The year was 1976. The popular slang was “groovy” and “far out,” Gerald Ford was president and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were busy creating the first Apple computer. The Hi’s Eye staff was hard at work reporting, writing and publishing articles.

Now, in 2019 some things have changed, for example we don’t say groovy anymore, Donald Trump is president and Apple, now a billion-dollar company, is busy perfecting the newest iPhone XR. But some things haven’t changed—the Hi’s Eye staff is still reporting, writing and publishing articles every week.

A couple of months ago the current Hi’s Eye staff was going through a pile of old newspapers and found an edition from May 7, 1976. Immediately the headline on the front page caught our eye: “Survey reveals acceptance of premarital sex.”  And as we flipped through the pages more headlines like “Doctors deal with teenage sex, feel students lack needed info” and “Sex ed course badly needed” sparked our interest.

According to one of the tri-editors of the 1976 Hi’s Eye, Mr. Stuart Goldstein, the inspiration behind this paper was simple: the staff thought these were important and timely issues that had to be brought to the attention of the community.

Goldstein looks positively on this edition of the paper and his time at the Hi’s Eye in general. Goldstein stressed that because of their independence there was a great responsibility to cover these stories accurately with good, balanced reporting. “We were aggressive in terms of covering stories and we were very proud of our independence as student journalists,” he said. “We didn’t set out to generate controversy, but we weren’t afraid of controversy resulting from our coverage.”

After finding this paper we, the Hi’s Eye, decided that it was time to cover these topics again and see how they have changed, or stayed the same. The newspaper mirrors the design and each article in this edition corresponds directly or loosely with an article from the 1976 edition. We hope to shine a light on topics that we still find very important and timely, just as the 1976 staff did 43 years ago.