By Abby Petersen 

The Clarion staff knew this issue would be published on Valentine’s Day long before our print deadlines started to appear in our calendars. Still, when I asked my columnists, both single men, to write about love, they shrank back in their chairs and began to plead the fifth.

I made them write about love, anyway.

We all think about it. We all talk about it. We all argue about it, from pulpits and offices and computer screens.

Love.

The last issue hit the racks Dec. 6, so we’ve got a lot to catch up on in this fresh issue, including a certain rapper’s performance on campus, a projected $6 million budget deficit and an annual celebration of romance. This conglomeration of things may make you want to shrink back in your chair and plead the fifth, like my single, but brave, columnists.

I want the variety of this issue to set a tone for what The Clarion strives to be – a publication that richly and journalistically describes all the sorrows, tensions and joys of the human experience. We’re still learning how to do that as best we can.

As I said in the first issue in August, our door is always open. Talk to us. Challenge us. Seek truth with us.

And, occasionally, talk about love with us.