EDITOR'S NOTE

Because of a budget shortfall in 1994 and complications resulting from new computer equipment that rendered our typesetting program inoperable, the Spring 1994 issue of Occam's Razor was never published. The stories and poems selected for that issue are finally appearing in this, the Fall 1995 issue. This issue proudly presents the winning short stories of the Robert V. Williams Memorial Contest for Spring 1994. All three stories pack a heavy dose of realism. First prize went to Rodney Dunican's "A Sunday Night Rain," which includes scenes in an AIDS-testing clinic and deals with the sexual anxieties faced by couples today. Maximiliano Garde's "La Pinta" deals powerfully with the intercultural conflicts of a street-tough Latino youth as his college education opens up new, if not always encouraging, perspectives. Anna Marie Davis's third prize "Aisha" involves the humiliation an African-American career woman suffers as she tries to conceal her past. The poetry in this issue exemplifies a subtle sense of wit, imagination, and feeling without recourse to willed intellectuality or theory.

The Occam's Razor staff is grateful to the Alumni Association for a grant that has helped to make this publication possible. I wish to thank both Leah Nelson, a recent graduate, for her help in learning to typeset this issue on Word 5.1 for Mac and the Foreign Language department for allowing me access to its Mac computer in UM 59. This editorial statement is written on behalf of our co-editors, Leila Rae and Rodney Dunican, who have completed their degrees and gone on to other tasks.

Don Markos, Faculty Advisor