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Oreligiös, opolitisk, obeslutsam – THS? TEXT CHEFREDAKTÖR | EDITOR IN CHIEF, BENJAMIN JAVITZ
It is not easy to create a newspaper. Articles have to be written, texts edited, photos taken, illustrations drawn, put together and sent to print. Paper is cut, colours printed one by one, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Pages are sorted, folded, stacked, laminated and cut again. The magazines are then sent out to you, students, THS-members, our readers. When they arrive in your hands, they have completed a long journey that started in ours. Many of you have started a long journey as well or are continuing to follow your paths through student life. As the student union magazine, Osqledaren should strive to follow all the interesting choices people at KTH make, all the innovations that are created, all the discussions started, all the controversies uncovered. Every year, Osqledaren gets a new editor-in-chief and has to find a new balance of our four missions: to examine THS and KTH; to give attention to the important work THS and all our chapters and associations do; to cover and report important events and developments on our campuses as well as in student life; but also to entertain you. Some years OL might be more focused on developments in the world, some years we might get into THS and chapter politics, some years we might focus on scrutinizing KTH. Some years, OL will just bubble along and talk about random, mildly interesting topics. I want us to do all of that, but we can’t. It hurt me to realize that I can't give every chapter and association the space in Osqledaren they deserve, that I can't create a platform for every important debate, report on every chapter meeting, career fair, gasque, festival or event, discuss questions like internationalization, digitalization, housing, economy, CSN, KTH, THS, exams, budget, money, JML, discrimination, cooperation, unity, division, dialogue, standstill. All of these deserve attention. Most of all the people behind all of these topics deserve our attention. And they deserve much more
attention from THS than they currently get, as well as better ways to decide what our student union should look like. One topic has been bugging me throughout the last few months. To me, THS often feels like a huge, lazy, boring grey whale - neutral, big, slow and cold. Not exciting, quick, active or warm. Political activism? Well, let's think about it first. Party events in Nymble, from Vänster to SD? Well, we want to be neutral, so we'd probably have allow it, right? Companies buying small parts of Nymble for 5 years? Sure, for the right price. But naming rights to our whole building? Actually.. maybe we'd need a discussion about that. Inbetween though? Grey zone. The main colours our student union uses are a light blue and grey. Oh, and orange, but only sparingly. When the brandbook allows it. This is not in itself wrong, it's just surprising to me. What I want to say isn't that THS is stuck in it's ways, it's that those ways should be decided by YOU: students,
THS-members, our readers. I want YOU to care. We can do so much good if we discuss these things in public, not behind closed doors in Sammanträdesrummet. Tell us what you want THS to be! Go to KF (the union council) and make a scene. Visit KS (the union board) on Mondays at 18:00 in Panorama, to tell them how you really feel. Please fill out our survey on the next page and tell us how boring or amazing you think Osqledaren has become (and win a lunch or coffee card)! During this year, I want to leave my mark on this magazine - I want you as THS members to start turning to OL when you are wondering what happened on campus this week, and what will happen next month. I want you to tell us what happened to you, so we can write about it, to let us know what is bothering you and to join us in the most important debates we should have about student life at KTH. It will not happen overnight, and so this magazine still looks and feels a lot like the previous ones. But send us emails - and we will print them. Tell us who we should interview - and we will talk to them. Tell us what you don’t like about THS - and we will investigate. Just as the paper you’re holding right now, I have made it to another stop in my journey. I’m not Swedish, I'm a German exchange student that a series of steps, decisions, and experiences led to this point. I don’t know how things used to be done around here, but I will look around as much as I can and try to understand. And I’ll cover the things that seem a bit off. I didn’t know what to expect when I started this part of my journey, so this magazine will cover expectations - how to deal with them, how to handle disappointment, in yourself or in the people around you, even how to live without any. Enjoy :)
