Editor’s note: A 30 column is a chance for departing permanent staff to say farewell and reflect on their time spent in The Daily Texan’s basement office. The term comes from the old typesetting mark (-30-) to denote the end of a line.

Recent controversy surrounding an acclaimed racist cartoon published by The Daily Texan and the creation of a black student publication on campus has people labeling the Texan as “self-selected” and “racially biased,” but the world I stepped into when I submitted my first application was anything but.

As a Hispanic student attending a predominantly white University, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the atmosphere of the Daily Texan caters to students of all races and is comprised of at least one of every ethnicity that comes to mind.

While I will not pretend that our underground lair is not reflective of the white majority that is our campus, the culture you will find if you step through our always open doors is an essence of like-minded creativity and not race.

We at the Texan are unified by our need to stimulate our imaginative outlets and connect through shared experiences of intellectual, visual and exceptional capacities. Our investigative impulses push us to take a sincere interest in the inner workings of our campus as well as in the various backgrounds and stories of our fellow students and coworkers.

At the Texan I have found a family away from home that nurtures my needs for comfort, expressiveness and variation. I have also found mentors and leaders who have helped me develop my writing, inspired me to push boundaries when pursuing stories and who taught me to never act submissively when being wrongly credited with negative labels.

I encourage students of all ethnicities, conspiracy beliefs and religious or cult followings with an interest in journalism to tryout for The Daily Texan and join the welcoming team that I did two years ago. The Daily Texan is not for the close-minded or the easily offended. You will find fellow students who have stranger habits than you do and who will debate and question you to the end of your sanity, but who are eager to learn about what you have to teach.

I leave the Texan not by choice but because my time at UT has come to an end. To all you Texan Staffers, previous and current: The long hours testing my strength and sanity with you all in the basement were extremely well spent and are the main reason I leave UT with a sense of great accomplishment. The University of Texas at Austin and all of its brilliant professors, staff and students were the greatest asset to my personal and academic development, but to find a concentration of every great thing UT has to offer, I encourage you to seek out my comrades at The Daily Texan. The truth is out there!