Halloween Letter from the Editor

Maya: I think my Managing Editor is trying to kill me. 

Chris: Don’t mind that. Fall is a season for change, but rarely is it associated with firsts. While the leaves are changing and preparing to drop, it’s an exciting time of renewal for The Blue & White. New writers, new illustrators, and for the first time we’ve finally decided to come out of our early fall hibernation and celebrate Halloween. 

M: I don’t remember writing that. But perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions—my mind slipping further into the recesses of Slack channels, lost like an Oxford comma in the AP Style Guide. Ah! There I go again, rambling about capitalization and curly apostrophes and whatnot, on and on and on. You see the conditions I’m under—anyone would go mad! More than anything, though, I fear what goes on in those spaces between issues, what is written on the FTFs, filed away without my knowing by my so-called ‘second in command’ (not to mention our Deputy Editor—I fear he’s already been done away with). 

C: Halloween is a time for donning costumes and becoming someone else for a bit. Many of our writers have shed their normal outfits of literary non-fiction and instead decided to write the truth with a mask of fiction. It’s an issue that tackles the monsters of Columbia daily life. Ana Sorrentino explores job-induced zombification, Tierney Smink grapples with the ghosts of feminism in her Spanish class, and Lucy Mason gives an exclusive interview with a Revolutionary War era spectre still hanging around Columbia.  

M: He’s here, he’s in my head! (Or maybe just my google account.) He’s stealing that final shred of autonomy I have left—my precious Letter from the Editor, my sanctuary to wax philosophic and revel in vacuous abstraction. As my mind spiraled, I had forgotten my mortal form—so fragile!—left vulnerable to his twisted machinations. 

C: And of course, fall is a season of change, and that includes changes in leadership. With our Editor-in-Chief’s sudden incapacitation, we’ve even decided to co-write the Letter from the Editor for the first time.  

M: Co-write?? That is tantamount to murder! It is clear to me now: He and I, locked in a dialectic struggle to the death. I won’t be giving in so easily.

You, dear reader, are spared the ugly guts of the behind-the-scenes: You see a polished final product, in beautifully edited blue-and-white ink, without a fathom of the bloodstained budgeting or brutal backdoor dealings with ABC that bring our Magazine into fruition. That slaughterhouse is home to our Managing Editor. And I fear he grows resentful. Issue after issue, I hand him the axe. Who knows what he will do with this much power! 

I think he’s been watching me. Last night, I found a trail of Bic mechanical pencils and crumpled lined notebook paper leading to my dorm room door. I knew it was him—that luddite bastard! But his online presence is all the more frightening. Someone has been rejecting my Google Docs suggestions. At first I paid it no mind—an accident, or a disgruntled writer, perhaps—but a quick look into “Recently Deleted” revealed the identity of the murderous journalist. What next! My name slashed from the Masthead? My portrait, thrown into the abyss of the Wix archives? I’m being erased!

C: We should lighten the tone a bit—our previous Editor-in-Chief has never been known for her levity. We’ve reached deep into our closet this issue, past all the skeletons, and revived a Blue & White classic genre, campus gossip, confronting our fear of blog-like activities. And, we’ve reached beyond the veil of St. Paul’s and taken in an external submission, the winner of our inaugural Halloween literary contest, Edith Domanski. This holiday season also necessitated the creation of a brand new genre, the Trick-or-Bweat, with our writers dropping candy in your baskets via short horror stories. 

M: Lighten the tone? Me, on the threshold of death, and he wants to talk about candy? No. With my final breath I will reassert my editorial vision! Our truth is more horrible than fiction: This issue, Selma White-Pascualeva stares unflinchingly at the sinister void of club promoters, while Neda Ravandi asks us to contemplate our discomfort at our own bodies through the mirror erotic thriller … Oh, why do I try! It’s futile! The conspiracy runs too deep—I’m sure by now he has corrupted the illustrators against me. I hear their maniacal scribbles, that maddening tap tap of stylus against skull. You think this is satire? I’m gravely serio—

C: Not that we’re completely scared of the serious. Hauntings feature prominently in this issue: Luke Zinger writes about the wisdom to be gained from the spirits haunting Butler stacks, while Jack Bradner explores the legacy of the Manhattan Project at Columbia. Natalie Buttner puts on her Sherlock Holmes trenchcoat and solves a century-old mystery haunting St. John the Divine. And since our Editor-in-Chief, even in her healthiest days, was leery of mentioning illustrators, I also strongly suggest you check out this issue’s comics and gifs,provided by Ines Alto and Julie Shi. And with that, as we invite you to read through this spooky edition—

M: No, wait! I’m not ready to die! What about Iris Eisenmann, and the horrors of America’s healthcare system?? Oh, the horrors of injustice! Of usurpation! Of—

C: Of the joys of succession. As you celebrate this All Hallow’s Eve, don’t forget to enjoy the sudden opportunities life drops on you. Don’t concern yourself too much with the philosophy of it all: After all, Queen Elizabeth killed her sister and Catherine the Great killed her husband. The only constant in this world is change, and the reaper comes for us all eventually.

Happy Halloween everyone, 

Maya Lerman 

Editor-in-Chief (Editor Emeritus) 

Chris Brown

Managing Editor (New) Editor-in-Chief