Remember how last week I wrote a farewell column? Well… now I feel like kind of a fool.

I didn’t expect to be your fall editor in chief, but somehow, here I am. I’ve spent the past two years with the Collegian, dividing my time between reporting, news-editing, content-managing and neglecting my classes.

I’ve watched some amazing coverage by our staff this past school year in wake of story after story about upheaval in our athletics department, and I’ve watched our devoted staff of editors, reporters, photographers and designers spend hours trying to create the ultimate professional product. I’ve also watched as, these past few weeks, we went from just writing the news to actually being the news, all because of a mistake I take a lot of the blame for.

I’ve watched some pretty amazing stuff during my time at the Collegian, and hopefully during my tenure as editor in chief, we can continue the legacy that more than 100 years of editors have built, and hopefully build on it.

I hope that we don’t just improve as a newspaper in a technical way, but also in a way that’s far harder to quantify: I hope that we genuinely offer some reflection and insight into what, exactly, makes CSU the place that we all know and (usually) love.

After all, at the end of the day, we exist for one purpose: to serve the diverse, multi-faceted and, for the most part, extraordinary community here at this university. We’ve got some ridiculously devoted people on our staff to tell some of those stories, but I’m not going to claim that we’ve been remotely perfect in making our coverage as diverse as possible.

And that’s where you, the readers, come in.

This is your paper, and everything we do, we do for you. Do you think we should write a feature on that cool guy who works in your dining hall? Tell us about him. Do you think the CSU Police Department mistreated you on a traffic stop, or that one of your professors is abusing their power? We need to know about it.

Did your student organization do something great? Shoot us an email. Is there something that you’re just curious about on this campus? Please, let us know.

And if you ever feel like we’re misrepresenting people on this campus, or passing unfair judgement, or publishing things that seem offensive or make you feel attacked, don’t ever hesitate to tell us.

The reason why this product exists is to serve you. It’s not about the 10 editors sitting in a basement, it’s about the other 29,990 students milling around this campus every day, all with a unique story and a unique perspective.

But we can’t serve our community unless our community is involved in our process. And that’s why you need to contact us. Send us a tweet (@RMCollegian), write on our Facebook wall, send us emails or drop us a line on our comment board — heck, send us a telegram or snail-mail if you want to –– I can’t emphasize enough how much what you say matters to our process.

And if you’re feeling crazy, walk into our office. Find me on campus. You can’t miss me: I’m tall, awkward and have red hair.

And if you want to have even more of an ownership in what we do, there’s no better way than to get involved. We’re constantly hiring columnists, reporters, photographers and news designers. We’re always looking for guest columns, and love (or hate.. but preferably love) letters to the editor.

I don’t care if you’re a liberal arts major, studying veterinary medicine or an engineering major, if you love everything that the Collegian does or absolutely hate the useless rag we produce: you’re more than welcome to get involved, and try to contribute to this product and to the dialogue that we hopefully create within our university, and to make us better.

I’ll end with a final thought: I love everything about CSU, from Tony Frank’s obnoxiously long emails to the fact that our rec center looks like Pride Rock, from how great it is to do homework at the Oval to how perpetually awful the hallways in Eddy smell.

I’m glad that next year, I’ll have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend a semester trying to tell the stories on this campus, and to serve the amazing community that I’m still stunned I get to call myself a part of.

Despite some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past year, I vow to do things right. Because at the end of the day, everything we do, we do for you.

And I’ll make sure that we fulfill that promise.

Editor in Chief-elect Allison Sylte is a junior journalism major. She can be reached at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter@AllisonSylte.