Three years ago this month, on the night the U.S. launched an air war against Iraq, I scampered through Harvard Square in the rain, reporter's notebook in hand, recording the reactions of random members of the Harvard community, asking stupid questions like, "So, what do you think of the war?"

I was only a first-year at Harvard, but I felt like a seasoned reporter, filing my notes in the rush of producing a war extra. Later that night, as I delivered copies of the extra to the doorstep of Kirkland House rooms, knocking on every door as I went by, one awakened resident opened his door and yelled after me, "We fucking know already!"

Well, true enough. In fact, almost everybody in America knew war had broken out in the Persian Gulf before newspapers hit the stands with the story. It didn't stop people from reading the newspaper. If anything, newspaper sales go way up at such times: Apparently, people actually want to read about something they already fucking know.

Still, that Kirkland House resident's pithy critique of The Crimson's war extra made me think at the time about the role of a newspaper in a community. The beginning of a war seemed a good moment to wonder how a newspaper should serve its readers and to wonder if The Crimson was performing that service well.

Today, three years and more than 500 issues later, at the end of my time here, many of the same thoughts have returned.

Whatever one thinks of its content, the advent of USA Today ten years ago forced the establishment press to re-think the impact of commercialism on the sacrosanct profession of journalism.

In fact, editors of at least one newspaper of good repute, the Orange County Register in Southern California, actually call their newspaper a "product" and their readers "consumers." Such changes are dangerous; they may only further the public's cynicism that all journalists are out to do is sell papers.

Self-evaluation is always health, and many newspapers have managed to re-think their methods without abandoning their mission. The Crimson, too, is a constant exercise in self-revision. I would like to think we haven't lost sight of our own mission along the way either.

Ideally, a newspaper should tell the story of a community. For 120 years now, The Crimson has told the story of the Harvard community--sometimes well, sometimes not so well.

(While The Crimson also serves the Cambridge community, this tradition is unfortunately neither considered sacrosanct nor observed with vigor by all at 14 Plympton St.)

This paper has often got its facts wrong, exploded some controversies out of proportion and not paid enough attention to others. It has at times offended some readers and alienated others. Obviously, The Crimson must be diligent in pursuit of accuracy and be ever watchful of its sensitivity.

To do these things, to accomplish the ideal, The Crimson paper must draw on its community, must obtain and keep its interest and its trust.

Hanging on my office door at The Crimson is a sign stating the paper's very unofficial motto: "I will not philosophize. I will be read."

Unfortunately, a great many members of the Harvard community do not read this paper. The Crimson is Harvard's daily paper in part because there is no other daily, not because Harvard students have chosen it to be so.

Yet the paper must be available to everyone, and must be read, to have a real hope of being a community newspaper. I say give out the Crimson for free; drop it at every Harvard dorm room. We've tried the hard sell for decades; it's time to commit ourselves to serving Harvard students, not charging them.