To anyone who reads this,

Hello. We are the Senior Copy Editor and Deputy Senior Copy Editor of The Varsity, Callie and Raina. You may not know what we do. We are the backbone of the newspaper. We spell-check, fact-check, and do all the other checks that ensure you receive accurate information. There is not a single story that doesn’t cross our desk. 

Anyways, we will now seize one of the rare chances of escaping the copy office to speak into the void (even though we have both written articles before, try to find them!). Volume 146 has certainly been a year. Thank you to everyone who has been part of it, including all the copy editors, section editors, management, and writers. 

Specifically, thank you to our GOAT associates Ben Chapman, Juliet Pieters, and Cate Woodhead. Thank you to Ben and Juliet, who have been pillars of the copy community throughout the year, for never failing to show up and ensuring we publish quality articles. Thank you to Cate for stepping up at the end of the year and doing the impossible task of learning almost all of DSCE’s responsibilities in less than a month. Additional thanks to our leads, Sarah Pan, Omayma Lateef, and Roya Alisultanova. (No) Thanks (jk) to our defectors: Zaneb Asad, who became an Opinion Associate, and Hilary Cheung, who became a News Associate, but still made sure to come back every Saturday and Sunday, respectively, to help with copy. 

Thank you for locking in. We have formed a great, tight-knit community that we (Callie will, Raina is sticking around) will greatly miss. Your honorariums will come in April.

Now we will utilize this precious space as an ad. If you, Dear Reader (shoutout Juliet, see you in Arts), would also like to be part of a great copy community (and maybe also receive an honorarium), please consider joining copy! We promise we don’t bite. If you are a grammar police and like free snacks, you should also join. 

Copy editing is a great way to contribute to the university community by supporting its largest student paper and keeping up with events on all three U of T campuses. To do so, you can email [email protected] or [email protected] for more information, or fill out the volunteer form at the top of The Varsity’s website.

Now to take one last big shit on AI. Fuck you. And if you are a ‘writer’ who is considering submitting a piece to one of our dear section editors with AI, why? You don’t have to write. It’s on a purely volunteer basis. No one is asking for that computer-generated slop. If it’s not your own voice, we don’t want it! We want to publish the real thoughts and opinions of students. Stop making our job harder, constantly having to catch AI! We will dig through your editing history, minute by minute, and expose you.

In all seriousness (not that AI isn’t serious), thank you for an eventful year. We look forward to Volume 147 with Raina and Cate!

See you next year,

Callie Zhang, Senior Copy Editor, and Raina Proulx-Sanyal, Deputy Senior Copy Editor