This is the last week of classes, and many of us here will take our exams and head home for the holidays. The Poly won’t be published again until courses resume in January. Students and professors alike will get the opportunity to start fresh with new faces and learning materials. Similarly, many student organizations are seeing officer turnover now; the new year brings new leadership and opportunities for improvement.

This newspaper is no exception; we held our Editorial Board elections this past Sunday, and this issue marks the beginning of the new editors’ terms. The new staff will bring with it many changes to the paper; hopefully you, as readers, will be able to observe improvements as the spring semester progresses.

For my part, I have many goals that I would like to see fulfilled over the next year. I have heard countless complaints about how we failed to cover a certain event or missed some crucial detail in a story. Like every editor before me, I’m hoping to see fewer of those issues, and I have some ideas about how to go about achieving that. Above all else, however, what this paper needs is more help from the community.

This paper is as much yours as it is mine; we exist to serve the students, the staff, the faculty, and everyone else who this campus touches. Unfortunately, however, we often cannot provide the coverage that we would like to, simply because we don’t have the manpower to do so. Dozens, if not hundreds, of newsworthy things happen at Rensselaer each week, but we need help writing, photographing, and editing if we are to come even remotely close to reporting on all of them.

With that, I’ll make the call for help that has traditionally signaled the start of an editor in chief’s new term. We need new faces on our staff; we cannot hope to serve the community adequately without your assistance. No matter what your interests and skills are, your contribution to the paper would be invaluable. Are you a movie junkie? Perhaps you could do a weekly movie review. Do you think our editorials are so completely and utterly wrong? Then we’d love to hear it. Should the fencing team be in the Sports section? Send our editors an e-mail, and maybe we can make it happen.

Even if you aren’t a writer, we can use your help. Of course, the photographs that appear in each issue don’t take themselves; we can always use a new sharp-eyed cameraman. We have the largest budget of any club on campus, and yet we receive no subsidy from the Union—our business and advertising staffs would always appreciate some help. Beyond that, our staff has web designers, computer system administrators, and graphic artists; anybody who would like to help out in any of those areas is more than welcome.