The Penmen Press has experienced great change over the course of this Fall semester. It began with a new co-editor-in-chief and a lot of new ideas that have paid off greatly in the past four months. But our biggest goal becoming more active on campus.
Our first effort at improving our visibility on campus was the Welcome Back issue. This special issue was put together by our returning staff over the summer and made ready and available on campus for Freshman First Days. The issue was a huge success and showed the kind of quality that we have strived to replicate in every issue since.
We don’t have statistics, but we think the Welcome Back issue was a success as it lead to the largest Involvement Fair recruitment in our organization’s history. Over 70 students signed up to be a part of our staff.
Another moment that we were hugely proud of this semester was our event, “The Penmen Press presents: Inside Out”, in the Last Chapter Pub during Memorial Day Weekend. It was a lot of work to accomplish, but over 100 people came out to watch the film on the holiday weekend. The response was so positive that we’re happy to announce that we’d like to present another film on Memorial Day weekend next year!
We’ve also made it so that The Penmen Press is now available online! You can access any of our issues from the Fall semester at Issuu.com. All you have to do is search for the Penmen Press and you can scroll through every issue as well as bonus content that we couldn’t fit into our layouts. These include uncut articles as well as some articles that couldn’t find a place due to space limitations.
Our organization has seen a great deal of success this semester, but it’s our fantastic staff members who have made it happen. We wanted to become more active on campus and we’ve had Penmen Press teams for the charity event Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, The Center for Community Engaged Learning’s Give a Little Feed a Lot food drive, as well as volunteering to make blankets for the local women’s shelter with S.A.G.E. It’s extremely rewarding to see our staff outside of our meetings representing the Penmen Press in the community.
We’ve accomplished a lot in just one semester, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to expand our efforts into next year and the Spring semester. We’ve discussed some goals which we aren’t ready to share just yet, but stay up to date with The Penmen Press on our social media profiles. As many of us leave for the Winter break, we’ll leave you with this: The Penmen Press is happy to report the stories on and around campus that wouldn’t be known otherwise. We can’t wait to continue reporting and be active this Spring!
