Under the tenure of new editor John C. Williams ’06, Spike retired from the duties of renegade acts of humor and focused on the hard business of writing (or not writing) the magazine.  The confusion, instability, and poop-joke loving tendencies of modern man were reflected not only on the magazine’s pages, but also within the constantly changing membership of its staff and editorial board—Williams was soon joined by Michelle Crouch ’07 and Joe Kille ’06 to form the editorial triangle so often recurrent in Spike folklore. As the jet setting editors took frequent trips abroad, however, it was not until the final year of the union that its true potential was tapped; the result was the skewering of American history in the “Monumental” issue (Spring ’06).

            In these annals of the magazine we would also be remiss not to mention the one editor who appeared at the head of the masthead only once: Alex Wheeler (classless), who teamed with Kille when the going got rough and Williams and Crouch skipped town. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Spike, however, was a piece in which he imagined himself as a computer, a daring feat of empathy in a time of technological inundation. In fact, this work, along with Bill O’Stool’s truly magnificent Baywatch article (Fall ’04), may be one of the finest fruits of this era of the publication; although, in all unbiased honesty, the brilliant cacophony of this editorial staff produced many resplendent works.

            Perhaps the most overlooked event of this period of the magazine’s history was the appearance of yet another edition of the Poenis.  The general indifference with which it was met by the student body was the cause of great bitterness on the part of the editorial staff, who expected to either be expelled for its disgustingly offensive content or graced with plaudits for its boldness and wit. While it was dismaying to hear the comments of many students who were confused as to why the Phoenix would be satirizing itself, the experience provided a valuable insight into the student body’s general sack-of-potatoes mindset towards humor, and it convinced the vanguard of the continued revolutionary work it had to conduct in getting Swarthmore to lighten the hell up.