Shawn Safvi | To our readers

This year the DP is about you. Yeah, that means you.

Now, I know that many of you dislike us and that over the years the level of trust many of you have in us has diminished.

We want to fix this. It is our goal to be accessible to every student on campus, but we need your help and your input.

As the Executive Editor, I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. I'll be holding an "Open Forum" meeting on the last Monday of each month where I will seek out student feedback.

However, making sure this works is as much your responsibility as it is mine; I need active support from you, the student body. If you don't read the paper, I want to know why. If you read the paper and love it, let me know what you like. Whatever you have to say, this is your opportunity to do so.

For those of you who are particularly ambitious, I invite you to join us at 4015 Walnut Street. We are recruiting new staff to join the 250 students who work tirelessly around the clock, taking pictures, writing stories and selling ads.

Working at the DP is a great way to get engaged on campus. Although the DP is affectionately known as Penn's "unofficial journalism department," from academia to finance, DP alumni have become leaders in every profession imaginable.

If you are even a bit curious about working for our paper, or just want to come out and see what the DP is all about, please join us at our introductory meeting tomorrow. If you are interested in joining our editorial team, come at 6 p.m. Even if you've never worked at a paper before, we'll teach you everything you need to know.

And for those of you who are business savvy, come at 4:30 p.m. -- we have a $1.3 million budget for you to play with.

Interested in the web? We've got that, too. We maintain our own Web site that gets over 25,000 hits a day.

Whatever your interest is, there's a place for you at the DP.

Maybe you don't want to make a full commitment. That's fine, too. We encourage you to submit guest columns and guest blogs. Our columnists and bloggers can't be everywhere all the time, so you need to be our eyes and ears. It is very important to me that everyone has a say in the DP, even those who don't work regularly at the paper.

I want to hear what's on your mind. Attend one of our "Open Forums," join the paper or submit a guest piece.

After all, it is your paper.

Shawn Safvi is a Wharton junior from Chapel Hill, N.C. His e-mail address is safvi@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.