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The trees on campus are taller, the lines at the Library Cafe are longer and there are more buildings dotting Reem Island’s skyline than there were last year. We have more boarding passes than photographs and we change rooms or cities or continents once or twice or thrice a year. We’re a transient community, always changing and forever in motion.

Instead of lauding and fearing this eternal cycle of change that surrounds us, we hope The Gazelle can embrace these transformations, and investigate where the change in and around us leads us. This Spring, we have brought together a team of newcomers, returning juniors and seasoned veterans to collectively concoct and produce our weekly issues.

Unlike a traditional publication, we live on the World Wide Web. Having a crisp newspaper delivered to your doorstep every Sunday morning while you make your omelette and avocado-lemongrass juice in a mason jar almost seems novel in today’s world. While we mourn the decline of print, the tech age offers new ways for absorbing and sharing information. Our online format allows us to collaborate across mediums, and engage in interactive investigations that a printed newspaper can never achieve. Moving forward, we plan to produce content that reflects both our dedication to journalism and showcases the relationship between our articles and the environment in which they are produced.

This semester, we’re publishing three special issues: Love, Food and Justice. We hope that with these themes we can spark dialogue about topics important to the NYUAD community.

Spring marks the last semester for many of The Gazelle's veterans who brainstormed and created it under Alistair Blacklock and Amanda Randone back in 2013. Together we’ve come a long way from Sama 526. We’ve tested limits and grappled with the complexities of our place here; all the time questioning what it means to be a student publication in the UAE. With the help of too-much-caffeine and cardamom tea, we look forward to seeing where this semester will take us.