COVID-19 put D.O. traditions on pause. But there are some silver linings.

It’s crazy to think my time as editor-in-chief of The Daily Orange is halfway done. In a fall semester so devoid of Syracuse college life, I was incredibly grateful to have The D.O. — even when that meant no Sunday meeting at the house, no Race and no Secret Santa.

We couldn’t always work together in the office, either, as we needed to suspend in-person production with each uptick in COVID-19 cases throughout the semester. Managing Editor Emma Folts and I were sometimes at 230 Euclid Ave. completely alone, with the rest of the staff working remotely.

In times like those, we missed the chatter and laughter that ordinarily fill the house. We missed carrying around boxes of chips to each section (the COVID-19 edition of PUP food). We even missed running up and down the stairs to give staffers a temperature check before they came in.

The constant threat of losing the ability to work together made us appreciate our time in the house more. For some of us, in-person production was just about the only social interaction we had each day. With few in-person classes and limited group seating — goodbye to The D.O. booth in Food.com — there wasn’t any other place for several staffers to mingle.

We could only fit about half the staff in the house with social distancing, and staffers were mostly confined to their section room. But being able to speak to one another at least from across the room went a long way in keeping the staff connected. Those four production nights each week became a break from the isolation we faced throughout the rest of our daily lives.

But there was a silver lining (or a few) to the craziness of running a college paper during a pandemic.

The D.O. is better prepared to adapt to an inevitable shift to a digital-only publication because we cut a second print day due to coronavirus-related advertising losses. We’ve created a digital managing editor position and added more assistant digital editors to the News, Culture and Sports sections to better manage our online presence. Podcast is now its own section, which includes our main news podcast and a revamped Sportscast. We’ve even revived our weekly sports newsletter.

We have also made efforts to strengthen our commitment to diversity and inclusion. Emma and I have held workshops with the staff on how we can be more inclusive in our reporting, and we’ve updated our style guide with more inclusive language as well. We will soon be releasing The D.O.’s first report on the diversity of our content and staff — and creating an action plan to implement changes for the spring and beyond. Future management teams will be required to complete a similar diversity report.

We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to increasing the diversity of our staff, especially at the top levels of the paper. But there’s some hope that change will come sooner than we expect. Next semester we’ll have three women editors on the Sports staff: Allie Kaylor, Skyler Rivera and Ella Plowman.

Thanks to the generosity of alumni and readers, we will also be able to continue our staff stipend program, ensuring the No. 1 student newspaper in the country is accessible to all.

Thanks for your support.

Casey Darnell (‘21), editor in chief