Wilson is 37 percent white. The Beacon staff is 76 percent white.

The Beacon’s biggest shortcoming is our lack of racial diversity. This isn’t news to anyone. We talk about this every year, but we have made little progress.

We should be the voice of all Wilson students, not just the voice of the white Wilson students. In order to achieve true representation, we must give all students a place to speak, rather than speaking for them. It is the perspectives that are added, not the changes in statistics, that are so vital to the improvement of our publication. We know white people aren’t the only people who want to write, and we know white perspectives aren’t the only ones that matter.

But honestly, we don’t truly know how to diversify The Beacon. Still, we’re going to improve our efforts to make The Beacon a more inclusive environment. As 2018 comes to an end, we take the time to reflect on the progress we have made—and have not made. Here are our New Year’s resolutions for 2019—concrete actions we promise to take to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of The Beacon.

MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS: As suggested by a writer this month, we will announce the details of each monthly Beacon interest meeting for a week leading up to it.

FLIERS: We will continue to put up fliers advertising the interest meetings and the variety of ways you can contribute to The Beacon. These include writing, layout, photos, videos, and social media.

BEACON OFFICE (ROOM 203): We will be in The Beacon office every Wednesday with the door open and music blaring, snacks in hand, to help out anyone who’s interested in contributing to The Beacon.

CONTACT INFO: We will make our contact information more visible on our masthead (the list of staff members to the left of this editorial).

WORKING WITH JOURNALISM I: This year, a mix of Beacon staff members and students who have never written for the paper are in the Journalism I class. We will involve these students in the process of creating our monthly list of article ideas for the paper.

COMMITTING TO EVERY ARTICLE: If an article comes in and it’s not at its fullest potential, it can be tempting to sweep it under the rug. We will work with writers on every article until that piece is ready to be published on any of our platforms.

This is not the staff editorial we wanted to write to end 2018. Diversity has been an ongoing conversation among our staff for years, and our goals have been well-intentioned, but idealistic, and ultimately have lacked the planning and urgency necessary for change. So this is the staff editorial we needed to write to begin 2019.