Dear editor:

We’re back. Unlike Greta and Gussie, we are quite certain you remember us. We’re the ones who let anyone and everyone publish an opinion piece about anything — at least according to YikYak. We thought we would pop back in before graduating to get something off our chest. 

We have been thinking about this for a long time, but we finally feel removed enough to say something: We find the image cutouts at the top left of the physical issues to be extremely disturbing. Phew. That feels good to say. 

We think that the images are distressing; oftentimes it is only the top half of a person. Where is their bottom half? Does it hurt them when you remove it? It seems that you are causing unnecessary harm to the subjects of the cutout. Please stop this immediately. It also appears that athletes are a common target for this. They have done nothing wrong. We implore — give them mercy. 

Even if a subject remains intact, what about the people in the background of the photo? What happens to them? Where do they go? Do they disappear forever? Does the subject get lonely?

You might be thinking to yourself: if we find this so upsetting, how did we do it as editors? The truth is, we didn’t. We avoided it until the last possible moment on layout nights. We often made another person in the layout room make the decision. We didn’t want to do anything to risk our position as editors, even though we do not agree with the socially accepted, grim tradition of dismembering innocent people for a cool design feature once a week. But, enough is enough. We demand justice for cutout subjects. 

If you have been the victim of a Record cutout, you are not alone and help is available. A support group meets on Monday evenings in Java where we bond over a mean Java Dawg. 

P.S. We’re absolutely flabbergasted that this Connections game is considered common knowledge. Is it just a better Wordle? A Mennonite rite of passage? You know, maybe this cutout habit is also some Mennonite thing. Can someone explain what haystacks are? Dutch Blitz? Clarify, or we’ll be forced to write another letter long after we graduate. Please don’t turn us into those people.

 

Mariela Esparza and Jakyra Green have never been seen in a room without each other. It is unclear if they are two separate people. They are both from Elkhart, are in the same extracurriculars, had the same majors (English and secondary education) for almost four years until Mariela dropped the education bit, and released Pinchpenny Press poetry chapbooks this semester.