Dear readers,

Welcome to our final issue. Welcome to the season of goodbyes. As we submit our final papers, complete our exams and pack up our dorms, we become even more aware of this transitional place. The few possessions we have brought with us to Sama Tower are now being stuffed into boxes. Some of these objects will not be unearthed again before NYUAD relocates to Saadiyat Island. As we say goodbye to our next-door neighbors, we once again become airport residents.

Filing out of Sama Tower for our various summer destinations, we leave behind an incomplete university forever. Next year, with the incoming of the class of 2017, we will at long-last be a complete four-year institution. Say goodbye to the school you thought you were familiar with — NYUAD will change on us once again.

Welcome to a new challenge: saying goodbye to accepting things for the way they are. Welcome to the opportunity to take ownership of your fundamental role of shaping this university as it enters into its first year with a freshman class that fills the fourth quarter of what we have been preparing for — a whole institution.

Just under 200 new minds will help fill the floors of Sama and the classrooms of Downtown Campus. Capstones and career paths will be forged by the returning senior class. The mirage of our Saadiyat campus will gradually become a reality.

Looking out toward our final year of living on Electra Street, it is easy to see an ending. The classrooms lined with well-marked whiteboards, the late night Safa trips and the views across Madinat Zayed from the south side of Sama tower will all be gone after this year. Our three-year-old university will transform as it outgrows its downtown roots and moves to Saadiyat. But we see this goodbye as only the beginning. Now, more than ever before, the student body has the chance to play a pivotal role in shaping this transition. We all have the opportunity to be agents in this institution; painters of a complicated, multicolored mural.

As an independent student publication, The Gazelle serves as a voice. Saying goodbye to the constraints of print has allowed for us to remain connected across the globe and for people to think critically about this fascinating intellectual community.

Whatever you are saying goodbye to — friends studying abroad, a preconceived notion of this complicated world, an FOS curriculum — our team has created a platform to discuss these changes inherent to a transitory community. We are grateful for their passion and dedication this semester. We are also grateful for the advisors, friends, readers and community members who never said goodbye to our dream.

Sincerely,

Alistair Blacklock and Amanda Randone

Co-editors-in-chief, 1st Managing Team