The people in the picture above are Bilkent News Editorial Board members. They are the ones who read, review, comment, discuss, and edit the news items that are sent to bilnews@bilkent.edu.tr every week. They meet religiously every Tuesday afternoon, they diligently participate in the decision-making process, they carefully select the items for the following week's issue, and they punctually meet the four o'clock deadline for the final review of the master copy on Fridays. They are the first ones who feel bad about any inadvertent typo, mistake, error, or goof, and they are the ones who work behind the scenes on the weekly production of the university paper.
With this issue Bilkent News is proud to have completed its fifth year of publication. This year, there were 29 weekly issues (the 30th will be a graduation special), of which three were "specials," including the Republic's 75th Anniversary, the 60th anniversary of Atatürk's death, and the Student Union elections. All together, those 30 issues add up to 158 pages, a good-size master's thesis! In those pages there were more than 220 pictures, close to 100 pieces of club news, 25 sports stories, 18 stories about BASSO and musical activities, 20 letters to the editor, 15 pieces of news about Radio Bilkent, 15 stories about the Traffic Committee, and numerous articles, announcements, ads, acknowledgments, and stories about Bilkent and its community.
In the picture, from left: Professor Ümit Berkman, Vice-Rector, did the fine tuning; Professor Mehmet Baray, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, was conscientious about word selection; Pat Bywater, Bilkent News Assistant Editor, did layout, copy editing, picture taking, and production; Kamer Rodoplu, Director of Tourism Schools, made sure our geography was correct and that foreign words were spelled correctly; Evrim Ölçer, Administrative Assistant to the Communications Unit, prepared the agendas for meetings, and took and prepared pictures for production; Dr. Yasemin Alptekin-Oğuzertem, Coordinator of the Communications Unit, took all the credit and blame; Reyyan Ayfer, Head of the Computer Technology and Programming Department, crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is; Özlem Korkmaz, President of Clubs and second year AMER student, provided communication between the paper and student clubs; and Hande Yeşilbaş, a third year AMER student, represented the student body.
Following are the year-end remarks of the Board members about the Bilkent News and what it means to them:
Reyyan Ayfer: Many thanks to the Bilkent News production team for giving me back my Fridays. I enjoyed being a member.
Mehmet Baray: I enjoyed being an Editorial Board member of Bilkent News because the Bilkent News staff made our jobs easy.
Ümit Berkman: Roads come to an end, but news doesn't.
Kamer Rodoplu:
Bilkent
Never tired,
Ever ready
When asked to
Serve the Bilkent community
Pat Bywater: Through my interaction with members of the Bilkent community I have learned the true meaning of living with an open heart and helping hand. Thank you!
I thank all board members for their continuous help and genuine participation. I'm sorry that we will lose Pat Bywater, whose contributions made my life much easier than it would have been. Although it was hard at times, I enjoyed every bit of the work I did. As they say, the harder the battles the sweeter the victory! See you in September.
- Yasemin Alptekin-Oğuzertem
