There is always something newsworthy
about streaks. Or eye-catching, at least, like the eye-catching rugby fellas that grace our cover.
Or in the way that two presidents’ streaks, Dr. William Barker and Kiki Wood, come to an end.
We always look over when we see streaks blossom, including the hopefully productive streaks
of the five first-year students whose work we feature between this issue and our web content;
we watch streaks break and shatter, like Adrian’s commitment to being at every Monday night
in the Wardroom, which will come to an end on the last Monday of his academic career, or Griffin’s
tear-streaked face as he considers a future in the arts.
We’re proud of our own contribution to the Watch’s little streak, too, from our expansion to online
material to refining our own commitment to being this school’s paper of record. In fact, the Watch’s
streak has been going since 1989, and every editor since then has marvelled that we’ve even survived
to this point. Things are no different now. And while we tried our best not to put ourselves in the news,
we don’t know whether the Watch’s streak might end. That’s because right now, we’re homeless.
As part of the Wardroom renovations, we’ve lost our office to construction and eventual expansion.
Over the last month, we’ve been told by the administration that this was always to be expected;
in some ways, it was.
But make no mistake: we are losing student space.In speaking to past editors-in-chief,
the Watch was promised its own space, an office to call its own for what we were told is
an important institution. Now, our expulsion from our own office has left us to fit as much
of our furniture under Chapel Bay in the former Patrol office. Crammed to the eaves, we’ve used
the King’s Students’ Union’s back room to operate, and they’ve been kind enough to let us use it
for the time being. But depending on how union negotiations go, it may not be a long-term solution.
And as we rove with our heavy desktop computer, desperate for Wi-Fi bars, and as our boxes of
archives and financial documents find a home under a residence building, it’s hard to think that the
Watch isn’t considered as important as we thought it was.
Streaks don’t come easy: they’re a product of unyielding commitment and attention to minutiae that
most couldn’t care less about. We’ve fought this year for a Watch that represents you, that shows you
what a magazine in one of the best journalism schools in the country should be able to do, and it’s a
queasy feeling after poring over a year’s worth of issues making sure our oxford commas are in and
our captions are pristine and our headlines are catchy and our copy is clean and still not knowing
whether or not our own image of ourselves matches what the rest of this community thinks.
So we leave unsure. We leave not knowing anything other than the fact that the next executive is
going to do an incredible job keeping alight the torch we’ve run with. We leave only hoping that the
Watch is important to the King’s community, because that’s honestly the best we can do.
And we leave knowing that though as a team we started together late in the year, and definitely
almost always finished issues late, too—as far as streaks go, maybe ours wasn’t too bad.
Your editors-in-chief,
– Adrian Lee & Griffin McInnes
