BY
Every Wednesday night around 11 p.m., the night the RECORD goes to press, we sit around the office trying to come up with an editorial topic. As the self-appointed group of nine worker bees whose half-drunken whims represent the “voice of the students,” we work really, really hard to think of something that everybody cares about enough that we swashbuckling wannabe-journalists can swing our editorial axe at it.
Once in a while we get lucky and really hit the nail on the proverbial head (and do it without clichés). But other times we just end up having a big staff pillow fight that ends in a flurry of giggly girl talk.
We realize that we probably ought to put more effort into the process. But since we aren’t student “leaders,” we’ve just got to take our potshots from our overhot confines in the basement of Ames.
Unfortunately, some of those potshots misfire. Sure, we’ve argued for important stuff like grade reform, including students in the Allston decision and urging Harvard to be a good landlord, but we’ve also run some real schlock. We whined because professors weren’t reporting grades fast enough — probably right after we got done with some diarrheal mumblings about how grades don’t matter. Oops, we did it again.
See, that’s what happens when you listen to rock n’ roll classics like No Doubt’s “Hey Baby” and every hit in the Creed catalog when you’re trying to write important, world-changing edits. Try writing one to that song by Buckcherry that goes, “Love ain’t nothing but bitches and money!” It’s not exactly as mind-expanding as whatever Allison Margolin is on.
Maybe that’s why we ran a reprint of a poem for an editorial. Or maybe that was because we were debating buying a new keg refrigerator for RECORD 2002-2003.
It’s not like we’re the smartest people in the school or anything — the only Law Review champs that have ever been in this office are Sarah McGonigle and Justin Dillon, and we’ve got a future editor who cut his chops at For Him Magazine, for Chrissake. (For those that don’t know, that’s Playboy without the naked chicks).
Still, it’s kind of cool that we get to advance our own personal agendas, even when they’re really random.