Coke Bottle Glasses and Chicken Little - Who's running the show?

This week we want to talk about two very important (and surprisingly timely) changes here at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One is that our president has resigned. The other is that the glasses in DAKA are wicked big now. We will take these two serious topics in order of their effect on student life:

Have you seen the size of these glasses they have now? They're great! They're actually NPSGs (normal-person-sized-glasses). If this is your first year on DAKA, you will never know the plight of the little glasses. People would take five or six at a time just to have enough liquids to last through a meal. This year, however, I started pulling one out of it's little plastic home, and it just kept coming! At first, I thought two of them had just stuck together (they don't get really clean in those machines) but then I remembered that it was the beginning of the year, so they couldn't be that bad yet unless the Freshmen were wicked tough on them for that extra first week. Low and behold, they were simply NPSGs. Of course, some people won't notice that the glasses are twice as big now and will still take the same number of glasses, and try to figure out why they're having problems later on in the day.

It's encouraging. DAKA's really getting into this engineering thing. "If we make the glasses twice as big, we won't have to wash them as much... because it will be harder to check to see if the bottom is clean..." Now they just have to work on keeping the milk containers filled with the right kind of milk. Skim goes into "Skim," Skim goes into "Skim," Skim goes into "Skim"... At any rate, the glasses may be better, but we still ended up resorting to pizza and pasta for meals so far... If anyone from DAKA is reading this please note: Veal is veal is veal is veal is veal... It doesn't matter what you put on top of it to hide it, we know that anything that is shaped like an oval is veal. It's not a good sign when the level of food variety is sooo low sooo early...

Strauss \'strow-ss'\ n. 1. The only president with enough stature to pose nude for Newspeak (See April 1, 1993 issue) 2. He who get's out when the getting is good.

Our beloved president is leaving us. We wish him luck on his future endeavors wherever they may lead (accountant). This leads us to one important question. Who's the next person to get their picture up on the wall? Who's next? (That's two questions, I know, but it's the same question, so it's just one question, right?)

So, who's it going to be. We need someone who will personify the New WPI Image... We want to attract new students? We need better marketing... We need media coverage... We need celebrities... We need O.J. Simpson as our new President. Simple as that.

Think about it. The Board of Trustees wants more recognition, and President Strauss wants to attract "larger numbers of higher ability to pay students." (What this really means is that he wants more rich kids, so he can renovate his office again.) What better way to meet these goals than to get a highly visible celebrity? How about one who, until so recently, lived in Beverly Hills?

Oh, sure, we know that he's in jail right now with this whole trial thingy, but that can't last forever. It will end soon enough, and when it does, bang, we hit him up for the job. The metric buttload of paper work should be done by then...

Sadly, O.J.'s popularity will eventually die down, and we will need a new president to attract the number and kind of students we would like to. This leads us to another search for a benevolent leader - kind of like Star Search.

Hmmm, how about Bob Hope? Nyaah...too cheesy.

Cindy Crawford? No, Pepsi would never let her do it.

Fabio. Ugh. I can't believe Laurel said that. Yuck. Sorry everyone. Big mistake.

Ricardo Montebahn from Fantasy Island? "Velcome to Vooster Phanta-c Univerr-sity."

Kevin Costner? Why not? He does everything else...

Fozzy Bear from the Muppet Show? "Wa-ka, wa-ka, wa-ka! Hello Faculty and Germs!" (Just imagine this at graduation...)

This list could go on and on (and it may in future articles), but we have a slightly better idea:

Picture a "President of the Week." It would be like Hollywood Squares. We'd have a new person every week, and they would be funny and have a neat personality, and we'd only have to deal with them for a week. (If they were exceptionally cool, we could have them back at a later date - kind of a "best of..." thing.) As in the game, if the President doesn't know the answer to a question, they could make up something that sounds good, and get the other people to believe it. Hey, wait a minute...!

NEW TOPIC.

For Freshmen who read our article last week, the following is just a reminder. Our purpose is to inform the entire WPI community of things that we feel are important (or just plain baffling). Sooo, if you know anything weird, unusual, funny or just plain cool, please tell us, so we can tell everybody, ok? There are many ways to get a hold of us: e-mail, e-mail, e-mail, and e-mail. Oh, and snail mail too. Send it to Philler in care of Newspeak at Box 2700. By e-mail, send it to newspeak@wpi.wpi.edu with Philler as the subject. Please do not send it to our snail mail box.

Send your thoughts, observations, and questions to us at philler@philler.com...