Hello Worldlings. The past few years at Burroughs have been great, don’t get me wrong, but we all know that something’s been missing. Yes, the newspaper still arrives with all regularity for you to quickly skim through before assembly and turn into a giant paper airplane without actually reading any of the content. But that’s the way the news goes. But back to the point. We’ve heard the complaints. And like the true democratic leaders we are (cough — Will Forsen and the Great Milk War of 2018 — cough), we listened to our constituents and made a change. That’s right, folks. Just like Miley Cyrus’ questionably triumphant return in 2013, The Backpage is back and better than ever. Instead of absentmindedly flipping through the entire newspaper, we’re making it easier for you to just turn your copy over and laugh (or not) at our jokes again. Recently, the real news hasn’t been all money and candy, to borrow a catchphrase from Ingrid Keane (‘19). If you’re like me and get nervous every time you see a notification from the New York Times light up your phone, this section is for you. Maybe it’s just me becoming more jaded in my old age, but everyone takes everything so incredibly seriously now that we’ve forgotten how to laugh and just enjoy. Here at the World backpage, we want you to be able to take a break from the news and forget about all the stuff that’s adding to your growing mountain of anxiety and maybe get a slight chuckle out of our jokes.

This year, we want to do the backpage Review style. Instead of just a couple of World staffers producing all the content for the backpage each month, we want anyone in the JBS community to be able to submit anything for Backpage consideration. The best thing about Burroughs is that it’s filled with weird, creative people. At the beginning of this year, Beecher encouraged us all to be weird and take risks. That’s what we’re all about here at the Backpage. The beauty of this section is that it has virtually no structure. There aren’t any word counts or assigned articles. You can submit anything you want. It can be a satirical article, a meme, or a really bad haiku. If nothing else, I just want people here to be able to take a step back and not take themselves so seriously. It’s great that we’re all serious students with big dreams and whatever, but none of that really matters if we aren’t having fun. So be weird. Send me your funny stuff. Long live the Backpage.

xoxo, Lucy Bloomstran