“We’re all here to fight with you.”
The words Nadeen Abusada, Tiger TV station manager, just told me in the hallway before I sat to write this.
It’s one of those things that make me love this place, this basement of Hodges Hall. We are all very near finals week yet here we are, all on the same team, ready to fight for this big organization we put our hard work into everyday.
We are used to being a voice for the student body as a whole, representing LSU’s campus and telling the story of LSU’s history as it unfolds.
Now is the time for us to be our OWN voice, as an organization and team.
As co-editor-in-chief along with Taylor Gonsoulin for 2 years now, both members of the Gumbo for 3 years total, I mean it with everything in me that this yearbook is so important to us. Not only has it given me and will give me opportunities in my future career, it will do the same for my staff, who work hard and do even voluntary things to create and sell this yearbook when circumstances call for it.
It has been so rewarding, continuing this century-old tradition, and I want to see its continuance for years to come. I do not want to graduate in December of this year knowing that the Gumbo is something that will cease to exist after I am gone.
Taylor and I have been through all the ups and downs one can imagine, being new to leadership roles and having to put together a staff willing to work as a team with constructive criticism and compromise, to complete one historical document that represents this school and all perspectives that come with such a diverse campus.
There have been the technical problems and the financial problems, but through and through my staff has conquered all things we have faced.
The Gumbo Yearbook, from 1900 – 2018, has documented and represented students at Louisiana State University, covering events such as World War 2, a switch to the 21^st centuray, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and The Great Flood of 2016, among tons of other historical events that not only left their mark on LSU but on Louisiana as a whole.
Student Government can potentially take away our fees, but they cannot take away what we have already accomplished here as a unit in Student Media.
I want to thank my staff, our Student Media Director, John Friscia, our Coordinator, Jann Goetzmann, and all other editors and hard workers down here in the basement for speaking for the Gumbo Yearbook and the Legacy Magazine.