Last year, my meal plan was a glorious 28 meals a week. I’ll be the first to admit that as a freshman, I lived like a queen. Not only did I feed myself and supplement my upperclassmen friends’ diets off of this plan, but when I went home for the summer I brought a rather large bag of Easy Macs and Izze sodas with me. Foolish in my youth, I donated this food. As Cat Stevens said, I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger.

This year I am living in McTyeire. This decision has improved my Russian, gotten me really close with my Russian peers and half-starved me. McTyeire’s inflexible meal plan has caused me to take up an interesting life of conservation (always carry Tupperware, you don’t want to eat the second sweet potato now, but you will later), begging (making those favors from last year pay off) and scavenging. It is this last point that has really gotten me through those particularly meal-sparse weeks. Scavenging, or the art of free food, is one of the untapped secrets of this beautiful Acfee-indulgent campus.

Like a vulture to a dead-caribou carcass, a raccoon to a garbage can, or a leech to an artery, I attend a superfluous amount of free food events on campus, talk to alumni over dinner, schmooze to the chancellor over ice cream, or salsa over chips. Student organizations, the Admissions Office, the Office of Housing, the Engineering Departments—all have tons of events geared towards networking, looking fly and feeding me.

It’s funny how life works—two years into college and one year with an inadequate meal plan, and I have learned to scavenge well but not to cook any better. However, one very important lesson that I have learned: not that many people read this far down on my column, and of the few who do, most know me personally. Hey Mom!

While writing these columns there is one particular phrase that repeats again and again in my mind: “This would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to be funny.” Think if I could just write without worrying about the entertainment value? It’d be like the history paper I have to turn in tomorrow by noon!  Or perhaps, I could tell you all about fashion news, music reviews, and give you a list of the tracks I listened to while creating this. Or perhaps I could tell you the news of the day, write a shoddy opinion on why abortion should remain legal, or create a really pretty spread about sports that few people on campus would actually care about. However, I’m better than them, so I won’t.

Alas, like a monkey on a string, I am forced to perform. Except I chose this job, I have considerably less fur than a monkey, and there’s nothing actually physically holding me here. Wait… there’s nothing holding me here? There’s nothing holding me here!!!! …………

Our center spread (pgs 4-5) this issue is Halloween themed and has a special section on haunted places around campus to avoid. However, the most haunted building on campus was not actually included, as you may have already concluded, this building is McTyeire. Many occupants of McTyeire take on pseudonyms to avoid the ghost (I for instance also go by Masha, маша if you will), however, nothing seems to deter his dastardly work. The work of the ghoul of McTyeire is fiendish and diabolical, but mostly it is inconvenient.

So far this year I have been having a difficult time thinking of what to fill this space with. Conveniently, the last two issues I could fudge creativity by talking about our publishing changes or plugging our new website (<shameless> www.theslant.net!! <shameless/> ). Convenience has driven me to writing about obvious topics for this column like convenience has driven you to buying your toothpaste for twice what its worth from the munchie mart. However, now in a remarkable twist of fate, inconvenience has inspired me.

            All of Vanderbilt’s publications are funded by one organization: Vanderbilt Student Communications (VSC), a non profit-organization designed to keep Vanderbilt University out of trouble for the ridiculous stories some publications (I won’t name any names) are apt to publish. VSC is funded primarily from the sales of ads in its newspapers. This year and last year ad revenues have been down, and thus everyone in all of the publications have been trying to work together to spend less dough.

It’s interesting that Versus is called such. When the scheme was first proposed that to save money The Slant would need to be inserted in another publication, our staff met the pitch with much hostility. Give up our sovereignty? Never! However, when push came to tackle we didn’t really have much choice. The situation that you see here could have easily become The Slant versus Versus. I don’t know whether it was the jarring name of such a showdown or our dislike for redundancy, but currently there is no animosity (that I know of) between The Slant and Versus. The decision to combine the distribution of our publications came from necessity, frugality, and laziness. We used to have to get up early in the morning and distribute The Slant ourselves and let me tell you, this is SOO much easier.

Besides, being easier to distribute, getting a new dust jacket came with some other perks. Coming soon, the Slant will have a new website. Still located at www.theslant.net , our new website will have lots of content to flip through and you will be able to obsessively read our stories (for instance, you will be able to look through ALL of our Fucked Images… ever). The Slant is also now bigger. Although coming out only once every three weeks (a cut of one issue a semester), our issues are roughly 4 pages longer than last year. When distributed, we’re also now in more racks than we used to be, with 6,500 copies all over campus.

Being Vanderbilt’s, America’s and the world’s favorite publication comes with a lot of responsibility and so I find it necessary to reassure humor-loving people of the world, we are not going anywhere. It will take a lot more than a recession before we are dead and gone.

Meryem Dede
Editor-in-chief 

­