Hey, The Hoya. It’s been a while.
It’s hard to know how to begin. After 53 years since we broke up on that cloudy 1969 day, when a handful of The Hoya editors split off to form the Voice, we’ve both evolved so much. We’ve grown more than we could have imagined when we were last together. After five long decades, the Voice is more than just a rebellious offshoot of a larger, established newspaper. Now, we both are robust publications with accomplishments in our own rights.
Now, I can’t help but wonder what we could have been. Could we, now matured, remain healthy if we got back together?
Of course, the Voice’s Editorial Board is well aware of the usual pitfalls of getting back together with an ex: Divorce usually happens for a good reason, and such a decision is not to be reversed lightly. In fact, it is for this very reason that we rejected The Hoya’s Nov. 12, 1970 merger proposal the day after receiving it. The Voice needed time to find itself, to truly love itself, outside any partner. Although we, of course, missed you dearly, we knew better than to jump back into a relationship so hastily. It was important, we knew, to forge our own sense of identity.
Now, however, enough time has passed that we feel this split is no longer necessary. You have grown a lot since we broke up, too; no longer does The Hoya seem sort of generally to be in favor of the Nixon administration, just as we no longer think that The Beatles are a boring band that won’t go anywhere (see our 1969 review of Abbey Road). As distinct publications—not even quite in the same medium anymore, as we are a magazine and The Hoya is a newspaper—we have created our own separate niches in the Georgetown community. We have no reason to believe that we would encounter the same toxic cycles and ruts of internal editorial disagreements we knew in our history.
We know that we two publications have not been the best of friends these past years and have instead created something of a rivalry, but this should not dissuade us from reuniting. Chalk it up to the sexual tension. It was only natural that we should feel a need to exert our independence by pushing The Hoya away. In the same way, of course, The Hoya would feel the sting of rejection our very existence implies. But this conflict of the past is just hiding the truth—our very real feelings for each other that we never got over. We can overcome our limitations and challenges if we both acknowledge that we were wrong to judge each other so harshly and move forward with forgiveness in our hearts.
With these obstacles removed, the upsides of getting back together are innumerable. For one thing, pooling our budgets and moving to a shared account would increase both our disposable incomes. If FinApp won’t give us enough money to function, we can just add ours together and see if that’s enough to get by. (That’s what young couples do, right?)
Additionally, a merger would do wonders for both of our reputations. The Voice would, of course, benefit from the prestige and recognition that comes from The Hoya’s name (and their Wikipedia page, which is, like, three times longer than ours), just as The Hoya would enjoy being implicitly absolved of some of their worst takes (still looking at you, coverage of Vietnam War protests) by joining a publication that disagreed with them. Also, we just miss you guys. We’ll even be the little spoon.
Hoya, we understand that you’ve always been a bit stubborn. It’s a character trait, we get it! Don’t worry—we actually find it quite endearing, hot even. The Voice was founded because we disagreed with you guys over there, and, sure, for us to get back together, you’d have to admit that you’ve been wrong, which I get is difficult for you. But we’ve been wrong too! So, we can compromise, and we’ll be happy to meet you halfway. We’re prepared to be The Voya. Or the Hoice, I guess, if you want that one instead. Either way, it’s time to put our differences aside and move forward. Babe, we still love you—let’s get back together.
(But you can’t share our Bunn Awards. Those are ours.)
