This is my last issue as Editor in Chief of The Polytechnic. It’s the first “last” in a long list of “lasts” that will come in this, my fourth and final year at RPI.
I remember my first semester at The Poly, when Vivian Lai and Joe Juisai taught me (in about five minutes, mind you) how to run the News Department.
I was new to journalism then, having only just cut my teeth on two less-than-hard-hitting news stories. But there was no News Editor at the time, and I was willing, so lo and behold they asked me to take over the News Department, and the rest, they say, is history.
This is going to sound like a bad acceptance speech, but I have to say my thank yous before I go. First to Vivian, Joe, and Terry Kaseta, for giving me a shot that first semester; to Bob Juras for teaching me that “funness” was not a word; to Mike Cooke for showing me what dedication really means; to Ryan Huebsch for teaching me the power of speaking softly and carrying a big plastic ax (or hockey stick); and to all the staff who served under my tenure as EIC, for all they’ve done to better this paper.
Thanks to Mikey Gisser, John Reynolds, and Matt Hitchens, for following me from the third floor of Crockett all the way to the Poly office, and to Joe Davis for putting up with being my “second,” first in News, and then again as my Senior Managing Editor. Any success I’ve had here, it has been because I’ve had him with me the whole way.
Thank you Karen, my fiancée, for two and a half years of love and support, especially all those “Poly Closing Night” Tuesdays.
And thank you, God, for … well for everything!
I leave you, reader, in the capable hands of those staff here at The Poly who take over next semester. They all have poured more of themselves into this publication than any of you can truly imagine.
My freshman year, a professor of mine pulled me aside after class one day upon finding out I had recently been elected News Editor. He said to me, “A student newspaper isn’t doing its job if someone doesn’t try to shut it down at least once a semester.” Well, Student Bill of Rights and Media Statement notwithstanding, in my three and half years here we’ve made plenty of people mad enough to want to try. To all those who’ve ever taken issue with something we have printed, to you I say thank you. It was nice to know we were doing our job.
The Poly isn’t about learning to publish a newspaper; few of us here have any career aspirations even remotely related. It’s about awareness. It has become the last bastion against the infamous apathetic attitude that floods the student populace.
If we’ve ever jarred you out of your own particular apathy field, all I have to say is welcome to the fray. Glad to be fighting along side you.
