Occupations, strikes, fires, space negotiations, campus trespassers: it’s been a busy semester of news at The New School.

The university’s history of commitment to social justice (and how that history is branded and presented to prospective students) makes the institution a place where student activism thrives.

The New School Free Press is committed to providing this community — everyone who makes up this complicated, hopeful, historic university — with the coverage that it deserves.

Take a look at the biggest national and international headlines this year. Hell, look at this year’s Pulitzer winners. Good journalism has the power to hold those in authority to account.

I’ve spent hours in the Free Press newsroom going through our archives, reading about this history of unrest, from the 2008 Occupy movement, to provost problems. I’ve spoken to former editors of the Free Press, now at New York Times, the New York Post and Rolling Stone among others, whose articles led to real changes in the administration and elsewhere. All it takes is persistence, a pencil and a notepad.

Somehow, when you print a story on a piece of paper, when there’s a masthead, when there’s bylines, when your fingers are smudged by ink — a story becomes more than a story. It’s the news. It’s something you trust.

We hope that our efforts in bringing the Free Press back to the presses proves our presence.

We are journalists reporting on these campus happenings. We pin our names on it and present it as best we can — bearing witness to events that matter. We do this to inform the community. We hope to cover the people and the work that deserve coverage.

We want to hold those in power accountable for their actions and their inactions.

We are the newspaper of record for this university. I hope you follow our coverage next term.