Welcome to The Backpages!

The opinion pages—featuring editorials, letters to the editor, guest commentaries, cartoons and columns—are often referred to as the backpages because of where we can be found in the print edition of The Chronicle: at the very end of the paper.

As we enter the blogosphere, however, we are no longer bound by the restrictions of the printing press. Here, we are not the end of your rummagings through the paper; we are not rudely interrupted by word limits; we are not cut short by unforgiving deadlines.

But for all the opportunities the Internet will provide us—and for all that it has inspired within us—we also know what it is capable of. We know what that it lends ease to anger and fosters the growth of anonymous warfare. So we ask that you write passionately and boldly—with a heart that knows compassion and with the weight of your reputation, as we have put both into the work we do.

We've named our blog The Backpages to remind ourselves that the standards that we have set for our pages in the print edition follow us into the World Wide Web and that the obligations we have made to you, our readers, remain the same no matter where we go.

We hope this blog brings us closer to fulfilling our promise to be a tower of campus thought and action.