Dear Patriots,

This marks our last issue for the school year as well as my last letter from the editor to you all. Needless to say, this is very bittersweet. As I myself come close to graduation, I am feeling nostalgic, reflective and grateful for my time at Mason and Fourth Estate, and to be your managing editor this past year.

As briefly as I can, I wanted to take the time to thank everyone from Fourth Estate for being the heart of this paper. From staff changes to the infamous Slack chat and, more specifically, the ive-out-of-context slack channel to constantly living on a deadline to numerous personality quizzes (and a “What Fourth Estate editor are you?” Buzzfeed quiz) to heated arguments over astrology, among other things, we managed week in and week out to not just produce a newspaper, but also to both put out hard-hitting content and make this paper better than what it already was.

When I started here as a freshman, Fourth Estate was typically an eight-page paper. Now, we are consistently a 24- to 28-page paper on a weekly basis. I am certain that, next year, the paper will continue to grow under our new co-editors-in-chief, Dana and Hailey, along with numerous editors and staff writers, both old and new, who will play a part in the paper next year. A big shout-out as well to our old editor-in-chiefs from last school year, Fareeha and Sosan, for setting the foundation for this paper to grow.

Anyway, we had our semi-annual Ivee awards again this past Friday at the Rathskeller, which is always fun to celebrate. For this last issue, we have articles from “The Voice of Mason Korea” and NOVA and stories covering anything and everything from Mason’s new gift agreement policy to a Mason student who has been collecting free T-shirts, an opinion piece on course evaluations and underwater hockey—along with a couple stories by me(!).

It’s been real,

Basma Humadi

Managing Editor