By Andy Matarrese
It's a scientific fact that every college freshman will be greeted, welcomed, met, hailed, saluted, oriented or otherwise initiated into college life at least 500 times every day for their first week at school.In its latest report, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the energy expended on welcoming college freshman could supply the world's energy needs indefinitely. The panel recommended further funding for research in reducing the cost of putting freshman workshop leaders in hamster wheels.Depending on what time you picked up the paper today, I'm guessing it will be somewhere between the 350th to 400th time someone has said "welcome" to you today. Statistics for "welcome backs" are much spottier (Big Oil has been stifling research), but preliminary findings suggest this is about the 200th "welcome back" for returning students.So, whether this is your first time picking up The Beacon or you're a die-hard fan, I'm afraid you're about to hear it again: welcome to a new year with The Beacon. Hopefully, working together, we can make this one of the best publishing years ever for The Beacon, and by extension, one of the best years in UP history.To maximize your enjoyment of The Beacon, we recommend consuming a fresh copy once a week in an environment with adequate lighting. Beyond that, the most important thing for any reader to know about this newspaper, from the fresh-faced newcomer getting a feel for his school or the grizzled veteran reader keeping up with the big scoops, is that The Beacon is a two-way street.This is your paper, dear reader. The thing that keeps us up into the wee hours on Wednesday, beyond guzzling drinks from Espresso UP and noshing cheap pizza is the simple fact that this is a service industry. We serve the readers with our tireless reporting and stimulating writing. Either that or democracy falters at the hands of an unengaged free press on the one hand or, on the other, you get bored - an equally disturbing proposition.Such disastrous scenarios aside, it is here where I make the perennial push, as editors on Beacon staffs of yore have done for years prior, to solicit your thoughts and opinions.Letters to the editor, opinion columns, story ideas, hot tips, big scoops, corrections, gripes - they're all a part of what we do here. They're all part of being a member of the reading population. They are a part of maximizing your enjoyment of the paper and its value for the UP community.You can reach us at beacon@up.edu. We can't wait to hear from you. Andy Matarrese is Editor in Chief of The Beacon. He can be contacted at matarres10@up.edu.
