I’ve spent many hours in the shower, or brushing my teeth, or staring off into the corner of rooms, or doing the dishes or clipping my toenails – or anything people do when they ponder – thinking about what I would write here.

Last weekend was one of the hardest weekends of my life. Not because I felt cornered – actually, we’ll get to that – but because I felt so bad for everybody I had personally hurt with the addition of the “We Observed You” column into the paper.

I’m not looking for sympathy and I really don’t deserve any. I’m just trying to level with everyone – it’s not easy knowing you’ve pissed off a large portion of our campus and community population, and it’s even harder knowing you’re 100% in the wrong for doing so.

It’s even harder knowing that Ian (the person we photographed and wrote about) didn’t deserve in any way, shape or form, the publicity he got with our childish column. And for that, I’m deeply sorry.

The formal, written apology can be found in our “Scene” section, on page 10 (where the “We Observed You” would normally go). Read it, reflect, and ask yourself if it’s enough. Because honestly, I’m not sure anymore.

We’ll see if my apologizing and an addition of a new, much better column that celebrates the community works in some fashion. But I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that some of you hated us or me long before that column was even written.

On Saturday, some pretty awful shit was said about me and the Observer. On Yik Yak (I know, the dearth of of human compassion) people said we should be defunded and that I should lose my job.

On Facebook, people denounced us for our “skewed reports” or that we have “rarely anything interesting to say.” I get it, you’re mad, but come on. Really?

What about our news editor, Julia Moreno’s well-written and beautiful piece on anti-Muslim bigotry on Central’s campus? That was “skewed” and not interesting? How many people actually read it? It’s a fucking good story and it means something.

It means so much in fact that the Physics Department held a meeting to address the problem of Muslim racism on campus, since they have the highest percentage of Muslim students in their program. So when you say that we have nothing interesting to say, does this come to mind?

What about our sexual-health advice column written by a Ph.D? Is that not interesting too? Here we have a professor literally going out of her way to help students with something not a lot of people are comfortable talking about, and you call us not interesting or skewed?

You claim we should do more to help our community, but how does a sexual-health advice column not help? We’ve Facebooked out her email multiple times, and she’s received zero responses. How do stories uncovering bigotry and uplifting students not help? If you want us to help, you have to help us help you.

We made a huge mistake (really, it was) and it received a bunch of backlash. But when we do something positive, you all don’t seem to care that much. Do you know how many 1-star reviews we received on Facebook because of our awful “We Observed You” column? 10.

Do you know how many comments were on Julia’s story, which featured two harrowing accounts of racism targeted at Muslim students recounted by two heroic and brave individuals? Two. And one was from a community member who said she wanted to see facts related to racism of Muslim students – essentially calling us biased in the other direction.

How many five-star reviews did we receive because of stories like this? Zero. It’s so easy to get upset and take it out on someone. But how hard is it to say something positive?

A lot of you claim we don’t do anything right and that we’re awful. And a lot of you rated us poorly on Facebook for one fuck up. If that’s not petty, I don’t what is.

I hope in the future, our relation to the student body and community isn’t so dichotomous. We should both be talking and learning from each other. After all, we’re literally fueled by students who are still learning, and in many cases, have never written a news story before.

Or at the very least, I hope we can all stop shouting at each other.