By Brian Martucci

If you look carefully at this week’s opinion section, you’ll notice that all three of us editors (if you include Mr. Seitz’s staff editorial) have proudly written articles in a futile effort to fill as much space as possible and bulk up what is still a pathetic, barebones first Mac Weekly of the semester. I mean, come on, twelve pages? My high school weekly was longer than that. Not that I’m complaining—fewer pages means less work for me and my colleagues, and while the semester is still young (and people still have enough free time to party during the middle of the week) it also means I might be able to get out of the office early and spend some time with my friends before everyone conks out for the evening.

Nevertheless, there’s something a little sad about an opinion section which contains only the opinions of those charged with making sure it’s filled out every week. All three of us enjoy writing (why else would we be working for a newspaper?)—but let’s face it: we’re Macalester students, and many of our peers are far more opinionated—and far better at getting their opinions across—than we are. Everyone who contributes to these pages seems to have great things to say and obviously possesses the ability to say them in creative ways. We’re privileged to have the opportunity to edit a portion of the paper with so much raw talent from which to draw.

But as editors we’re also very, very lazy. We work long hours (Wednesday nights until well into Thursday morning) to polish the Mac Weekly into something somewhat readable, and we really can’t be bothered to make sure our section has enough content on top of all that. Besides, we can’t be expected to think of new things to complain about every week when we have to worry about which fonts go where and how much white space we can get away with leaving between text boxes. I doubt any of us would actually take the initiative to submit our opinions to the Mac Weekly if we weren’t on its staff.

Yet here we are, desperately bloviating on topics we know little about. It’s not that we don’t enjoy listening to the sound of our own voices—we just don’t know enough to actually sound convincing. This isn’t a tenable situation. We need fresh perspectives—from people who do not edit the Mac Weekly’s opinion section—to keep us from sounding like a broken record all the time. Or from sounding incompetent and amateurish. I mean, I know I wouldn’t want to have to read my writing every single time I picked up a copy of the Mac Weekly.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that these columns need writers who enjoy sharing their opinions with their current and former peers (and, in my case at least, their extended families), not writers who share their opinions because they wish to eschew the embarrassment of presiding over a section which appears woefully incomplete week after week. We’re having a staff/prospective writers’ meeting on Sunday (the 28th) at 10 P.M. in the Wallace formal lounge, a gathering which we view as a unique opportunity to ensure that the nightmarish scenario described above does not occur at any time during the semester to come. We need to enlist individuals who enjoy expressing their opinions for the sake of expressing their opinions—or else we’ll be stuck expressing opinions for the sake of saving face. We’re begging you: write for the Mac Weekly. We can’t do this on our own.