Archives:
February 25-March 3, 2007

February 25, 2007

“So the girls get out of town all right?” I ask, flopping down on the opposite end of the couch from Mike.

“Yeah,” he nods, leafing through a notebook, “dropped Pepper off at the airport this morning, and Alicia while you were at work.”

“Sorry to see them go?”

“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “You ever get that feeling—where every once in a while you just wake up and think, how the hell did I get here? It's like, you had this one life with family and friends you've known for years and years—it's home. And then you realize it's been years since that place—that time—was your home, and you've got a whole new life now.” Mike shakes his head. “I guess hanging out with the girls again just got me remembering the way things used to be. And there's a part of me that really misses it.”

“It's cool that you can be such good friends with Alicia, when her cousin's your girlfriend. It's like you're all family.”

Mike chuckles. “You know, I fell for Alicia a long time before I even met Pepper.”

“Is that right?”

“Mmm hmm. Pepper moved into town my sophomore year—a few months after Alicia shot me down.” He takes a sip from his Gatorade. “It wasn't until after I got with Pepper that Alicia said she had feelings for me.”

“Shit, man, you're life's like a bad soap opera. So what did you do?”

Mike turns the page. “Nothing. There was a little drama, but I stuck with Pepper. And we're all friends—end of story.”

February 26, 2007

“You seriously want to lead off with Larry Schmidt again?” I ask.

“It's still the story that's going to make people pick up the paper,” Sam says.

“I think people are going to be sick of it by now. Besides, there's no real news to report.”

“Excuse me, guys.”

We turn to see Tucker Williams standing in the office doorway.

“Tucker,” Sam begins, “what can we do for you?”

“Actually, I was hoping I could steal a word with Preston .”

This is the first time Tucker's ever asked me to talk to him. Typically, he acts inconvenienced when I ask to talk to him. “Yeah,” I say, spinning my swivel chair to face him fully. “Come on in.”

“Would you mind coming with me?” he asks, taking a glance at Sam. “It's sort of a private matter.”

I glance at Sam. Only one side of his mouth raises, as he stifles a grin. I turn back to Tucker. “Sure.”

I follow Tucker out of the Window office, down the hall to the SA office, and into his personal office, where he closes the door behind us. Across the room is his familiar tall oak desk, which I've sat at the wrong side of too many times. Today, though, Tucker doesn't sit behind the desk, in his leather chair. Instead, he sits down at one of the visitor's chairs, next to me.

“ Preston , this whole Larry Schmidt, Rod Estrada thing—it's a headache for us.”

“If you're asking us to stop running coverage—”

Tucker waves a hand. “I'm not asking you to do anything differently. I'm just embarrassed at the connection this whole thing has to my predecessor, and how the whole thing has basically made everyone forget about the Groundhog's Day event. It's just a big mess.”

I nod.

“I'm just speaking to you informally here. What I want is to make things better.”

“All right.” I cross one leg over the other. “What do you have in mind?”

“I don't know,” Tucker says with a smile. “I don't have a plan. But the relationship between your newspaper and SA has been a poor one for too long. And I want for you to know that I want to turn that around. No more of this me sticking it to you, you sticking it to me. We're stronger together—so let's admit that and get past it.”

“So why are you talking to me, and not Sam?”

“You think Sam would listen to me?”

I shrug.

“Sam's too far entrenched in the way things have been,” Tucker says. “And Sam's gone in a year, just like me. I'm offering an olive branch here for the next generation of Taylor students.”

“How noble of you.”

“Just think it over,” Tucker says. “I'm trying to make things right.”

February 27, 2007

My timing's a little bit off today. Ordinarily, after my 8 a.m. class (if I go to my 8 a.m. class), I head back to the dorm and grab breakfast, maybe take a 15 minute power nap, then check my mail in the office before my next class. It's right back to the office after that.

Today, I had to squeeze in an interview at 9:30 with the Dean of the School of Education , about some proposed changes to the program. The guy kept me waiting outside his office for about twenty minutes, meaning the interview butted right up against my class.

By the time my second class is over, I've got a raging headache. And so when I would ordinarily be going to the office for the long haul, I return to the suite to get some Tylenol. Setting foot in the common room, I hear laughter from my room.

I open the door to find Chang lying on his bed, and another guy sitting on his desk chair, at Chang's computer. Chang's face drops a little as he sees me, but then he smiles again. “ Preston , how are you doing?”

“Doing all right,” I say, pulling open a drawer of my desk and snatching the bottle of Tylenol out. “Sorry to interrupt you guys—I just needed a couple of these.”

“Don't worry about it,” Chang says, then waves his arm to the guy at his desk. “ Preston , this is Brad. Brad, Preston .”

Brad gets up and heads toward me. He's a pretty small guy—probably a little shorter than Chang, and really thin. He reaches out his hand. “I've heard so much about you. Great to finally put a name to a face.” He stops and both he and Chang laugh. “I mean a face to a name.

I laugh too, a little awkwardly, and shake his hand. “Well it's nice to meet you, too.” I'd like to say that I've heard a lot about him as well, but I really haven't. I know they've been spending a lot of time together—that they play racquetball and video games together, and that they go out with Brad's friends sometimes. It's kind of funny how little I actually know about Brad, though.

I glance at my watch, to see it's creeping up on one o' clock. “Well, good to see you guys, but I have to get the office. Nice meeting you again,” I sort of wave to Brad as he sits back down, “and I'll catch you later Chang.”

February 28, 2007

Sam kicks out the doorstop, letting the Window office door slam shut. He turns to me on his way back to his desk. “There's no way you could tell them to shut the fuck up for 45 minutes?”

Dave and The Axis are playing downstairs in the Student Center , where, from the sound of the cheering, they seem to have assembled a pretty decent crowd. There's something screwy about the sound, though, and up here all we can consistently hear is Dave's voice and the bass line. “The Student Association's paying them good money to put on a show,” I say. “You should take it up with them.”

“Who puts on a concert on a Wednesday night?” Sam asks, sitting back down. “Besides, it's our student activity fee that's paying them—we should have a right to veto when we don't agree with an activity, or get to take our money back.

“Right,” Teri says, “because it's your hundred bucks that are paying the band.”

Sam leans back, eyes fixed on his computer. “Figure these guys are getting paid five hundred dollars to play. And the four thousand full time students here are each paying for part of that through their activity fee.” I turn to see Sam open the calculator program on his computer. “I would gladly take my 12 cents back from this show.”

“That would really make you feel better?” Teri asks.

He shrugs. “At least on principle.”

“Then catch,” she says, as she flips a quarter across the room.

“Why the quarter?”

Teri shrugs, looking back down at the printouts she's editing at the center table. “I like the background sound, so I'm buying you out. Keep the change.”

March 1, 2007

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” I ask, as Sam and I sit down at opposite sides of a table at Luigi's Pizzeria. Sam insisted on the two of us going out for a dinner meeting after the staff meeting tonight, while Teri and the others headed out to eat elsewhere.

“I just thought it was time we talk about a few things,” Sam says, taking a sip from his Mountain Dew. “For one, I've been trying to figure out what makes The Window distinctive as a college paper.”

I shrug. “We've had some pretty big news this year, and I think we handled the stories—”

“We do a good job with the news—good writing, good photos, good coverage,” Sam says. “And that's all well and good. But we're still not the talk of the campus. When I walk around this school, I see people talking about what they're doing this weekend, or about the basketball team. When we're lucky, a group of people is talking about the same things we're reporting on, and one in five of them has read our article.”

“So we're a college newspaper,” I say. “Nature of the beast—we do the best we can, and just hope we can get half the campus reading.”

“That's good enough for The Butterton Chronicle or USA Today. But we are the lone newspaper for this college. People should be depending on us.”

I set my Pepsi down. “But people are busy. They're taking classes, and going to meetings. They're figuring out what they want to do with their lives—and what they want to do this weekend.”

“Then we should be telling them what to do this weekend.”

“We've got the page of SA events—”

“And that's where we lose credibility as a college publication,” Sam says. “We're telling people what they can do, when everyone knows that there's cooler stuff going on. It's like we're just a mouthpiece for the college administration when we keep everything we do G-rated.”

“So what would you have us do—print a list of which frat parties are having opens this weekend? Write up which bars will let you drink underage?”
“Why not? That's what people are interested in.”

“And that's how we're preparing our writers—ourselves—to be professional?.”

“And you think all of our writers are going to move on to work for Nickelodeon News?”

“When's the last time you saw a frat party listing in The New York Times?” I ask.

“When's the last time you saw The Times run an article about opportunities for people to make puff paint t-shirts in the basement of the Student Center on a Friday night?”

I drink some Pepsi. “So you want to make the paper edgier.”

Sam nods. “It's going to be hard to change the world in these next two months. But this is something I wanted you to think about—for the future of the paper.” He stirs his drink with his straw. “For example, I was thinking about putting out a joke issue at the end of the semester. Something where we satirize all the news from this year.”

I tilt my head. “Could be funny.”

“And here you are,” the woman from behind the counter says, setting a medium pizza down on the table between us.

“Thanks Darcy,” Sam says.

“So let me ask you something,” I say, pulling out my first slice, with the server, dragging along a string of melted cheese. “Why are you bringing this up with me? Shouldn't this be something all of the editors are talking about?”

“I told you, I'm looking for the future. And next year, I want for you to be our editor in chief.”

I smile. “That's stupid. Teri's got a year of experience on me—not to mention that she's the managing editor.” I curl the slice, and take a bite.

“I don't see Teri coming back next year.” He grins. “Don't be surprised, Presto. I may be wrong. Hell, she's your girlfriend. You should ask her.”

“Why don't you think she's coming back?”

“Let's just say that I know Teri,” he says, chewing on a bite from his own slice. “Anyway, I just want to get you thinking about all this.”

“You're making a lot of assumptions here.”

“Such as?”

“What makes you think I would want to be editor in chief—or that I'd want to come back to the paper at all?”

Sam plugs the rest of his slice in his mouth, and sips from his soda to wash it down. “Let's just say that I know you, too—maybe better than you think.”

March 2, 2007

“All right, Preston , you're a guy,” Phoebe says. What do you think of this one?”

I round the rack of dresses to come to where she stands, a little red cocktail dress in hand. “Well—I'd say that there's not much dress there to speak of.”

She rolls her eyes. “You sound just like your girlfriend.”

Teri shrugs, smiling. “Maybe we're worth listening to.”

“And maybe the both of you are prudes,” Phoebe says, setting the dress down, and flipping through the rest of the rack. “I'm telling you, I need something sexy.”

“You're going to be on campus TV for an audience of 50, if you're lucky—” Teri starts.

“Not true,” Phoebe breaks in, dress after dress passing in the reflection of her glasses. “We get more viewers for the telethon than any other program we do all year. And what better way to build that audience than with a slutty host?” She pulls out a black dress, with fishnet sides. “Thoughts?”

I can't help laughing. Teri's less amused, and starts working through the rack with her. Phoebe heads up the campus television network, and Teri tells me she's been looking forward to running this specific event all year.

Beyond being a showcase for the TV station, the purpose of this year's telethon is to benefit political groups in Darfur . “We're giving them money to put toward resources they need for diplomatic negotiations, and to work with the media in Sudan ,” Phoebe explained. “And besides that, Darfur 's hot now. People who don't know a thing about the conflict still know it's a good cause, and it's cool to help. It's no Katrina, but it's the best cause we've got this year.”

I think about Phoebe essentially looking for a trendy cause, and think about Sam talking about wanting to reach out to the college audience at Taylor . It bothers me to think that that's what college media is about—not educating, or sharing information, or getting behind a good cause, but choosing what to report to appeal to what students want to see.

But then, I suppose I should be happy enough if the money is going to a good cause, even if people don't understand what that cause is. I suppose it's for the better if people are taking a glimpse at the news, even if they only picked up our newspaper to see a listing of where to party over the weekend. You have to appreciate the little victories.

“I don't think so,” Phoebe says, as Teri holds up a relatively simple red dress. “I'm pretty sure my mom has that one.”

March 3, 2006

“I just don't get it,” Amelia says, as I sit with her and Teri in their living room, watching the Taylor basketball away game. It's rare for an away game to be broadcast, and a testament to the team's success that we're watching this one. Mike has just split to defenders, only to be fouled by a third as he lays the ball in the basket. “It's not like he's even that fast, but they just keep letting him by.”

“He's harder to guard than he looks,” I say, grabbing a handful of popcorn. “He's not necessarily fast, but he knows how to fake out the defense.

Mike goes to the line and nails his first shot.

“Anybody want another drink?” Teri asks.

“Yeah, I'll have another Blue,” Amelia says, stretching out in the recliner.

“Me too,” I say, watching Teri as she heads into the kitchen.

“So word on the street is these guys are going to the championship tournament,” Amelia says.

“That's what Mike tells me. But he says they can't lose another game, or they'll be out of consideration.”

On screen, Taylor takes the ball back. Perry gets it to Mike and he penetrates before kicking it back out to Perry for three. The shot is good, and Taylor spreads the lead to eight, with a minute to go.

“Well why didn't you bring the sweater with you?” Teri comes back in, beer bottles in hand, phone pinned between her ear and shoulder. “Well we're watching the game, we'll be over when it's done.” She pauses. “Yeah, well, maybe you should have thought of that when you bought your dress. All right. Yeah. I'll see you in a little bit.”

“Phoebe?” Amelia asks.

Teri nods.

“You know we don't really have to wait until the end of the game,” I say. “It's probably just about over. They're just going to be fouling for this last minute to stretch it out.”

“Whatever,” Teri says, downing a gulp of her own beer, then sitting back down next to me. “I'm not her employee. She can wait until after the game—or she'll have one of her boys over here to get a sweater before we leave.”

Perry's fouled and goes to the line. I take a long sip of beer, leaning back and putting an arm over Teri's shoulders.