As another year draws to a close, we at The Minaret are already preparing for an exciting new year. We begin by ritualistically burning piles of the issues that took us until 3 a.m. to complete. We then go on to ritualistically burn the columnists who brought negative attention down on the commentary section. Luckily for me, I will be nowhere near The Minaret office when this second procedure takes place.
One of the most pressing challenges facing the pioneers of commentary science today is the topic of satire. Satire, when used improperly, is a highly unstable element, capable of reacting with nearly anything and causing vast explosions or turning mild-mannered readers into marauding vigilantes. Some of the best articles we’ve put forth this year were subject to a rigorous detox process, removing as much satire as possible. Some articles barely survived.
Needless to say, it is in our best interests to find a better way to communicate satire, one that cannot harm the sensibilities of students, administrators, members of the Board of Trustees, corporate sponsors, the City of Tampa, the President of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and so on. From now on, we’ll leave all that to the news section, as they seem to be doing a ripping job with it.
As for us, one of the new innovations you can expect from next year is a revolutionary new system of satire “signaling” that should reduce misunderstandings to zero. In the 19th century, the French poet Alcanter de Brahm suggested that writers adopt a new typographic icon he called the irony mark because he wanted to create a symbol that would represent France’s chief export at the time. The irony mark is a slightly modified question mark that resembles a large nose sniffing disdainfully at the reader. For this reason, it most often appears in print in The New Yorker.
Another French writer, Herve Bazin, took the concept one step further by introducing symbols for doubt, certainty, acclamation, authority, indignation and love. Sadly, these are absent from U.S. typefaces – because we are a rough-riding, plain-spoken people who say what we mean and mean what we say. But the wonders of the internet have provided us with an alternative: the chatroom smiley.
The cutting edge in smiley technology is the vertical smiley, which will allow us to communicate our hidden messages without even having to turn the page sideways. Using a combination of various text dingbats, everyone will know exactly what I’m thinking as I write without even reading the text! Observe as I use a few paragraphs to demonstrate.
It has been a wonderful year here at The Minaret. ;^) We are all looking back on a job well done x:-/ and cannot wait to return next year to do it all over again. :-C In the fall we hope to make commentary even more diverse and inclusive by hiring a vampire :-[ and the pope +<:-) to write for us.
Sadly, commentary was not able to achieve its ultimate goal of subsuming the entire newspaper. ;_; Since I was not chosen as supreme overlord next year, it seems unlikely that our annual staff dinner will take place at my favorite venue, the International House of Pancakes. :-((( However, I can always ditch the rest of these losers and go to IHOP myself. ;-))) While I am there I hope to have pigs :8) in a blanket. Afterwards, I will go out to the zoo to see the penguins. 8> 8> 8>
As you can tell, it would be absurd to write an entire article like this.
As you’ve probably noticed (unless you skip directly to my article every time you pick up the paper, which is understandable), The Minaret has provided a lot of information on the censorship controversy at Flagler College. A natural assumption is that the fate of a student newspaper rests in the hands of the university president, and the most important relationship is between the paper and the administration.
This is false. The most important relationship in a healthy student newspaper is between the students who happen to be writing for the paper at that particular moment and those who happen to be reading it. You have nothing to fear from any opinion column, whether you agree with it or not. Communication is the most important part of any relationship, and step one in communication is listening to your partner. Hear the paper out. Read through to the very end. Try to look at it from the newspaper’s perspective.
That’s right, folks. You’re in a relationship with The Minaret. <3
So, I’d like to encourage those of you who never call or never write to open a healing dialogue with the newspaper beginning next semester. If you know someone who’s walked out on the paper before – whether it was because of a misunderstanding or lack of commitment – please encourage them to open their heart. There are no irreconcilable differences between a student body and its newspaper.
Plus, if you don’t read The Minaret, the terrorists win. 😉
Thank you! Thank you, everybody! You’ve been great – see you next year! ^_^v