Hello kids, remember me? I used to be that skinny Indian kid that kept you entertained every Friday last semester during your Microeconomics class. I made you laugh reading about political turmoil in Lebanon while you tried to figure out what the hell conspicuous consumption and marginal utility were.

Well I’m still a skinny Indian kid. That part didn’t change. But now, I got a promotion. This semester, I’m moving up on the Stater food chain to become the Forum page’s assistant editor.

What do I do exactly? I’m still trying to figure that out, but hey, I get my own mailbox. I’d do any job if it gave me my own mailbox. I wouldn’t mind harvesting turd for a living if it meant I’d get my own mailbox. Hey, I’d wear gloves of course if I was a professional turd harvester, so don’t judge me.

On a serious note, my tag-team partner Steve Schirra and I plan on putting together a Nutrageous Forum page. This page will be so good that I had to borrow the name of a chocolate candy bar to describe it.

We will always challenge our writers to write credible articles with facts. We will push our humor columnists to actually write something funny. To put it bluntly, our main goal is to make sure the columns in the Stater don’t suck.

Then again, Steve and I may think we know what a good Forum page is, but you readers may think otherwise. We won’t know though unless you tell us.

In the past, I’ve overheard students whining about the Stater being too liberal or whatever. For the most part, I agree. I am sick of the cookie-cutter anti-Bush articles that pop-up every semester. I will do my best to make sure the Forum page remains interesting.

But if you have a problem with the Forum page, then get off your hiney and do something about it. Talk to Steve and me personally. Write a letter to the editor or a guest column. Or even better, apply to be a columnist next semester.

What I don’t want you to do is simply send hate mail to the columnists. You may think you’re making a difference, but all you’re doing is feeding the columnists’ egos. Calling my columnists “liberal tree huggers” only gives them narcissistic boners.

Instead, embarrass my columnists publicly by writing a letter to the editor. Insulting people’s intelligence in front of an audience of 30,000+ people is always fun.

By the way, don’t forget that little “D-word” that keeps this country together — democracy. Every citizen in this country, even the stupid people believe it or not, is entitled to his or her own opinion. Voltaire once said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

That’s the philosophy I’m sticking to this semester. Just because you disagree with a columnist, doesn’t mean that he or she is not allowed to say it. But I don’t know about the whole fighting to the death thing. Perhaps we can settle it over a game of Chinese checkers.

Aman Ali is a senior information design major and the assistant Forum page editor for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].