Enquiry is a publication that consistently embodies its motto “free thought and discourse.” But in recent years, many have thought it was focused more on discourse, contradicting other opinions, rather than free thought. To much of the campus, Enquiry represents a publication that is simply contrary to the views of most students. While we do offer differing opinions that cut against the grain of prevailing campus thought, we also wish to fully exemplify our motto by providing the seeds of conversation.

2020 has been an unusually eventful year. Wildfires in Australia, Kobe Bryant’s death in a helicopter accident, and the impeachment of President Trump dominated the headlines before even the first day of spring. Allegations of Hunter Biden benefiting from corruption in Ukraine and rumors of Kim Jong-un’s imperiled health have persisted for months. Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation, and chants of “ACAB” (“all cops are bastards”) engulfed popular culture following the murder or wrongful death of George Floyd, with some cities experiencing protracted protests and riots. Last weekend, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died after 27 years of highly visible service on the court, prompting a battle over the nomination of her successor that complicates an already most contentious election year. And of course, there is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which in addition to claiming so many American lives affected Hamilton students by displacing us and nullifying a semester’s grades. The shift to a credit/no credit grading scale was especially disorienting to Hamilton students as no one - students or those reviewing a transcript - can discern what grades one deserved for that semester.

Editing a publication which cuts against the grain of public opinion on campus is challenging, enlightening, and incredibly rewarding. Our publication is either heavily scrutinized so it can be criticized or it is dismissed completely. It is sometimes picked up and discussed vigorously and sometimes thrown into the garbage soon after distribution. Sometimes we get strong agreement from our readers, and occasionally we engage in a friendly sparring session with our counterparts at The Monitor (though I believe we have a perfect record against them). Coming to the end of my tenure as editor-in-chief, I want to share some of my most rewarding experiences while publishing Enquiry.

On May 26 I will graduate – a joyful and bittersweet occasion. I am ready to depart, but am left wondering how four years moved so quickly. And however imperfect my reminiscing, I will nevertheless remember my time at Hamilton College with thoughts of gratitude – such a small place up on a hill, chock-full of gifted people with big dreams. As Robert Frost declared in his poem “Birches,” I have endeavored “to fill a cup / Up to the brim / And even above the brim.” And at the graduation ceremony that Sunday, I will think the morning is full of hope and promise, filled even to the very brim. Amen to all that.

My goals as Editor-in-Chief of the Alexander Hamilton Institute’s student-run publication Enquiry are to nurture student authors and to publish exceptional writing on political, economic, and cultural issues from differing voices. I want staff writers and guest writers from “paleo to progressive” to describe the world from a perspective that is uncommon, significant, well reasoned, and profound. Their power will come from their ability to look at important issues cogently and dispassionately, relying not only on current modes of thinking, but also on their unique views. At Enquiry, as our mission statement attests, “you will find no shouting matches, no sloganeering. The goal is to elevate the discussion, not to end it. Here, no debates are over and settled, and no ideas are safe from criticism.” We take all who want to enter the realm of ideas and conversation as welcome guests. 

The last few weeks of any senior’s time at Hamilton are rife with reflection. Through all the final papers and presentations, it is exciting to look forward to a postgraduate life but also nostalgic to consider how Hamilton has changed each of us. I know, through positively and negatively impactful experiences, that Hamilton has shaped me in innumerable ways. The Alexander Hamilton Institute and my connection to political controversy on campus through this publication have certainly helped define my political views and how I see myself participating in politics at all after graduation. One of the many things I am looking forward to upon graduating is leaving behind a political categorization game which is played by both students and faculty.

Sophocles was born just outside of Athens in 496 BC to a well-to-do family and lived to be 90 years old. He wrote more than one hundred plays, of which only seven in complete form have survived: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. He was a contemporary of another great playwright, Euripides, and wrote most of his plays after those of Aeschylus.

The last year has not been kind to our language. Students throw racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc. around to end a conversation on a virtue signal instead of engaging in a challenging discussion. While the necessity to use these words may be more frequent, their meanings, and thus the arguments stemming from them, lose their punch without proper definition. John McWhorter, a distinguished linguist at Columbia University, observes: “The Martian anthropologist would recognize no difference between the way those accused of being witches were treated in 17th-century Salem, Mass., and the way many innocent people are being accused of ‘racism’ today.”

Hamilton College recently hit a low point when activists calling themselves “the Movement” made national headlines for their laughable list of “demands” that sent college administrators scrambling to appease them in one way or another.

Fortunately, Hamilton followed up the low point with a high point the very next week. On December 11, Hamilton announced the selection of a new college president. David Wippman, a professor of international law and the Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, will assume the office in July 2016.