Gaggle cops 133rd Managing Board elections
Eclectic group of Superheroes takes over the reins of The Tech with dazzling superpowers
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s the V133 managing board!
“Fellow heroes, our greatest fear has come to pass!” solemnly decreed Sarah “Who’s Sarah?” Ritter ’14. She’d been but a lowly production editor until a chance encounter with a radioactive giraffe. Now, gifted with the ability to order dinner, play pokemon on issue night, and manage chairs, she had taken the super-alterego of Chairman.
“We’re out of Green Tea?!” squawked Anne “Overdose of human interaction” Cai ’14, better known as Editor in Chief, temporarily deafening the rest of the assembled heroes. Her sonic squawk could stun even the most tight-lipped of sources, and few could stand up to the pure destructive power of her flailing.
At this point, the great and powerful hero, Executive Editor, tried to give a well-thought-out and educated guess, but was horribly surprised by Anne waving hello. The shock reverted her to her civilian form, Deborah “Reverse surprise trust fall!” Chen ’14.
“We tried to upload to Massweb at 8 a.m. and they said no?” By day, Ian “There will be poop” Gorodisher ’15 was just another college student, but by night, he was Managing Editor, grower of the not-actually-in-November Novembeard and baker of the brownies.
“We’re out of money?” asked Bizman. Joyce “Still in San Francisco” Zhang ’16 was one of the team’s newer heroes, with the the ability to summon poop sheets and collect money from advertisers even when they said they’d totally sent that check like three months ago and it was somewhere in the mail, really.
Sarah slammed the prod tomahawk on the table. “None of those things! Our two greatest foes have combined forces!” She yelled, because yelling was super cool and she’d read in a handbook somewhere that lots of yelling meant that you were being a good leader.
“You don’t mean…” began Ian.
“DON’T SAY THEIR NAMES!” squawked Anne. “WE NEED TO BUILD DRAMATIC TENSION.”
“SO YEAH! SUMMON THE MINIONS! I mean editors. Summon the editors!” ordered Sarah in a leader-like fashion. There was silence for a moment as the assembled Executive Board realized that they, in fact, were really the only ones in the Hall of Justice, aka The Tech’s office. Awkward. Everyone started checking their phones to look like they were actually doing something important.
“Where are the editors?” Deborah finally asked, somehow managing to refrain from scaring herself.
“Well, the Fantastic Four Nuzeds are off reporting about all the civilian casualties that this has caused. Deaths get the most pageviews,” Anne said without squawking, much to the relief of everyone else. Sarah frowned. The four News Editors were a valuable resource to be missing. When together, Stan “My filter is so much not” Gill ’14, Bruno B. F. “Brief boy” Faviero ’15, Austin “Where’s Papademos” Hess ’15, and Janelle “Only early riser” Mansfield ’15, could turn inshorts into briefs, and sometimes, into entire articles!
Curiously, Annia “The most stressed zygote ever” Pan ’15 and Anthony “Asian Dad” Yu ’16 were also nowhere to be found. Which was very weird, because production was always in the office.
“I think the Production Editors are still recovering from the great battle of Year in Review, but at they managed to make two front pages, one for each possible outcome of this battle.” Ian said as he held up two front pages. The first had an adorable 1a of a waterskiing panda. The second? A four column photo of death and destruction everywhere; also, a vertical gutter.
“How terrible!” gasped Sarah.
“Right? I thought we taught them better. Vertical gutters are such a rookie mistake.” Bemoaned Ian.
“I just saw Jacob ‘Sugar addict’ London ’15 around, maybe we can find him?” Joyce interjected before the rest of exec started mocking up the entire front page.
“Well, he was going to use a smidge of time travel to defeat his arch-nemisis, The Keithinator, but unfortunately he got caught in a point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint-countercountercounterpoint-countercountercountercounterpoint … it goes on forever … loop. I don’t think we’ll ever get him back. The Opinion Editor is lost to us now.” Explained Deborah.
“Tragic,” Anne noted wryly.
“Where are Sarah ‘Double secret prod spy’ Weir ’14 and Austin ‘NFL’ Osborne ’15? Where are our Sports Editors? Were they too greatly weakened by the Superbowl Sunday wing shortage?”
“No, but close. The NFL predictions grew so long and detailed that they developed sentience. They’re trying to hold them off, but at this rate … well, they might need her.”
“Not … the brawler? Not … Mindy Brauer?”
“Well, she is pretty much sports staff,” said Ian.
“What about that au courant superhero team, the Arts Editors? They’re far too high class and cultured to be affected by either the NFL predictions or the wing shortage, right? They should be here.” Sarah asked, only a little bit of desperation in her voice.
“It turns out that the Golden Globes were on recently. Angelique ‘Thing 1’ Nehmzow ’14 and Grace ‘Thing 2’ Young ’14 have to stay at home and bask in the blue glow of their television screen to restore their arts reviewing powers after such a night of beautiful celebrities and super overpriced gowns.” Deborah supplied, crushing Exec’s hopes of having a classy battle.
“Next you’re going to tell me that the Photography Editors were trampled by rabid fans at the Golden Globes or something aren’t you?” grumbled Sarah sarcastically.
“Close, but not quite.” Joyce added in, the sarcasm flying over her head with a “whoosh” kind of noise. “Jessica L. ‘Search for ‘firey auburn’’ Wass ’14, Tami ‘Photo essay editor’ Forrester ’15 and Christopher A. ‘I swear this is just coffee’ Maynor ’15 were going to go to the Golden Globes, but they got distracted and are currently doing a photoshoot with a much more deserving subject. A cow.”
“A cow?” questioned Ian.
“In EC Courtyard.” Joyce paused. “It is a very adorable cow.”
“If it’s in EC, then shouldn’t Campus Life Editor use her powers of event calendar scheduling to make sure everyone knows about the cow? Is that where she is?” Anne eagerly asked, hoping for more content. Even though the world might end, it was still ads night, and they still really needed content.
“No, Kali ‘Smiley’ Xu ’15, followed the Fresh Start workout plan to buff up her superhero muscles, and now she’s too sore to get out of bed.” Said Deborah.
“How about the Copy Chief? Her powers don’t actually produce original content, but she’d be great for support.” Sarah suggested.
“She’s caught up in the turf war between AP Style and Chicago Manual Gang violence. I saw a news report on it by the Onion.” Ian reported. “Laura E. ‘Fearless leader’ Forte ’15 is doing her very best, but last I’d heard, the Grammar Nazis had formed an independent faction and now she has to hold off three armies.”
Sarah sighed and rubbed her temples. “Okay, keep the names coming. This rollcall is getting a little long.”
“I think Moya ‘Biz saver’ Chin ’13, Nayeon ‘IAP saver’ Kim ’16 and Ding ‘Call me Martin’ Ma ’16 are at a bank robbery,” Joyce said. Moya and Nayeon were the Dynamic Advertising Manager Duo, but it wasn’t common for them to do a teamup with Ding the Operations Manager.
“That’s it? All of our other members have been dealing with crimes and crises strangely specific to their department. And they’re just stopping a bank robbery?” Ian questioned.
“No, they’re not stopping it, they’re the ones robbing it.” Joyce informed exec calmly. “How else will we afford banquet?”
“How are we going to explain this sudden income to SAO?” groaned Sarah, trying not to cry at the thought. SAO, aka the Superhero Accounting Office, was very strict about properly itemized receipts for all financial transactions, and robberies generally didn’t come with those.
“Our Technology Manager, Greg ‘Staying at MIT forever’ Steinbrecher ’12 is helping with that. Whenever they look into our finances, a giant kitten will just pop-up on screen instead! It’s perfect.”
“We’re even doing an online feature about bank security,” added in Anne happily. “Videos, infographics about the safest banks in the world, all thanks to the Online Media Editor tag team! Lourdes D. ‘Opening the doors to video’ Bobbio ’15, Stephen ‘Literally the worst’ Suen ’15 aren’t exactly using their powers for the greater good, but it’s the good of The Tech, which kind of counts.”
“Fine, fine. That’s everybody. Let’s just go save the world. Quickly. Dinner is at six,” Sarah noted. “Exec board, roll out!” And so Exec all hopped on their ripsticks, but most of them fell off and hurt themselves. For everyone’s safety they decided to take the Tech Shuttle instead.
The Tech Shuttle was pretty crowded for a Thursday night, and all of exec was pretty uncomfortable about it, which they tried to fix by all playing tetris on their phones. And so finally they got to their destination, which was some non-descript place where stuff was blowing up and people were running away in terror.
On the top of some building, ten figures stood ominously, facing the five exec members.
“I was hoping it wasn’t true, but it is! Our arch nemeses, the Contributing Editors, Joanna ‘Another new successful department’ Kao ’13, Connor ‘Comic-Con’ Kirschbaum ’13, Jessica J. ‘Comic-Con’ Pourian ’13, and Michelle E. ‘Always sick’ Szucs ’14, have joined forces with our other arch nemeses, the Senior Editors, Shelley ‘Spartz half Wednesday Adams’ Ackerman ’13, Kathryn ‘Sparts half Generic Tim Burton character’ Dere ’13, Jessica ‘Jellyfish’ Liu ’13, Elijah ‘Spiders’ Mena ’13, Aislyn ‘I left my skates here’ Schalck ’13, and Derek ‘Not a hipster’ Chang ’14,” squawked Anne in something resembling distress.
“RISE ADBOARD MINIONS, RISE!” said the senioreds and contribeds in a very scary manner that almost made some of the exec members need a new pair of pants. And out of the ground came Paul E. “The oldest again” Schindler, Jr. ’74, V. Michael “Awesome website” Bove ’83, Barry S. “Still in journalism” Surman ’84, Deborah A. “Design expert” Levinson ’91, Jonathan E. D. “I only review first-rate things” Richmond PhD ’91, Karen “Not the test” Kaplan ’93, Saul “Typography” Blumenthal ’98, Frank “Not interested in journalism” Dabek ’00, Satwiksai “Doesn’t actually appear” Seshasai ’00, Daniel Ryan “Photojournalism master” Bersak ’02, Eric J. “Businessman” Cholankeril ’02, Nathan “Across the pond” Collins SM ’03, Tiffany “Actually showed up for her election a year ago” Dohzen ’06, Beckett W. “Diplomat” Sterner ’06, Marissa Vogt ’06, Andrew T. “Drinks Coke, works at Pepsi” Lukmann ’07, Zachary “Lived adjacent to a bar” Ozer ’07, Austin ‘Eefi’ Chu ’08, Michael ‘Panda’ McGraw-Herdeg ’08, Omari “Vault his pole” Stephens ’08, Marie Y. Thibault ’08, Angeline Wang ’09, Ricardo ‘reddit’ Ramirez ’09, Nick “G&T” Semenkovich ’09, Quentin “Cameraman” Smith ’10, Jeff “Hipster” Guo ’11, Ethan A. “Will never leave us” Solomon ’12, and B. D. “Greybeard” Colen.
“Minions, attack!” proclaimed the contribeds and senioreds as one.
“Exec, don’t run away! Also, let’s save the world!” The five braced themselves for combat, and then rushed forward in one united slightly jaded mob.
And the battle raged. Much magenta ink was spilled, the coke machine ran out of Arnold Palmer, and many toes were stepped on, but in the end all of adboard was defeated. And the senioreds. And the contribeds. It was a very gorey battle. Too nasty to grace these.
“Nooooooooo!” cried the senioreds and contribeds as they faded into crufty dust because their minions were gone.
“Smash?” All five exec members looked at each other, looked in the general direction of The Tech’s office, and then began a mad sprint that killed five bystanders, caused a minor flood and upended a hot dog stand. After all, there were only four controllers, and no one wanted to be the guy sitting out.
AND THAT’S HOW EXEC SAVED EVERYBODY THE END.