The 2021-22 Centipede Editorial Board included eleven senior editors and five senior staff writers. Jack Connolly ’22 and Lisa Liu ’22 were the Co-Editors-in-Chief; Sarah Heuer ’22 was one of the Features Editors; we had Cindy Jin ’22 on News and Kiran Rajagopal ’22 on Arts. The Opinions section consisted of both Casey Bakarani ’22 and Audrey Zhang ’22, and Lilia Kasdon ’22 was one of the Sports Editors. On the other side of things, Shihab Moral ’22 was our Head Media/Web Editor, Tomi Adegoke ’22 was our Layout Editor, and Sonny Tang ’22 was one of the Photo Editors. The transition from online school to hybrid and then to a fully in-person schedule was hard enough this year, but all of our seniors put countless hours of hard work and dedication toward making this year’s Centipede experience one of the best ones yet.
While writing this article, I reached out to all of the senior editors regarding their most memorable Centipede experiences over their years working with the paper. Lilia wrote back, saying her most special moment was interviewing Henry Fairfax, Concord Academy’s incoming Head of School. “I really got to know him as a person and as an educator, and that was really special,” she said.
Jack’s favorite articles to edit were in the Opinions section because of the opportunity it afforded him to listen to and learn from different points of view. The article that had a lasting impact on Jack was an article written by Darley Boit ’21 on sexual assault awareness at CA, as it changed how he viewed the role of the paper. “That was the first article I read [and] edited that was critical of the school in a substantial way, and even though it had to get cut down substantially in order to get it published, I still think it’s the best article we’ve run,” he said.
Lisa’s favorite articles that she both read and edited this year were from the Centipede's special edition the Centennial articles. Lisa loved the idea of investigating how different aspects of CA have changed or not changed through the years. “I learned so much from these articles. Special thanks to Martha for providing information from the archives!” she responded. For Lisa, crafting emails was a crucial part of her Centipede experience this year, which included responding to emails absurdly late at night. She kindly suggests that future editorial boards frequently check their inboxes and respond to emails within 24 hours. Similar to Jack, the article that left the most lasting impression on Lisa was also Darley’s article on sexual assault. In response to the re-publishment of the article in the previous issue, Lisa said, “It just feels right to revisit this article at this time, and I think the decision to rerun this article [shows] how deep an impression it has left on us.”
Collectively, we will always remember the time that the auditorium lights shut off and Jack accidentally swore during announcements one day. Jack knew how to make Monday Centipede meetings fun. He always had entertaining article suggestions, brought pizza, and constantly wondered if the word ‘impact’ was a verb or noun. Lisa was always a voice of reason and a constant within the Centipede. No matter what time of day, we could always count on Lisa to edit articles, supply photos, and round up people to fold the hard-copy newspapers. To our departing seniors, I know that I am speaking for everyone who was involved with the Centipede this year when I say, we miss you in the coming years.