Welcome from the Editor

Some of you seniors (and junior fuck-ups who got held back a year or two) may remember the Amherst Hamster, Amherst’s leading satire publication.

It was rude, crude and controversial. It was last heard of when the Asian affinity club tried to get it de-funded after it made fun of some horrible natural disaster in which hundreds of Asian people died. In short, it was awesome (the magazine, not the natural disaster).

It was part of an Amherst that is now long gone. We now live, nay, exist under a heavy curtain of political correctness and self-imposed creative and ambitious suppression. You may have noticed that people at this school either have no sense of humor or are afraid to speak openly for fear of ostracizion* or garnering labels of bigotry.

The Hamster once served as place where people could anonymously lampoon all the things that make the fairest college awful (there are a lot), things that should be addressed and dealt with, rather than swept under the carpet and ignored (the black hole in val anyone? [FTR MSimmons is the man])

If ever there was a time when satire and criticism was needed it is now. I urge any and all Amherst Students to submit any satirical or comedic articles to me at sangel10@amherst.edu (the Hamster email gets about 50 messages of spam every day, reading it is a fucking hassle) in order to bring back this most excellent of traditions.

Some history: I had some trouble getting the Hamster published in 2008 due to a lack of writers and content. AmhPub works to fix that little problem. I can now put up any content I see fit for publication regardless of whether we have enough articles to fill 8, 4, or 12 pages or not. So please, I urge you, as a responsible member of the Amherst community do your part in making fun of Tony Marx’s voice, or the Multi-Cultural Center’s seeming uselessness and drain on resources (some might argue). Do your part by telling me I’m an asshole and that the MCC is an integral and important part of the Amherst community. Do it comically and I will publish you online and hopefully (pending either my return to Amherst, or someone else’s initiative to take over editorship at Amherst) you will get published in the next hard-copy edition of the Hamster.

And of course, remember, all articles remain anonymous, the only person responsible is me, your fair editor.

So what exactly is my plan of action?

Myself and a slew of other gentlefolk actually wrote and laid out an entire issue of the Hamster that never got published in the Fall of 2008. I plan to post these articles and any decent articles I receive via E-Mail on this quaint little blog. Then, should we have enough content for a proper issue, I will attempt to bring the Hamster back to life in its original paper medium. (Online copies found here http://www3.amherst.edu/~hamster/)

I am eager to hear from any and all of you,

-Santiago Angel ‘10

*(a word whose origin, for the record, comes from the original Greek action of removing anyone vastly superior in a competetive sector to level the playing field for the other participants)