Editorial

Every year you've read the editorials ex-horting you to contribute to your newspaper. Saying that this newspaper will be what You make it. Maybe even daring to imply that you'll get what you deserve. Well, it's true enough, and so as not to to disappoint you, here's another such editorial!

Actually, that you'll get what you deserve is not quite true. This cliche is true when applied to politicians. And when applied to the editorial staff of your average daily newspaper, especially the evening paper. Such papers are no more than a drug, a secular opiate of the people. The content is the same every night, the style never changes. If you have ever lived in a country area where the paper comes a day late, you will have noticed that the date makes no difference - it's only the habit, the drug, of getting the newspaper and settling back to read it that is important.

This, however, is a university paper. And whether or not you deserve it you may not get it. It is not a drug, rather it is or should be "the focus of all the intelligent academic, political and cultural thinking" that should be going on. Or, if you don't like 'focus' how about' medium for catharsis Or how abour 'bursting pimple'. Anyway, the fact is, if there Is no mental or cultural activity going on, there may be no Salient. There will be no better thing than a newsheet. So in that sense, it is up to you!

But, as it happens, you have got better than you deserve. If there is no contribution nor reaction from you, we will go on putting out a paper. But it will be Our paper, and you will have neither right nor space to criticise. You have got better than you deserve because we've got ideas to push, maybe even esoteric ideas, but yearning to see themselves in print. When we cease to publish of you and for you, we cease to be a newspaper or even a journal and we become a propaganda machine, which, come to think of it, while its not what you deserve, may be what you need.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."