Summer is right around the corner. Vacations are planned, projects are finalized, the sun is shining and the clock ticks down. And so, we get ready to end another semester at Shippensburg University. As I get ready to graduate on May 6, I cannot help looking back at my four years here.

Fall 2019 I jumped right in with The Slate and SUTV. I got myself and the rest of our crew into a presidential rally for Donald Trump in Hershey. We covered a homicide off campus.And, I won my first Keystone Media Award for my photography. I would say it was an eventful first semester. Spring 2020 started off great, I was looking forward to my time at Shippensburg University.

And then the pandemic hit.

Campus shut down, we all went remote, it was a difficult time. I was one of the students who came back to campus in the fall of 2020 even though my classes were remote. In my apartment just off campus, I worked to complete my classes and keep pushing through.

Fall 2020, there was something in the air around campus. Shippensburg University felt almost abandoned during the pandemic. I could walk across the quad in the middle of the day and I would not see a single student. There were no groups playing frisbee on the quad, no gossip being shared walking between classes, it was not the Shippensburg University I knew a semester prior.

That did not stop us though. While things were difficult, SUTV and The Slate refused to keep quiet. During fall 2020 both of them worked together to cover another Trump rally in Middletown, and SUTV hosted live election night coverage. We as students refused to let the shutdowns shut us down.

Then, we got the news. Finally, no more masks.

At the start of spring 2023, things felt different once again. It was something I had not felt since fall of 2019. Crowds on the quad walking between classes, friends laughing and catching up between classes, things were returning to normal. So, as I finish laying out my final edition of The Slate, I leave you all with this.

To my colleagues Ryan Cleary, Paige Shope, Jack Ansley and the entire class of 2023. We survived. Good luck after graduation. It has been an honor to write, study, take photos and be by your sides through these past four years.

And to the future freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors. When you all return to campus for the fall 2023 semester, just know one thing.

This is the way Shippensburg is supposed to be. Enjoy it. 

Reporting for SUTV News and The Slate, this is Carmine Scicchitano, signing off for one final time.

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