From the Editors

The university publication is a constantly changing entity. At its heart is a group of rapidly changing students putting words, images and designs together into a non-saleable commodity. As the university grows and develops, the students constantly rotate through, helping form parts of this place in this time, but seldom sticking around long enough to see the consequences—good, bad or otherwise—of their work.

As current editors, we have the transient responsibility to guide this publication until we too have rotated through, and have been dispensed by fate into far different worlds. We are aware of the 11 volumes of Towerview which have preceeded us, and from this history we derive a sense of guidance and purpose.

At this moment though, we birth this monster that is Towerview’s 12th volume. We have spent hours pondering and discussing what this magazine is, what it should be and what it can become. To us, our vision is bold, perhaps even pompous. (Dare we say Towerview should be the 11th item on our 10 to Watch list? Fearing the consequences of hubris and knowing the absurdity of this claim, we bite our tongue. But wouldn’t it be nice?) We hope we have envisaged an engaging package which entices readers to ask for more. We hope our coverage expands beyond Duke undergraduates, beyond Duke and into Durham and beyond. We hope to resonate.

There is no reward but the satisfaction of a job that may not necessarily be well-liked, but is (hopefully) well done. Once we are finished, this work is beyond us. Our attempts at beauty and some form of truth evade us and become the reader’s—yours. Ultimately, we are at once hindered and enabled by our vision and the history we inherit.

Holding artifacts of history, we exist trying to fulfill the potentials of a collective future of which we are not sovereign but certainly a part.