Historically, Spectator has always been said to mimic
The New York Times. But we have reason to suggest the
opposite is true.

On July 1, 1877, when the first Columbia Spectator
appeared, it pledged to avoid the pitfalls of "class politics."

On the opinion pages, the editors promised to "certainly express
their opinions without fear or favor, not hesitating in any case to
call a spade a spade."

Some 19 years later, Adolph Ochs would appropriate the phrase
"without fear or favor" in his first signed editorial after purchasing
The New York Times.

Despite Spectator's bold resolution, its first editorial
board of seemed unsure of the newspaper's direction. In that first
issue, the editorial board promised no effort would be spared in
adding features and improving readability.

That first editorial read, "The Spectator seeks to be nothing
more than an interesting and instructive University paper, more
ënewsy' and lighter in tone than than the periodicals which have
hitherto flourished so well at Columbia."

The Columbia Spectator is 125 years old. And though it has
been a part of the University longer than both Barnard and the
Morningside Heights campus, what it has meant to this
community has changed over time.

Recent editors have ignored the idea of a formal mission
statement. The editorship of Spectator, and with it the
news judgement and editorial voice, changes each year.
Despite constant change, the basic desire to be interesting and
instructive remains. Spectator, from the opening of the first
residence halls on the Morningside campus to the recent failures
of Mail Services in Lerner Hall, has reported the news at and
around Columbia University.

At the same time its editors have used the editorial page to
express their collective opinion.

In the days right after the move from 49th Street to 116th Street,
Spectator's opinion pages agitated for residence halls and
student centers. The newspaper also published early works of
fiction and poetry by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston
Hughes.

In the 1940s, Spectator focused on the war and Columbia
sports. In the 1950s this newspaper first reported that Columbia's
president, Dwight Eisenhower, planned to run for the American
presidency as a Republican.

Spectator of the 1960s was a reliably left-wing publication
that saw the University divided into two camps: students and
administrators. The newspaper, as it would for years to follow,
came down squarely on the side of the students.

Most recent boards, this one included, have often viewed the
administration with distrust. Spectator has focused its news
coverage on the administration's dealings both with students and
the neighborhood. Persuasion was less important than accuracy
in this year's coverage.

This is the last issue the 125th Managing Board of
Spectator will oversee. Next year, a new body of editors will
pick the news stories and write the editorials. Spectator will
march on.

For the people who produce it, their time at the paper is a blink in
its history. The people who work nightly to create these issues do
so for many reasons. But the end result is a continuation of the
history of the organization and the documentation of the story of
Columbia's students, administration, and neighborhood. For
those whose Spectator careers are finished, the exhaustion
of the nightly production will give way to the satisfied smiles of
being a part of something, this history.

This issue is a monument, however small, to that history.

—Michael Mirer, 125th Editor-in-Chief