In my time as the satire editor, I have stressed no point more than one. That is to say, The Wire needs to have its editorial board do the Clarette’s challenge together in order to bond as coworkers. It is astounding to me that a group of 10 brilliant diamonds in this, the newsprint diadem of Whitman College, have not really established their group dynamic. What, with the loud, opinionated and aloof characters on this editorial board, one would think that everything would have fallen apart at this point? Alas, dear reader, no!

Though our attention spans are small and our patience thinning faster than the proverbial father’s hair, this staff of editors puts out a mostly-acceptable gossip rag that only serves to regurgitate Memorial’s PR points each week. I mean, it’s not just anyone who can copy-and-paste Mem’s fun facts on a piece of newsprint. We are so self-congratulatory that we even think we’re the only way free press exists on this campus–without The Wire, do you think anyone would know what is going on? Hell, no!  There’s no other way I can think of for people to look at news or, like, figure out who said what. Who the fuck is The UB?

Here’s the thing. We all are super mad, obviously. People will be writing op-eds until the administration comes to burn down The Wire’s office. But, cracking the Da Vinci code that is the newspaper’s relationship to the campus at large will not be easy. Many think of this paper as a gossip rag. Many think of this paper as a news outlet. The rest do not really give a shit about all this confusion–in fear of being unclear, these are the same people who don’t know that there is a newspaper on campus. Hopefully a new day will dawn, and this newspaper will move to be solely online, just like all the other important papers. Or underground. It’d be fun to print in a cave!!

If nothing else, I’d love to harp on the fact that the editorial board NEEDS to go do the Clarette’s challenge as soon as humanly possible in order to determine if we’re a gossip rag or not. Until then, enjoy all the regurgitated PR statements from Memorial that appear in this paper–we worked super hard to paste them for your reading enjoyment!