It was a close race between the guys, but DivaSis took home more than half of the total votes cast!

The inauguration ceremony for DivaSis will be held at 5 p.m. Whyville Time (2 p.m. Pacific) in the Greek Theater. She will be sworn in by City Hall, accepting the Senator's Oath, thus officially becoming a Senator.

Wonder what the Oath is? Here you go! City Hall says the words in blue, and the new Senator says the words in red (all the "I do"s).

As a Whyville Senator, do you hereby solemnly swear to uphold the honor of Whyville, and to act always in the best interests of the people and the Senate of Whyville?

I do.

As a Whyville Senator, do you swear to honor City Hall and the other City Workers of Whyville in your public dealings, and to pursue Whyville Virtues in your public and private life?

I do.

Do you swear to uphold and defend Whyville and swear never to act in a way that would threaten its existence?

I do.

Do you pledge to serve your fellow Whyvillians and act at all times in their best interests and without prejudice or for pure personal benefit?

I do.

Do you further swear to fulfill the obligations and responsibilities of the office of Senator to the best of your abilities?

I do.

On my honor as City Hall, and in the presence of the city workers, and your fellow Whyvillians, and by their and my will and favor, I do confirm your position as a senator of Whyville with all the rights, privileges, obligations, and responsibilities attendant thereto.

There it is! Now, do YOU have what it takes to be a Whyville Senator? The next election is coming up soon... prepare your platforms and read up on what Whyvillians want in the Times archives! The new Senator will replace OrEoBaBy, who's done a great job as Whyville's second Senator. Giggler01 was the first one, for those of you just joining us -- she was Senator for several months, helping us decide on a lot of the guidelines for being a representative for you Whyvillians!

Good luck to you all!

This month's 'Meet the Makers' event at Club Why was hosted on July 6 by City Workers neutral and scyllaCat. They answered questions from about 25 Whyvillians such as how to become a city worker (it's a real-world job!), who were the founders of Whyville (superid, jen, turnip and mark), what will be the next thing the CWs add to Whyville (a new Welcome page that features polls), if the CWs are going to make more chat rooms (yes, exclusive Trading Post chat rooms for Club Why members), and how can regular citizens help get sponsors for Whyville (email city-management@whyville.net).

The CWs also got feedback on the new Newbie Center -- seems that everybody thinks it's a good thing, for newbies, regular citizens and veterans alike!

Last week, Whyville was down for much of the weekend -- City Workers tell me this happened because of a hardware problem that our ISP had difficulty pinpointing. It's possible Whyville will go down again in the near future if they didn't correctly diagnose the problem, but we hope it's all right! Cross your fingers...

On a side note, the Debate transcript is missing part of one of City Hall's questions for Deriko -- she asked "Deriko - Your platform and the way you chat is very carefully crafted..." and then said, basically, "Do you feel the way you speak distances you from the average Whyvillian?" It was more complicated than that, but she can't recall the exact wording. Sorry to those of you who wanted to see the whole thing! We're not sure why that line was dropped... must have been a glitch, one City Worker told me.

All the brand new teleportation rooms continue to be hugely popular, as is the Newbie Center, where Whyvillians of all ages are asking questions and exploring the answers together... great stuff, great stuff.

Breaking mental blocks with my bare brains!

Times Editor