Hello, and thank you for supporting student media by reading The Daily Beacon. My name is Daniel Dassow — rhymes with “lasso” — and I will have the privilege of serving as Editor-in-Chief for the 2022-23 academic year. I am a junior majoring in English and religious studies, and I have written and edited for The Daily Beacon for three years. Your attention to what we do enables me to have this position and I am grateful for it.

Though The Daily Beacon is tucked in a corner of the Communications Building and is not part of the busy day-to-day lives of most students and campus workers, I have always seen the newspaper as fundamental to building community at UT.

Student media matters because having your experiences documented and reflected back to you is a life-affirming thing. Community gets built when a student cares enough about what you do and what you have lived through that she will volunteer to write an article or take photos or make videos between classes.

I look forward to guiding the process of documenting life at UT and mentoring those students who will stand where I stood as a freshman, before the student media table at Welcome Week, trying to seem cool in front of then Editor-in-Chief Kylie Hubbard.

Now, after two years as a staff writer and one as Campus News Editor, I get the chance to step into the role and work with Kylie as she invests time into the Office of Student Media and pursues a master’s degree at UT.

I have gotten to know and love so many of the editors I have worked with at The Daily Beacon, and though many are graduating, I will think of them often next year.

Among those graduating, I want to give a special thanks to Sarah Rainey, who has been a constant encouragement and role model as Editor-in-Chief this year. The composure and competence with which she led the paper is hard to follow.

I also want to thank Caleigh Rozmenoski, whose dedication to the Beacon this year as Managing Editor and provision of snacks was exemplary, and Madelyn Muschek, who co-led our section with me as City News Editor and made the job an absolute joy.

Lastly, I want to thank Alexandra DeMarco, who was Campus News Editor when I first came to the Beacon and Editor-in-Chief during one of the most difficult years in the paper’s history. Without Aly, I would not have known that I could do this job or that the Beacon was something worth giving your all for.

I wish Sarah, Caleigh, Maddy and Aly all the best as they graduate this year.

Looking to next year, I am eager to see how The Daily Beacon will grow. I will lead alongside a fantastic team of editors including Managing Editor Abby Ann Ramsey, who is a great leader and friend.

Though I often forget it, the newspaper has been at UT in some fashion since 1871, when Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States. Even in my short time here, we have documented how an ongoing pandemic and some of the deepest turmoil in the history of our nation came to a campus in Knoxville.

With 150 years of history and a talented team of writers with me, I look forward to stewarding The Daily Beacon toward its long future.

Thank you, and we will see you back on campus in the fall!