As co-editors in chief of The Echo, we face a unique responsibility to both inform our present-day audience of current information and record history for the progeny of the university.
With the inauguration of a new university president, Michael Lindsay, we’ve filled our time with coverage of events and getting to know the new first family — all common expectations for a newspaper during a new season of leaders.
However, unique from previous Taylor presidents in recent history, Lindsay doesn’t come from a law background or a previous role at Taylor. Instead, he has spent the last 10 years as president of a university, bringing both an uncommon level of extremely relevant experience and a unique past to his position at Taylor.
Consequently, last spring, we decided to run an article pair, one looking back on Lindsay’s career highlights and one looking forward to his plans for Taylor to give a general overview to the student body.
As both of us are seniors, we’re no strangers to our university making national news. We’ve seen Taylor University experience political divisiveness, COVID-19 adaptations and three presidents, and we know it would be a shame to let just one article written during any of these times define the complexity of a greater narrative of the last four years.
As such, our heart’s motivation for publishing the timeline of Lindsay’s career on page one is the same as the motivation behind all articles we publish at the Echo — we seek to inform our present-day audience and record history for those who come after us.
With the empathy of understanding the last few tumultuous years at Taylor, we understand that a timeline cannot capture the breadth and depth of a decade of Lindsay’s career at Gordon. Nonetheless, that doesn’t negate the importance of learning about those times.
Together with our Faculty Adviser Alan Blanchard, News Co-Editor Kyla Russell and Co-Managing Editor Markus Miller, we poured over the information available about Lindsay and his career, and exchanged ideas about how to approach these articles and their publication.
Consequently, we chose to present Lindsay’s career in a chronological format, starting with his career in higher education, not ascertaining any event’s importance above another. We carefully observed the word count of each event, as to not allow hidden biases to expand too heavily on a particular event and not another.
Additionally, we extended the opportunity for both Lindsay and Vice President of Strategy and Chief of Staff Will Hagen to assess an abridged bulleted version of the article to confirm the essential information. That said, neither was allowed prior review on the full article to maintain the journalistic integrity of our writing.
We implore you to read these articles with the same open hearts and minds that approached writing and researching them.
Just as every person on this campus has a past, so does our new president. As we continue to get to know the person of Michael Lindsay and learn about his hopes, plans and goals for Taylor University, we hope this snapshot of his career in higher education thus far will encourage you to be curious and approach your discussion of our new administration with a willingness to seek out truth and speak in love.
For further comment on the article on page one, please email echo@taylor.edu, or submit a Letter to the Editor.
