I left my office to grab coffee Tuesday, and I came back to a newspaper-wrapped package on my desk. “No PR. No BS. No Retreat.” stared back at me. I opened the package to find reporter notebooks and a note that read, “Give ‘em hell.”

This gift was from The Daily Evergreen’s content adviser Jacob Jones. It put the fight to save our five-day print cycle into perspective.

Since dead week last semester, the Evergreen’s editorial staff has been working against a print cut, a direct threat to the Evergreen’s identity. We thought we had the semester to make a difference, to save what we do — but now we don’t.

I was in the middle of hiring new editors. The Student Media Board elected me the week before. I stepped into the editor-in-chief position and was thrown a curveball I doubt any other editor at the Evergreen has faced.

The Daily Evergreen will not feed you public relations. We won’t hide anything from you. We will not back down. We are college students fighting to save an organization we love. BS is not classy, but neither are the trenches.

It may seem alarmist to publicize this struggle through editorial boards and behind the press posts, but the public deserves to know what happens in our office and any other part of campus.

I will never stop fighting for this newsroom, the fellow student journalists I work with and the people we serve. You, the readers, make what we do so valuable. That will never change.

The Student Media Board will vote on whether we continue five print days a week at 4:15 p.m. today in Murrow 123. We will not stand down from the fight. We are ready. If you would like to attend, please do.

If we, the community, do not take action to preserve what we believe in, there will be no free, independent news source. Any change to print frequency will severely impact how the Evergreen can share information with the community, including each and every one of you.

If you are a student and like something we do — or if you don’t — come write for us. Comment on Facebook. Send letters to the editor. Submit news tips. Review the public records on the Transparency page. Without initiative, nothing will ever change.

This morning, when I thanked Jones for the notebooks, all he said was: “Thanks for fighting the good fight.”

And fight we will.