Hey folks. It appears I have been tasked one more time with posting to this blog. We just wanted to take a second to welcome everyone back to campus. We hope you’ve all had restful summers, and with the school year upon us, it’s time to start making a paper again. The staff is already filling the newsroom, and we’re going to have three papers for you this week – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This may be my last ever Deadline post, seeing as I officially give way to Fall Editor-in-Chief Trevor Alexander Brown tomorrow and take up my new position as sports editor with my boy Jon Hines. It’s been real, see you in the sports section on Wednesday.

Hello folks. This will likely be the last Deadline post I make as editor-in-chief. Our last paper rolled out this morning and hit stands before the sun came up, just as every other IDS does. It will be in stands until Aug. 16, when the Welcome Back Edition will publish.

The Welcome Back Edition, the last of our big four summer publications, will be in stands from the 16th until Aug. 21. Our first fall issue will publish Aug. 22, the Wednesday of Welcome Week. Be on the lookout, because come fall, we publish every day, Monday through Friday. The fall staff is already churning, getting ready to put together our first week’s papers, and they’re going to be good ones, believe me.

That said, it will be sad to see the summer go. We’ve had a lot of news this summer, both happy and sad, and we’ve certainly been glad to have you along for the ride. From Dave Adams to Coach Hep to Michael McRobbie to exorcisms, this summer seems like it started just yesterday. It’s hard to pick the biggest story or stories of the summer months, there really have been so many.

We’ve had a lot of fun bringing you your IU news this summer, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the coverage we’ve tried our very best to provide to you, our readers. Without being too sentimental, we should send you a heartfelt thank you. Without you, we would not be, and for that we are grateful to each of you for picking up and reading the paper.

Enjoy these last two issues, and remember to stay with us through the fall. It’s going to be a great one, folks. Hope you come along for the ride.

And with that, the summer staff is officially signing off. See everyone again in two weeks.

While checking the latest news updates before my class at 1 p.m. Monday, I saw the news story about breaking news out of Virginia Tech, where CNN and other outlets were reporting at least one person was dead at the time. While taking note of it, it really didn’t phase me much at the time. I went to class, and after I returned to the newsroom, I noticed a much larger crowd huddled around our small 15-inch TV. That’s when I heard the confirmed death toll jumped from 1 to 22. I, along with many others, were shocked and saddened by the news as the toll continued to rise to 33 as of press time.

We immediately pulled The Associated Press story and put it online and we updated it when more information came in. We quickly then assigned a writer to localize this national story. We wanted to examine how students were feeling about this and more importantly, if this could ever happen here. For the print edition, we came to the consensus that this would clearly be our top story and should run banner across the page. We then looked for the proper photos to pull off the AP wire and packaged them with our localization.

I can only imagine how hard it was for Virginia Tech’s newspaper, The Collegiate Times, to operate through the tragedy, knowing that their friends and classmates might be among the murdered. With so much Internet traffic to their Web site the Collegiate Time’s server was down most of the time, but that didn’t stop them as they continued to post updates throughout the day on their parent company’s site. So to our student newspaper counterparts over at Va. Tech, good job and good luck. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.