This week’s special features pull-out announces the winner of our first ever Poly Person of the Year, Sports Information Director Kevin Beattie.
When we first envisioned the PPOY award, we decided we wanted you, our readers, to help us in choosing each year’s winner. To enable this, last week we set up an online poll, similar to our weekly Poly poll, on our website, where readers could vote for their favorite PPOY nominee. The idea was to advance the top three vote-getters as finalists for the award, at which point our Editorial Board would select a winner from the three.
Beattie was chosen as the winner last Thursday, but the poll remained online due to an oversight on our part. Saturday, we received an e-mail from an alert reader who noticed that Beattie had garnered over 300 votes in the span of an hour earlier that morning.
Obviously, this was an irregularity, one that we are taking very seriously. Our web staff is currently working hard to determine what happened; for now, however, I want to assure our readers that the number of votes Beattie received was not the deciding factor in the Editorial Board’s decision. Beattie was selected as PPOY because the Editorial Board of The Polytechnic felt he was most deserving of the award.
It is our hope that you will accept our sincere assurances that the irregularity in no way affected our decision in selecting our person of the year, and that this unfortunate incident in no way blemishes the accomplishments of the winner. Kevin Beattie has served RPI with enthusiasm and dedication for many years, and his outstanding work made him a wonderful choice for our first PPOY. Please join us in congratulating him on his award.
With this, the last issue of the semester, The Polytechnic closes out its 115th year of publication. On behalf of all the staff, it’s been a pleasure serving you, our readers, throughout this year. We’ve worked hard to bring you a quality newspaper each and every week, and it is our sincerest hope you’ve been informed, involved, and entertained. Thanks for reading.
