Editor’s Note: This publication is from the very first volume and issue of the Northern Iowan, known as The Normal Eyte at this time on Jan. 12, 1892. 

In presenting this little pamphlet to the public we fully appreciate the responsibility connected with the undertaking and, in the flippant phraseology of the renowned Aeneas, “our limbs are relaxed with chilling fear and a cold tremor runs through our inmost bones” as we come into an empirical realization of what it actually means to be thrust out into contact with the hard, cruel world. Whenever an enterprise of this character is launched into the great journalistic sea there is bound to be a splash, and it too often happens that you hear a few gasps and all us over – the stock has become water-soaked and the scheme goes down, down into the murky oblivion of the fathomless nowhere. But fortunately we have learned to swim. We have started in to win and are bound to keep afloat until next June at least, at which date the practicability of a permanent college paper here will have been demonstrated and its further existence will become dependent upon our successors in office. For a long time a school paper has been the students’ dream: it is now to be realized. We shall attempt to place before you a weekly this 16 page pamphlet containing the Normal news and we hope to make it interesting as well as instructive to our many readers. But in return for our labor we shall expect your co-operation and support. In this enlightened age when human volition is subservient to the scream of the eagle on a silver cart wheel, it is found impossible to publish a college paper without money and it is in view of this fact that we have the audacity to ask you for sixty cents. Evidently then it lies in your power to aid us; first by subscribing to the paper, if you have not, then by urging your friends to do so and asking them to use their influence to have their friends do likewise. We have received many kind words of encouragement and start out with a propitious prospect. We have a fine corps of associate editors and are glad to associate with them, and if at the end of the school year our patrons are satisfied, then indeed shall it not be said that the midnight oil has been consumed to no avail. We shall not be offended at honest criticism and hope that when we offer suggestions they will be taken kindly. The columns of this paper will be open to any who may desire to express their views provided that they do not not indulge in waving the sanguinary nether garment. Contributors will please remember to hand in their names or photographs with each production.