Aien Du

Spotted: Aien and Aila delivering newspapers on the last day of their freshman year (May 18, 2023).

Hey, Mavericks.

It has been an honor serving as the eyes and ears of Claremont Lane for the past four years. Being Editors-in-Chief is the closest thing we’ll ever get to being some of our favorite news-related characters: Lady Whistledown, Gossip Girl or Rory Gilmore. 

Instead of reporting on 18th century English society or Upper East Siders, we have had the privilege of covering 21st century Mavericks. 

We were once clueless staffers, unaware of Oxford commas or Google Docs Suggest Mode. On May 6, we completed our second year as Online Editors-in-Chief together. 

Before we became best friends, we were actually assigned as each other’s first article partner. 1339 days ago, we co-wrote SAC is Back: Meet the Prefects.

Since then, we’ve used the pen name “Ailien” on the eight assignments that would follow. In the beginning of our sophomore year, we won our first Best of Students Newspapers Online award on a story about the Maui wildfires. 

Under our editorial leadership, The Review Online has published 300 items, won 28 Best of SNOs and reached over 280,000 total viewers. Mr. Nathan, our adviser, often reminds us that The Review is the most professional thing you’ll do in high school. Seeing the impact of our coverage on our community affirms that statement. 

But the journey wasn’t easy. People often say to never mix your work life with your personal life. But we didn’t take that advice. When working on projects together, we saw sides of each other we wouldn’t see anywhere else—overdue drafts, publishing errors and occasional crash-outs. 

We haven’t written any articles together recently, but that’s because the website has been the ongoing collaboration. 

To our viewers who click on the newsletter link every night at 8 p.m., thank you for playing our quizzes, thank you for ignoring our occasional typo and thank you for reacting to our pieces (we loved predicting which articles would get the most views). Thank you for your support. You are the reason our news engine keeps running. 

While our press was much tamer than the piping hot gossip the others disseminated, we’ve had just as much fun. 

We’ll remember the elevator games and late-night pizza runs in Boston, Philadelphia and Nashville. We’ll remember the Baskin Robbins celebrations where we shamelessly exited with 15 ice creams in hand. We’ll remember cackling at frivolous bot comments that we never ended up approving.

This is probably the last piece we will write together. We hope you have a great summer, and stay tuned for what’s to come. You’re in good hands. 

You know you love us.

XOXO, 

Ailien