New Section to Bolster Community Engagement

The Anvil to revive dormant “Letters to the Editor” section.

The Anvil is at its best when as many students as possible contribute to an issue. In an effort to encourage more students to contribute their voice to our paper, we are launching a new section, Letters to the Editor, which had flourished decades ago in these pages. This section will debut in Issue 6.

These days, short-form videos dominate everyday entertainment, and one’s “attention span” seems to inhibit extended concentration. Students here, due to the rigorous curriculum, spend a significant part of the day studying. These two forces—the rise of short-form media and the Middlesex coursework—contribute to a lack of student engagement in The Anvil.

Letters to the Editor will be a box, in between the News and Opinions sections of each issue, in which students can write short “community notes” rather than submitting a 600-word article. These notes, or Letters, could be club announcements, alerts for community service or other opportunities, satire, brief opinions, or student replies to articles published in previous issues of the Anvil.

Editors have observed that some students feel daunted by the idea of taking on an article in addition to their academic and other commitments. With this new section, students can get the feel of writing for the paper without the pressure of a larger article. Letters to the Editor could serve as a springboard for more students to contribute articles. More generally, we want to offer students another way to contribute their thoughts to this paper.

The Anvil must adapt in order to continue to optimally serve the Middlesex community. With this section, we are giving students an opportunity to project their voice in a more succinct way. If people start picking up The Anvil for upcoming club meetings, they might also skim an article. They might, then, feel inspired to write an article themselves—this process is how our paper evolves and grows.

George Thornton