On the first day of classes back in August, the editorial board laid out some rather bold goals for this semester’s Stater.

Among the top priorities we set was to quit being our father’s newspaper, as one design expert told us in the spring. Considering we received some critical comments like “We thought that the Stater was a newspaper, not a trendy magazine geared towards hot and horny 20-somethings,” it’s probably safe to say we accomplished that goal.

But others are up for debate. Because we’re in the business of evaluating others’ performances, we thought it was time to evaluate our own.

Some things we did well:

One of our most important goals was to focus on watchdog journalism. We’re proud to be the only publication that focuses on Kent State. The others are too big or have no interest in playing watchdog.

• We worked hard to shed light on the fact that the university board of trustees had no formal written evaluation of President Lester Lefton before awarding his $100,000 performance bonus. We also discovered the university misled the public in regards to its relationship with Capstone Development Corp. And we detailed unfair practices in the athletic department, where they didn’t follow their own suspension guidelines when basketball players were arrested.

• We worked to shed some light on where your tuition dollars go. We broke down the $31 million we pay in student fees every year and laid out the budget and expenses of Undergraduate Student Government.

• We tried to raise some important issues that normally aren’t discussed in college newspapers, such as sexual assault.

Some things we should have done differently:

• Our day-to-day news coverage seemed to be lacking on some days. While we strived to give our readers some relevant pieces, we did not give much focus to national and international news events.

• In hindsight, our “You might not care – But here’s why you should” headline the day after the November election might have insulted the intelligence of our readers. We’re college students, so it’s reasonable to believe many of us cared about one issue or another.

The above editorial is the consensus opinion of the Daily Kent Stater editorial board.