Sometimes less is more for a title ok? It’s also a reference ok? Get out.…
Tag: Deaditor
How did I get started with the paper? The same way I did everything at Fordham: chaotically, and with little planning involved. Like many of you, I scrambled to sign up for and try every club I could as a freshman. I remember being enticed by the weird but welcoming energy of the paper, like some avant-garde collective pulled from the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel. My interest was always casual – I was far too inexperienced at Photoshop to help on any design issues, so I slowly worked my way in through Earwax reviews and the occasional op-ed.
I think the strangest part about writing this is that I still can’t believe I actually even started writing for a Fordham campus newspaper. I waited until the beginning of my junior year to even try. I have some pretty vivid memories of my first paper meeting: one, I was terrified and two, I had way too many ideas. I actually managed to get two articles in my very first issue.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, almonds, and having meltdowns when meetings didn’t start exactly at 9:00. This will be my legacy at the paper which I got to be a part of for a combined 5 semesters during my Fordham career (yes I’m counting the semester I was in Rome).
During our last Christmas Paperfest, we had a secret Santa. I remember receiving a bowl sized mug with tequila shots and a bunch of other goodies in it. And then we signed everyone’s paper covers, writing personal notes to each other on them. I was happy-sad looking at what my friends wrote for me. These were people who get me. I didn’t have a lot of close friends growing up, and the ones that I did I never felt knew me. These guys did. I haven’t really told anyone but I cried when I got home.
But I still have a soft spot for the paper I remember and the one I know it can be. The one of free speech on a highly censored campus. The one that despite being of free speech took a stand against certain viewpoints that were intolerant or hurtful and worked with those writers to try to find less offensive ways to express themselves. We need that more than ever in this social political climate and I’m sure the paper has always been the only space I’ve seen on campus where that is even a possibility.
Four years have passed already? Wow, time flies when you’re making memes. Though, the best of that time was spent working on the paper and having fun with The Paper Pals. To be honest, when I first joined the paper I didn’t know what to expect. I remember going to the first meeting in the second semester of my freshman year and finding out that I could write about anything I wanted.
And like that I had a family at Fordham. A small group of assholes who like to play board games and watch movies about re-animated T-Rex’s with Paul Walker’s brain. We fought, sure, pissed each other off. A lot. But isn’t that what a family is for? At the end of the day, I love you all and wouldn’t know what to do with myself without you guys in my life.
I joined the paper late in my college career. After being prodded since my Freshman year by various friends, I finally started writing for the paper in my first semester of Junior year. By second semester I found myself Copy Chief and with a great new group of friends. Even better, I was able to indulge my desire to work with others on their writing, and through that improving my own. A little over once a month I would cram myself into a small McGinley and edit the writings of our many great contributors. I got to learn the many voices of our writers, and did my best to maintain these lovely voices while shaping them into the articles that hopefully many of you readers have enjoyed.
On Wednesday, former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State physician Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for multiple sex crimes against young women in his care in addition to a 60 year sentence for child pornography. Nassar’s abuse spanned over 20 years and affected over 150 women.
