Letter from the Editor

It is definitely not easy to come up with this issue of Varsity. When we took over the editorship of the magazine for the semester in September, we did a review of the past issues. We asked ourselves: What do we want Varsity to be? After much soul-searching, it has become clear to us that Varsity ought to be young and professional. To give a refreshing look to our readers, who are mainly university students, our layout design has to be smart and cool. We have strengthened the magazine's contents by bringing in more new and young elements. To ensure the quality, we have decided to produce two issues only in this semester.

All the editors and reporters want to perfect the magazine. The morale is high and the working atmosphere is good. Varsity, to us, is more than a piece of homework. Unlike our other school assignments, Varsity can always give us something more. That may be a kind of satisfaction. More importantly, working as journalists, we have an extra sense of responsibility. From initiating story ideas to doing interviews and from writing to editing copies, we keep asking: What do our readers want to know? What are the things we should report? We have to explore the truth. We have to convey certain messages to our readers. We have to tell them stories in our society that we seldom realise, or have neglected or forgotten.

In this issue, we talk about the advertisements with sex appeals. Swamped with advertisements in our daily life, we may fail to notice how our young generation has unconsciously fallen under the spell of advertisers. Our society hardly looks at the impact of these sexy commercials and not to mention the issue of gender stereotypes behind them.

We have also interviewed Mrs Elsie Tu, a former legislator. Many young people may not have heard about this veteran social activist, who had once been named as the “conscience of Hong Kong”. Even mature readers may have forgotten her fight for justice and democracy for the poor since the 1950s. Her story deserves our attention, especially when so many of us nowadays lack the courage to stand up against social injustice. Our report also finds out the sentimental side of this 92-year-old legend.

We enjoy doing Varsity because it provides us the chance to work as journalists. That bestows on us the responsibility to arouse public interest in people, issues and events around us all.

Anita Fang
Editor