Dear Northern Vermont University – Lyndon,
Last Thursday, the Vermont State College System (VSCS) and Northern Vermont University announced that the next few weeks of school would be moved to an online, remote platform to protect students and the outstanding community from the spread of COVID-19. This temporary move has put The Critic in a difficult position as we can no longer continue to host in-person club meetings or in-person events. That will not, however, prevent The Critic from publishing news and editorials relevant to the NVU-Lyndon community.
The Critic is a student-run newspaper that focuses its content on what the general body of NVU-Lyndon is looking for. This could range from coverage of events, featuring student artists, informing the community of upcoming deadlines, and so much more. With many events and conversations being canceled or postponed, this makes covering some of these topics within the next few weeks much harder.
Last Friday, I, the Editor-in-Chief (EIC), sent an email out to The Critic’s active staff and contributing members addressing preliminary COVID-19 closure concerns. “For those authors who want to continue to run their stories, that choice is up to you,” I wrote. I was met with several grateful replies of our student writers stepping up their game to continue to produce content for The Critic. We’ve even had new writers and artists reach out to our Executive Board team in hopes of being able to publish something during this break. Therefore, The Critic is not going to stop publishing articles under these unusual and extreme circumstances. I believe I speak for our entire team when I say that we will work through this experience to make The Critic an even stronger platform for the NVU-Lyndon community.
The Critic’s team is going to continue to do their best to keep NVU-Lyndon informed about everything happening on the campus during this time, as well as the VSCS’s and NVU Executive Team’s continued response to COVID-19. At the same time, some of our writers and artists are going to be more focused on publishing editorial articles or comics in this rough time to help bring lightheartedness into everyone’s social media feeds, online searches, and emails. We hope that these editorials bring entertainment to persons who have found themselves with more free time and don’t know what to do with it.
Our team will also continue to meet to discuss The Critic’s course of action and publishing schedule. Previously, we have used the WWLR Lounge as our meeting space to conduct assignments, collectively work on articles, and brainstorm ideas. Now, club meetings will occur over Zoom calls to reach our body of writers and artists. We still plan to host these meetings on Fridays at 4:00 PM. However, since the spring break in April was moved up to this week, this pushes around our plans for the rest of the semester. The Critic’s staff and contributor meeting schedule has been altered and will now be as follows:
March 27
April 10
April 24
May 8
As of now, only the meeting occurring on March 27 will take place over a Zoom conference call. For those interested in joining The Critic, please reach out to me, the EIC, so I can directly send you our meeting link. Students are expected to return to NVU-Lyndon by April 6 for regular classes and at that point, The Critic will resume using WWLR’s lounge as our meeting space. The experience we hope to gain using Zoom will hopefully allow more students to access our regular meetings, as well as our current body of staff and contributors should a scheduling conflict occur.
The Critic will be holding our Executive Board elections on April 24. Students interested in any position on the Executive Board should announce to the group that they are running the meeting prior, which would be April 10, to give voting staff and contributors time to think about questions to ask the candidates. Though this is a later date than previously anticipated, I believe that it is needed to allow students running for Executive Board positions to be fully prepared in light of all the recent changes.
All in all, The Critic is not going anywhere. While a wrench might have been thrown into our plans, we have a history of persevering through rough times and coming out on top. I personally look forward to the great content you will continue to see over these next few weeks, and I hope you do, as well.
Thank you for your patience and support through these times. On behalf of The Critic, I wish you good health and fortune. We’ll see you back at NVU-Lyndon in three weeks!
Sincerely,
Alexandra Huff