For my first act, I will make UT all but disappear. This is, of course, what happens in Knoxville when summer rolls around. The dorms empty of lanyard-wearing freshmen eating Easy Mac. Neyland Stadium stands silently on the horizon. The Fort is a hollow shell of its lively, boisterous self, now housing only a small group of resentful tenants who will not be studying abroad, interning in Portland or backpacking across Europe. Stacey Campfield has turned his piercing gaze elsewhere for the time being. And the jaunty pedestrian can even walk between those hedges in front of HSS without, oh, I don’t know, smacking into another person’s armpit or dragging half their body through the leaves or having to do that awkward, nonverbal dance of “who shall walk through the hedges first, you or me?” Even the Starbucks in Hodges is closed during the day sometimes (horror of horrors–but really). And yesterday, I got a prime parking spot near the Communications building. Never once have I been less than 200 cars deep into that parking garage.

But I digress.

UT in summer is, admittedly, kind of a ghost town, home only to straggler students and professors. And that makes this a little weird for you and me. What’s a campus paper without a campus full of students?

Here’s the deal, though: things are still happening here on Rocky Top. You need to know about these aforementioned things. The Cumberland Avenue renovation, the upcoming state representative elections, crime, campus construction, the best places to eat or go to a concert, all things sports. This is just a small sampling of the topics we want to tell you about. Remember the time a couple weeks ago when our campus was mysteriously flooded with children? I will be reading this issue to at last figure out what Destination Imagination is and why they come here every year.

Knoxville might be a little less crowded right now. It might be a little more relaxed, a little more tan and a little slower. But it is not sleeping. It is not waiting for football season to start being interesting. We, the abandoned summer Vols, are getting an even closer look at this town in the absence of its habitual college town persona. We are getting to read the prequel to fall semester. We’re an exclusive group, y’all.

So read your Beacon. This is the only place you’ll get to hear the student voice directly from the source. The only place that publishes solely what students might actually want to know. The only place where information is designed solely with the Volunteer Spirit in mind.

Hanna Lustig is a rising junior in College Scholars. She can be reached at [email protected].