Summit News Readers,
I’ve been writing this column for the better part of a year, but I’m now writing to inform you that I will be leaving my role at Summit News as I graduate from Summit Shasta and move on to Pennsylvania, where I will be attending Haverford College.
When I began writing this column, I chose to use it to bring important issues to light in the context of the wider political world outside of Summit Public Schools. It has been extraordinarily rewarding to contribute to Summit News’ coverage of the world beyond Summit. I have had the opportunity to tell stories that I would otherwise never have considered, and for that, I thank the readers of Summit News.
Throughout this time, I’ve had the honor of writing about subjects from national elections to local climate change activism in my attempts to share important issues with Summit News readers. I hope that my column may have contributed to how someone thought about a specific political matter.
Moving forward, there will undoubtedly be more important problems that arise in the future, just as there were countless political issues that this column did not engage with; it would be hubris to claim to cover them all.
This is all the more true with the uncertainty presented by current events — we are living in an extraordinary time for political news. The COVID-19 pandemic is inseparable from the politics surrounding our government’s response to it. It feels a bit strange to be leaving in a time like this, but there will always be political conflicts; politics will never be finished.
This lack of resolution has been constant throughout my writing as well. Many of the issues I have written about have failed to resolve themselves in ways I argued for in my time at Summit News, but that is to be expected. If significant changes of the type I have advocated for weren’t hard and oftentimes contentious, they would have happened already.
In my final remarks, I would like to emphasize that the need for information about politics doesn’t end here. It is essential that we not just involve ourselves in political decisions, but do so with an understanding of how those decisions impact our communities. I hope that we can all work to bring light to political injustice where we see it; whether through advocacy, news, or even just voting; it is us, the people, who make a democracy.
For the last time, I’m Ben Alexander, writing (and socially distancing) for Summit News.
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