Editorial 
Jonathan Han
BU Beacon Editor-in-Chief 2019
Responsible for the Beacon's 2019 Reboot.

I don’t know whether to speak for you or to speak to you. It has been too long since The Beacon was last published. But unlike the way reunions go, where there is something you know you were supposed to say, but very little time to recall what it was, I have had weeks, if not months, to consider The Beacon’s first editorial in more than half a century. Let me try…. Back in 1951, the Chinese had pushed the American military back to what we now call South Korea; President Bob Brown was born; and the last issue of the Beacon was published.

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The practice of contextualization, putting myself into old shoes, does not help much in finding the right words. If anything, the shoes are two sizes too big, and the heel scratches my ankle. Few words are found in shoes. If anything, I have realized what is best said does not often come out of my mouth, but someone elses:

It will not be the large organs of opinion, or the old periodicals; it must be the small and obscure papers and reviews, those which hardly are read by anyone but their own contributors, that will keep critical thought alive, and encourage authors of original talent.

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Although sobered by T.S. Eliot’s pessimism, I hope The Beacon will prove him partly right. Long ago my predecessors wished for The Beacon to hit the “big-time”; at least we have achieved the “long-time,” longevity having its merits. Over the years, our journal has commented on the introduction of co-education, longed for peace through two world wars, and published the works of hundreds of past student authors. Amongst them, and among those who wrote for this issue, there are surely those of “original talent” keeping “critical thought,” or at least The Beacon, alive.

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I would like to thank the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center for keeping The Beacon‘s past issues well kept, and allowing students to turn (not flip through) their delicate pages. I am also very much indebted to the English Department for sponsoring this year’s seventy-sixth issue and for their faith in our editors’ abilities. Patronage is a dying art.