and being grammatically correct, thus I have made it my mission to strengthen our writers in these areas. From a personal writing standpoint, I’m a master of masking bluntness with a veil of sarcasm.

Lastly, don’t be the person who can’t hold a conversation or come up with any small talk. Read the opinion section and have something to talk about.