Buttons Up: A Toast To 2010 (And What's To Come In '11)

The times, they are a changin'. Soon enough, it'll be May, my fellow seniors and I will don cap and gown and...well, before we get there...I'm just here to announce some exciting changes on this here blog and bring you on a quick, brief, non-sappy nostalgic adventure.

When the Class of 2011 started at Penn some seven semesters ago, things in our little world were quite different: Bush was president, it was just about impossible to register for classes on the old Penn In Touch, no one used Twitter and your parents weren't on Facebook. But you know what else wasn't around? Under The Button.

But then, in Fall 2008, a brisk wind blew through the high rise wind tunnel and delivered us a gaggle of bright and shiny new things. We got a new president and the Phillies won the World Series, while, on campus - the big bulky building known as the Radian officially opened and, also, much to the detriment of your class participation, Under The Button launched.

Since then, the blog has grown into a campus institution, and serving as its first managing editor for the entirety of 2010 has been a pleasure, an honor and a hell of a lot of fun. A lot of fun things happened: we paired with SPEC to announce Kid Cudi's performance at Penn, Tom Green smoked something green, we scooped that Michelle Obama was coming to town and then we hung out with her, Jon Gosselin tried to take over frats or something and the Dining Halls switched from Pepsi to Coke. And...that little old sex column called Pennetration, for better or worse, happened too. (People in the real world found this to be rather amusing.)

For all of that, credit is due to the gang of talented, hilarious, savvy writers (Adrian, Hannah, Morgan, Ian, Kelly, Danyal, Courtney and Maggie) whom I've been so lucky to write alongside, banter with on a listserv all day and night and occasionally crash acapella mixers with on Beige Block (is that post ever going to happen, guys?).

And tipsters! Commenters! Thanks to the tipsters, who flood our inboxes with photos and accounts of all the insanity Penn has to offer. And commenters, thanks for keeping us on our toes and making us look like idiots, but most importantly - thanks for keeping this really fun.

If you've gotten this far, well, thank you to you - our amazingly devoted readers. We hit damn close to 1.9 million pageviews in this year to date, up from a measly 750,000 the year before. So thank you, for refreshing your web browsers and not paying attention in lecture.

Succeeding me as captain of the great ship UTB is the dynamic, hilarious, talented Morgan Finkelstein, who moved quickly from prefrosh Twitter follower to veteran UTB all-star. Joining her in the new position of Senior Features editor will be the awesome  and poignant Ian Bussard, who promises to bring you lots of laughs and general greatness. Expect lots of other familiar names and faces to be hanging around these parts too throughout the Spring and years to come. And of course, if you think you want to try your hand round these parts, fire away at contact at underthebutton dot com.

As a parting gift, I leave you with this!