Dear readers,

Though a month has passed beyond our two and half-month-long winter vacation, the APU Times proudly presents its first and newest edition for the Spring Semester 2010. In the midst of uncertain weather and fluctuating temperature of Mount Jumonjibaru, APU Times family has always been committed to its mission by being aligned to the principle of the free flow of information from the students, by the students and for the students.

As an active learning community, APU students have directly or indirectly been participating in various events going on and off the campus; Beppu city in particular. In this edition, we have covered various fascinating issues, ranging from different student activities to the hidden information behind ‘business as usual’ at APU. Investigative journalism being the most important frontier of our task, we have a belief that harmony in such a multicultural community as APU will only survive if it holds the principle of transparency.

We have the desire to expand our coverage and readership as wider as possible. The emergence of new media and web 2.0 are a few signals for us that have compelled us to maintain and improve our quality and widespread dissemination of information. Many people say that the era of newspaper is over, but we believe that the spirit of newspaper will never die. As the one and only student newspaper at APU, we will always uphold the importance of student journalism and public participation in our beloved campus. Not for the sake of individual pursuits, but rather, to reveal the truth and spread the factual news to every one of us. This is why we are extensively promoting our online access to the newspaper from this time on. With the promise to keeping it updated in the days to come, we hope that more and more people, within and beyond APU community, will visit and access our website more frequently.

Like many other student organizations, we do still lack full vigor to approach towards perfection. Administration and management of the newspaper has always been the biggest challenge for every one of us, especially for the ‘noise-makers’ (the executive committee of this newspaper who is responsible for giving the final shape to this newspaper). However, whenever we see people come and approach us and say, “I want to join this circle”, or simply give feedbacks and suggestions for our further improvement, we really feel like being appreciated for all our efforts.

With this, The APU Times wishes everyone a wonderful spring semester 2010! As the new semester has already began, we hope that we can march forward towards a transparent and harmonious APU community.

*By Iqra Anugrah, Editor-in-chief of The APU Times, 8 May 2010 http://aputimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=225:keep-moving-forward-in-transparency-and-harmony&catid=13:talks&Itemid=202&lang=en