From the Editor

5/8/07

By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
Critic Editor

Wild dogs attacked and ate a prominent LSC official yesterday.

That’s a lie, I just didn’t want to open with something boring and make anyone think this was just a lame “I’m graduating/goodbye” editorial. One of the first things I was taught as a journalist was to never be boring, and if you have to be boring, don’t lead with it.

I wanted to take this space to thank The Critic’s staff in print, as I likely won’t be able to articulate myself well enough in person. I’m a writer for a reason, you see; speeches really aren’t my thing and the more important the thing I have to say is, the harder a time I have saying it.

When I became editor of The Critic, I was worried. Mary Wheeler, the editor before me, along with Dan Williams, The Critic’s new adviser, had set the bar extremely high. So high, the school had seen fit to give us a larger office in the spot where the Writing Center used to be. Space is limited around campus and there were plenty of other people deserving of that space, so I definitely had something to live up to when I took over.

I lost sleep in the month or so leading up to the start of the fall semester. It would have been all too easy to do a worse job than what had been done before and the thought of the paper going to hell in a hand basket under my watch was one of the worst things I’d ever had to think about in regards to academics in my school career.

That didn’t happen and it’s due solely to the fact that on The Critic’s staff were people who actually cared how the paper turned out. My first pleasant surprise was my first managing editor, Tabitha Fitzgerald. In case you didn’t know, it’s the managing editor’s job to collect all of our articles and edit them. It’s a thankless and difficult job and readers are quite quick to point out your mistakes.

Amanda Wozniak, my layout editor that first semester, seemed to take an actual interest in what the pages looked like. There’s no right way to design a page, but there are plenty of wrong ones. Andrew Koch, the sports editor, made sure I never had to think about the sports page. Ever. Making the Fun Page every week is far, far, far, from being fun, so Eric Downing took care of that for me. The Critic’s Web site and Apple computers are strange things, but Josh Gervais made them no big deal. The list of people and how they saved my bacon goes on. Check The Critic’s letter policy/credits for the list of people I owe big.

Oh look, I ended up writing a Thank You list. I hate Thank You lists. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Thank You speech I cared about that I wasn’t either in or making. Another thing I hate about them is that no one can ever include enough people.

I’ll bring this back to you, LSC, if you’re still reading. Studies show the majority of people don’t read this far.

A while ago I wrote that students on this campus needed to give more of a crap about what they do here. The reason The Critic hasn’t bombed is because it’s been lucky to have staff members who actually care about it. They seem to be here for more than just a grade and three credits (although no doubt that’s part of it).

There isn’t a single thing on this campus that couldn’t be improved by more student involvement. The food, SGA, overpriced television screens, the dorms, the course schedule, you name it, it can be made better by you and your buddies. I can’t count the number of students I’ve talked to who thought they had no control.

I’ll end with the phrase most common to college seniors. I’m graduating, so this place is your problem now.