By Our Staff
With the spring semester coming to a close, it’s time to look back on the work of Binghamton’s college publications and grade them accordingly.
Pipe Dream: C
Within this year, we saw, for better or worse, Pipe Dream return to printing physical issues. Unfortunately, their stacks are always full because (you know the lines). In terms of content, it’s been more of the same: boring “news articles” and cringy opinion articles competing for the dullest take of the year. I’ll be real, the only time I focused on Pipe Dream for more than 5 seconds was when I was aghast at their sex issue. To have a whole issue criticizing topics like the needless sexualization of women, while the paper was laden with (what I’m assuming are your female writers) real women posing in their underwear with their heads cut off. Tasteful. With all this in mind, we decided to give Binghamton’s most mediocre paper the most mediocre grade: a C, not even a C-, just a C.
Free Press: C-
The grade for this year could only go up, and 2 issues over the course of 2 semesters is infinitely more content than was produced last year. Looking back on your past work, I have to say we’re disappointed. There’s been a clear drop in production value over the years: busy graphics, artwork that looks like it’s been traced, and most sinfully, referring to the phrase “vaginal discharge” as queer lingo. Yeah, that’s right. I did the word search. Some of the poems were acutely disappointing as they had me wondering whether or not your editor hates you or if they, too, didn’t catch the fact that the poems had spelling errors and quality ranging from mediocre to “I’d like to hang myself now, please.” They also refuse to capitalize their i’s, which made us sad. But, I mean, what else would you expect from an anti-capitalist paper?
Bing Butt: D
We know we’re grading a little harshly here, but truthfully, we like to play around with the Butt. The sharpest criticism is that the disparity between the quality of the headlines vs. the quality of the actual content is like a slap to the face. Or, a slap to the Butt, if you will. When reading the satire articles found in the Bing Butt, one would expect to crack a few laughs when reading their articles (some knee slappers if you will). Unfortunately, the attempts at humor are not enough for these high IQ Bing review staff members. As always, we’re gonna have to give the Butt ‘the D.’
Happy Medium: C+
“Happy” isn’t an accurate description of the paper, but “medium” certainly is. Though your papers are credibly sourced, I don’t want to feel like I’m doing more homework in my independent reading time. With a name that leaves you wondering: is this a college publication or are they just describing my penis? Happy Medium is a serious publication that publishes serious articles on mainly serious topics such as politics. Compared to Pipe Dream, the other serious paper, there is only so much you can do. However, given the increase in quality of Happy Medium, compared to Pipe Dream, we thought that they deserve a slightly higher mark.
Asian Outlook “B+”
Having published only one issue this year, I have to say I’m a bit saddened by the lack of content to work with, (though you do get points for it being 26 pages. Goddamn.) From what I have seen from the fall issue, we at Binghamton Review are impressed. Quality written and edited articles with a wide range of topics, formatted within beautifully edited pages that incorporate the messages at hand. However, you do get points off for the amount of old Asian Outlooks I’ve seen around campus. They go all the way back to 2011! That was ten years ago. Don’t you know that’s self-plagiarism? At this point, you should be calling it ‘Asian lookback’ just for consistency’s sake. Also, Genshin Impact is cringe, -5 points.
Binghamton Review: A+++
Well, what did you expect? Were the only paper to consistently print 6 issues a semester while maintaining high-quality articles: serious, satire, and the heavenly in-between. One could argue we should be getting an “F” for “fucks,” which is exactly what we do. The Binghamton Review Fucks. Not only do we have amazing and colorful covers that tickle the mind and high-quality videos on our youtube channel that would have at least a 98% on rotten tomatoes, we also value everyone’s opinion, so anyone can get published. Yes, that’s right. Even you.