A year from yesterday, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. A year ago from tomorrow, on March 13, 2020, the School Town of Munster closed its doors for the school year. The world hasn’t been the same since.

In a year, so much has happened. As a community, we’ve adapted to things we never expected to. A year ago, we couldn’t have possibly imagined everything to play out as it did. We have grown into an era of change; we learned, we loved, and we lost.

As a staff, each of us have various levels of experience when it comes to journalism, ranging from our education in a Journalism I/an Intro to Photography class, to having attended various state and national conventions where we were taught by world-renowned journalists and advisers on how to have good reporting. In the end, none of it could have prepared us for what we were about to face.

It has been one of the most difficult years to tackle in terms of student journalism. We had to change the way we interviewed, the time we had to build our paper, and the way we communicate amongst ourselves. But our biggest struggle was grappling with the fact that with every letter we typed in every story, we were documenting a time like never before. To put it into perspective, the Crier is a primary source—we’re literally writing history.

Now more than ever, journalism matters. That’s why we decided to create this special edition in order to tell your stories. The stories that have been overshadowed by all this chaos.  We also wanted to take this opportunity to speak to our readers like never before, because we’ve struggled too. We want our readers to know that they are not alone.

We’ve made a lot of progress, and it seems like the worst is behind us now. That’s not true yet. While we can thank the vaccine rollout for the dropping of infection rates, we also can’t dismiss the half of a million people who have died in the US. Crier urges cautious optimism. We must continue to be vigilant in our efforts to be safe.