It's all about the Benjamin, baby!

fun and interesting this year. We weren't ones to always do the journalistic thing. We instead did the fun things. Granted, we often filled the entire oops box, but hey, at least it was entertaining.

BEN LUNN

This is the last issue of the year, and so it's customary for the former editor in chief to thank everyone involved, and say what a great year it's been.

I'm not one to follow precedent. I enjoy doing my own thing. Unfortunately I can't. I do want to thank everyone, and I think that it has been a great year. Thank you all.

We were a staff that did things our way and weren't afraid to cross some lines. More than once we ended up doing something stupid because we had no reason not to. Remember the editorial about taking a night off and going to the movies? How about the swimsuit issue that never happened? Even if we never could pull it off, we seriously would have done it. Forget about being professional. We'd rather do things that are fun and interesting. Get 'em to read for the weird stuff, maybe they'll stay to actually find something out. Our first priority was to entertain, then inform.

It's that attitude that made us

I think that at points we actually ended up being a voice for the students. That surprised me. I thought we were just a bunch of f.arcastic pasty white communications majors with an odd sense of humor that only we would find funny.

Anyway, I think that because we never took ourselves too seriously, we were entertaining in a self-depreciating sort of way,. 1ike a train wreck. No matter how bad it was at times, ya just can't look away.

That's not to say that the year was all smiles. We made a lot of mistakes and had a great deal of problems as well. To start off the list, we were seriously understaffed and inexperienced. But, we all picked up the extra work and continued on our merry way. Then there were the times that we weren't thinking and messed up a lot of things. Then there were the times that we just overlooked the little things. You know, a misplaced comma, a line too close to • a box, a missing paragraph or three ... the little things.

The new staff is thankfully much larger and has a better grasp of journalistic ethics than we ever did. That's not to say that you still can't learn anything from us, though. I think that even in our

OOPS!

glorious moments of stupidity we still knew how to have a good time. That's important. No matter how technically sound you may be, no matter how impressive the results are, don't take yourselves too seriously. Don't forget to step back and just throw the rules aside, and just have fun. It makes for a better learning experience at the very least.

But I digress. Time to get back to my thanks. Thanks to the entire staff this year. Regardless of your personal feelings of this year, at least it was memorable. It was different. Even if we couldn't copy edit our way out of a paper bag, we were different. That's what made us good. Thanks all.