EDITORIAL

We have spent the summer trying to bring the best possible ``Back to School'' magazine ever, from selling ads and begging for submissions to brow-beating our cartoonists. Mining for every morsel of humor than we could possibly find, we have brought you nothing but the best VooDoo ever.

Of course, the summer was not all smooth sailing. Physical Plant had to destroy our darkroom again. As if the WHOLE YEAR AND A HALF previous to the last issue wasn't enough (when they tore the whole place apart to install a ``fume hood''), this summer they had to ``install some ducts in the walls'' as part of their renovation of the Walker Kitchens. ``We'll be in and out in four days,'' they promised. WELL, WE ALL KNOW HOW MUCH A PHYSICAL PLANT PROMISE IS WORTH BECAUSE IT TOOK THEM TWO WHOLE MONTHS. If those buffoons were worth a tenth of what they are paid maybe Walker Memorial wouldn't be falling down around our ears. Here we are, trying to produce a magazine, and they have only let us use our darkroom for two months out of the last two years. Last month they told us ``We're done.'' We went in there to find an ARC-WELDER and the floor wrecked. ``Oh yeah,'' they mumbled, ``we forgot.''

Well, the summer is over, and we have our darkroom back (for a while, we hope), and the new freshman are here. We published a Rush Guide (during R/O week, of course, duuuh!), and we had a great time screaming at people at the Activities Midway. Our summer contest for the freshman (included in their ASA mailing) wasn't a complete failure : we got four entries, so we declared them all winners (see page 30).

Being a part of rush again makes me think back to my first experience at MIT as a new student. There was a commercial airline accident the day I flew from California to Boston for my freshman R/O week. After landing at Logan Airport, another freshman and I were given a ride to MIT by a generous upperclassman, who, no doubt, had spent his whole evening driving back and forth through the tunnel. In an effort to make smalltalk, he said ``So did you see the accident in Dallas?'' The other freshman said ``Yeah, it really freaked me out.''

In an attempt at humor, I said ``Yes, I saw it, but there are never two plane crashes in one day, so I knew that I was totally safe.'' The other freshman turned around to look at me and whined ``I'm sorry, but the probability of getting into an accident was the same for you today as it is on any other day.''

MY FIRST JOKE AT M.I.T. SQUASHED BY AN EVIL NERD.

I discovered, even before I got to the MIT campus for the first time, that MIT NEEDS HUMOR. This summer, when the guy in front of me at the ASA Freshman Packet Stuffing Extravaganza saw our flyer, he said, `` VooDoo's not funny.'' (I never told him who I was.) However, I am confident that the quality of VooDoo is beyond reproach. The last issue spent two weeks as the default reading material on my living group's bathroom floor, and that is the highest honor a humor magazine could ever hope to obtain.

Our publication schedule this year promises three more issues this school year, with the next one due out the middle of November. So get off your butt and send us your material : your prose, your cartoons, your photos, your jokes, your drawings, and anything else you want us to print. And be sure to get your angry ``Letters to the Editor'' written right away!

DISSENT

The good men and women of MIT Physical Plant provide the MIT Community with an invaluable service. Responsibility for the upkeep and maintainence of these hallowed halls rests solely with the underrated and unappreciated individuals of The Physical Plant. Ever cordial and helpful, Physical Plant laborers are always willing to take a break from the important work of pulling staples out of Institute bulletin boards and driving orange golf carts down the Infinite corridor to stop and offer advice to passing students. It is just this sort of friendliness which sets MIT Physical Plant apart from the maintainence crews at other schools. It is time that the members of the MIT Community join together in expressing their gratitude to Physical Plant for its superb and expedient work in accomplishing its formidable task in an undeniably extraordinary manner.


Phos