Let­ter from the Ed­i­tor

Greet­ings Bethel com­mu­nity, 

It’s been al­most ex­actly one year since the pre­vi­ous print edi­tion of The Bea­con. We’ve all been through a lot dur­ing that time, as in­di­vid­u­als and as an in­sti­tu­tion. Many of us have been af­fected by the COVID-19 pan­demic still wreak­ing havoc around the globe. But even amidst the chaos, we’ve been blessed to re­sume in-per­son classes for the en­tirety of this school year so far and even re­ceived the good news on Fri­day, Feb. 12, that Bethel is low­er­ing our risk level to the Blue Level—more de­tails about that can be found in your emails. 

There have been other ex­cit­ing de­vel­op­ments as well: the ad­di­tion of an Es­ports team, the re­lo­ca­tion of the Art De­part­ment to the base­ment of the Ever­est-Rohr cou­pled with the re­pur­pos­ing of the Art Build­ing into a dance and the­atre stu­dio, the con­struc­tion of the Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter and the rapid progress of Bethel’s GROW cam­paign. 

As these and other pro­jects con­tinue to ad­vance, The Bea­con will con­tinue to keep you up­dated on the lat­est events. Sto­ries are pub­lished al­most every Mon­day morn­ing at bea­con.bethelu­ni­ver­sity.edu and you can fol­low us on In­sta­gram @bethel­bea­con to par­tic­i­pate in our weekly Nut­shells. If you would like to get even closer to the ac­tion, we’re al­ways look­ing for new writ­ers and would love to have you join our team. 

On a per­sonal note, this past Jan­u­ary marked three years I’ve been with The Bea­con, and I could­n’t be more grate­ful for the peo­ple I’ve met and the op­por­tu­ni­ties I’ve had be­cause of it. I'm the fifth in­di­vid­ual to fill the ed­i­to­r­ial role dur­ing that time, and I hope I will have a long line of suc­ces­sors who care as deeply about the Bethel com­mu­nity as we have.  

As the se­mes­ter con­tin­ues, I en­cour­age you to reach out to the peo­ple you care about to see how they’re do­ing. We’re all fac­ing our own strug­gles and tribu­la­tions, and as cliché as it may sound, we truly are stronger to­gether. We were not cre­ated to be alone—we need each other. 

Stay strong, Bethel! 

Sin­cerely yours, 

Bri­anna R. Dens­more