Journalists at their best are bringers of light within their communities.

As weeks of panic become months of persistence amid today’s pandemic, reporters have carried the burden of publishing shocking statistics and ensuring political accountability.

Yet as much as illuminating issues involves asking difficult questions, reporting also demands a focus on hope. Readers need stories about neighbors helping one another and pantry-friendly recipes as much as they need the daily death toll.

While this combination of news and levity may be especially important right now in the national media, we hope the The Puma Press has always struck this balance for our readers.

We hope that over the last four years, our interviews with University Prep administrators have kept you informed throughout times of change. We hope Rants and Raves drafted at 2 a.m. have made you laugh. We hope profiles have made you proud of your classmates and paragraphs we’ve sweated over have made you think harder about our UPrep bubble.

We believe that thinking critically about issues presented around our community and sharing lighthearted reviews are not mutually exclusive.

We hope that this issue finds you, our readers, well. We thank you for sharing your insights and opinions and being vulnerable on the record.

While we reflect on our times on staff and the thousands of words written and rewritten, we are grateful for our adviser, Scott Collins. Scott has pushed us to be more courageous journalists and has led us through tough stories and hard reporting.

As we prepare to graduate, we leave this paper in the capable hands of Wally Bargeron and Parisa Harvey, as well as returning and new staff members. We cannot imagine a better team to carry on The Puma Press, and we look forward to seeing what light they share with and shed on the UPrep community.