Dear Reader,

The word “camp” can take you in a lot of different directions. There is the camp you might have spent your summer working at–the campfire, the cabins, the bug spray. And then there is Camp—the kind Susan Sontag wrote about in her 1964 essay, “Notes on Camp.”

For something to be Camp, Sontag suggests the need for something to be exaggerated. It is theatrical, extravagant and a little ridiculous at the same time. If you were to look at the world through a Camp lens, you would find beauty in the tacky and humour in the serious. During this semester, Dear Reader, I challenge you to find joy in being a little bit absurd.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we read that “There is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they live . . . it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” - Ecclesiastes 3:12–13 New Revised Standard Version.

I love that this comes from Ecclesiastes, a book so willing to stare directly at the uncertain nature of life, and then tells us to enjoy it. Maybe that is why having a Camp outlook on life can be so important. Camp reminds us that there is something sacred about enjoying what is right in front of us, even if it is a little ridiculous.

Susan Sontag further lists that camp is a Tiffany lamp, it is Gaudí architecture and it is Oscar Wilde. And, apparently, it is also Tanya Aggarwal. Our Website Manager who dressed in a Camp outfit for a Mars’ Hill Magazine photoshoot. One that she definitely did not sign up for when she applied for the website position. Sorry, Tanya.

Inside these pages, you will hear from TWU President Todd Martin, students Arturo Lombardo and Gnana Damarla, and the fourth floor of DeVries. You will also meet our new staff writers, Solee Lee and Sebastian Roque, alongside the rest of the team. We have added a new Culture Corner, where each issue we will introduce you to words and pieces of culture worth knowing. After all, being educated can be a little Campy too.

As your new Editor-in-Chief, I certainly do not have everything figured out. But I hope Mars’ Hill can be a place where we take people seriously without always taking ourselves too seriously; where difficult things can sit beside laughter; where strange, beautiful and funny stories all have a place.

Because people are like that. And perhaps that is what I love about Camp most: it looks at the strange things we do and the things we love and asks us to see them a little differently. So, as October begins, I hope you let yourself be a little more human, and maybe a little more Camp.

Welcome to a new year of Mars’ Hill.