Welcome freshmen! Our first issue! Get involved! We are WPI!

There's so much to talk about this week! First, I wish to welcome the Class of 2000. From the day you were graduated from high school until the day you graduate college, you have been and will be constantly reminded that you are the first class of the new millenium. Enjoy your next four (maybe more?) years at WPI. The word around campus is that your class is one full with enthusiasm and motivation. Now you'll have to live up to that! Probably one of the best things you could do as an undergraduate is to get involved in student activities. Of course, always keep in mind that your schoolwork comes first - you're not paying a total of about $100,000 to join clubs. But if you have the time and energy, extracurricular organizations are a great way to have fun and meet lots of people. There are lots of clubs on campus, come of which you would probably be interested in. If not, you can start your own club! The Student Activities Office hhas a handbook which will guide you on how to create a new organization on campus. Basically, you have to find some other people with similar interests, do some paper work, write a constitution, and you're all set!

This is the first Newspeak of the 1996-1997 academic year. We would have had our first issue out last week, but our new office, a part of the Riley Hall renovation project, was not completed. So, we apologize to anyone who wished to place an advertisement or an article in last week's nonexistant newpaper. When we finally get our office set up in the next week or so, we'll start getting back to anyone we haven't had the ability to get in touch with yet. We have lots to do, so please be patient. By the way, if anyone is interested in working with Newspeak, we have lots of opportunities, especially in writing and business! Just give us a call or drop us some email and we'll be happy to get in touch with you.

Next week, look forward to our special pre-Inauguration and pre-Homecoming feature! Next weekend will be very exciting, as this is probably one of the few (if not only) inaugurations you'll ever see - and you have the fortune of experiencing it first-hand! Newspeak will be there with photographers and reporters, so if you miss any of the action, you'll catch it in our post-Inauguration and post-Homecoming feature! (If anyone is interested in helping out with this coverage, we'd appreciate it!)

Well, it seems as if WPI's identity crisis has been addressed...if WPI had an identity crisis to begin with. Was it necessary to make the university known, in most cases, as WPI, as opposed to Worcester Polytechnic Institute? To be honest, it will be a lot easier to say "WPI" on the phone instead of "Worcester Polytechnic Institute". And I'm sure people won't forget what WPI actually stands for - after all, we all know what MIT, UCLA, and UNLV stand for (Why did I pick those in particular? No reason, except they are well known universities). I'm just glad we still have the Two Towers as our logo; I'm glad this didn't change like it almost did a while ago (No, I'm not just saying this because of our masthead). By the way, when you say, "Worcester Polytechnic Institute" to someone who doesn't know much about the school, and they ask, "Where is that?", don't you think that the most tempting answer is, "In Worcester"?

One last thing, which is basically a synthesis of stuff I have previously said: Get involved in Inauguration and Homecoming! The more people who attend, the more fun it will be! (It's a permutation of the Law of Increasing Returns, but that's a different concept for a different publication altogether) Be sure to send in your invitations for the luncheon and the symposium by today to the Student Life Office!