Student Life Archives

Alyssa Gregory

When I was asked to write this column, I was basically told to slap down some canned nostalgia about sunrises on the steps of Brookings or sex in notable places. Well, I saw my sunrise in the Quad, but only because I was too much of a wimp to kiss the girl, and I prolonged the date way too long. You can probably guess about the sex.

To be nostalgic would be misleading. Maybe it’s because I only graduated eight months ago, or maybe it’s because I work at WU now and spend more time on campus than ever. Maybe it’s because the only memory that accurately summarizes all four years is “foot-long meatball on wheat.”

No, nostalgia seems like a defeat-like I’d be saying that the best thing I took from WU are a bunch of memories. I do have some great memories from WU, but I have great memories from a lot of places. For example, this one time in high school, I put the wrong soap in the dishwasher and flooded our kitchen with bubbles. That’s a solid memory.

I choose not to look at WU as something that happened, but something that’s happening. Right now, I’ve got WU-minted friends and enemies all over the U.S. and several foreign countries. On an almost daily basis, I talk to people doing everything from waiting tables in a yellow-walled restaurant, to waiting tables at the art museum. Pretty much anywhere I go I have a friend to stay and play with.

At WU, we lived in a tightly controlled social environment which was mostly contained by maybe three square miles of St. Louis. And, although we all entered with essentially the same academic backgrounds and (though Bush doesn’t seem to care) largely the same social backgrounds, by senior year we became frat boys, athletes, architects, doctors. We narrowed our interests to fit first into a school, then a couple majors, and finally a thesis. We allowed our social network to contract until we were surrounded by enough familiar faces to think we knew everyone on campus.

We complained of too much work, too few bars, too little dating. We allowed ourselves to be pigeonholed into a major, into a group of friends, and into a single lunch item. Some of us were to be artists, or engineers, or professional liberals, and some made it to the next round on good looks alone.

Then came senior week-the week when you’ll get on a bus for pub night and realize that not only do you not know anyone on the bus, but you’ve never seen them before.

Senior week is a mind-altering experience. With your whole class together for the first time since orientation, you’ll see friendships play out in ways you never predicted. Your friends, it turns out, have other friends. Some you know, but others you’ve never heard of. Underlying all those social networks we tried so hard to build were arbitrary connections made on freshmen floors, in subway lines, and in distribution requirement classes.

During senior week you’ll rewrite much of your undergraduate experience. You’ll decide not to take the advertising job and instead audition for comedy. You’ll dump your boyfriend, you’ll make new friends and abandon old ones. You’ll realize that the rest-of-your-life is not simply the logical conclusion to college.

I guess, when it comes down to it, this whole column was just a gumpian riff. The real world, to college’s meatball sub, is a box of chocolates.

Brian Hamman was the editor in chief of Student Life in 2000-01. He currently works at Washington University.

Alyssa Gregory

Student Life is a vital enterprise for the Washington University community, and I wish to convey congratulations to all involved, past and present, for the wonderful contributions made through the years by Student Life. Student journalism at America’s colleges and universities has a long and distinguished history, and Student Life is among our country’s elite university newspapers. The long and rich 125-year history of Student Life has spanned almost the entire history of the university itself, and our student-journalists have documented the life of the university from their unique, important perspective.

Student-led communications are effective in disseminating information about all aspects of university life to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. Perhaps most important, an independent student-run newspaper provides an opportunity for students to voice an opinion on all university policies and procedures as well as on issues of local, national, and international interest. Washington University has been fortunate to recruit outstanding students, and responsible journalism is now one of our hallmark traditions.

Producing a high quality newspaper requires much effort, talent, and discipline. Writing interesting and accurate news articles and providing supporting photography and graphics are obviously important for a successful newspaper. But there are also business issues requiring attention, too. Clearly, however, it is essential that the editors show good judgment and wisdom in choosing what news to cover and what perspectives to communicate. Student Life has shown consistent commitment to achieving the very best it can in terms of quality. Sustaining excellence in a student-run organization is especially challenging, considering the inexorable high turnover of key personnel as students graduate and new students join the organization.

Students of all generations have experienced interesting and challenging times during their student years, and students of every era have made enduring contributions to the life of the university. Student Life has held the responsibility for lifting the voice of students to the administration of the university, and this has proven to be a rewarding contribution. All institutions and their leaders, no matter what their intentions and resolve to do the right thing may be, can benefit from constructive criticisms from the constituencies they serve. Student Life has supported the quest of the university to be a better place, and doubtless there are still new ways to improve and to do so faster.

New times bring new opportunities and challenges. Today we face a diminished economy, loss of confidence in religious and business organizations, a war against terrorism, possible military conflict in Iraq, and high tension in Korea. These national and international concerns come at a time, though, when we have great potential to create new knowledge that will bring benefit to our society. Research universities must change as the challenges and opportunities change. Students can play a key role in the response of the university to these changing times.

Student Life must remain a vibrant and articulate voice for students and sustain its 125-year tradition of bringing benefit to our community through its news coverage and criticisms. I am grateful to all who have contributed to the strong Student Life tradition and charge those here and present and future generations of students to continue our great tradition of excellent student journalism.

Alyssa Gregory

It was 1976 and for as long as anyone at Washington University could remember, Student Life was under the domination and control of the Revolutionary Student Brigade. Like a rare Ming vase, the editor in chief slot was carefully handed down from one student disciple of Chairman Mao Tse-tung to the next. While other student newspapers struggled with Republican or Democratic ideologies, our editorial page was decidedly “worker.”

But through some quirk of fate at the end of the 1975-76 school year, there was no heir to the emperor’s throne. The lower level editors aligned with the Washington University Chinese Communists had all flunked out, or perhaps they were on a pilgrimage.

The beneficiaries of this changing-of-the-guard were Greg Freeman and me. We were co-editors in chief in waiting, ready to take on the 1976-77 year.

Greg was an intelligent and gregarious junior with a reporter’s eye on life. If he were born a racehorse his name would have been “Relentless.” He was a young black man from St. Louis who knew he was going to be a famous newspaperman in his hometown, and that was all there was to it. Greg knew the politics of St. Louis and the politics of (don’t call it) Wash U.

I was strictly New York then. White, Jewish and one of those East Coasters who had come here to tolerate St. Louis for a few years in revenge for not getting into the University of Pennsylvania. To show you just how far Student Life had fallen, the Mao editors reached down into the cesspool of student journalism-the sports department-to find me. When word came that the Revolution was over and Student Life (a.k.a. the Most-Red Newspaper on Campus) was being liberated, I was eagerly recounting an intramural basketball thriller between ZBT and the Phi Delts. My domain was the last page of the paper.

Greg and I hit it off famously. He was a man possessed to change Student Life’s editorial policies and I took on the day-to-day assemblage of the news, sports, features and photography. He found a student voice for our newspaper and I found great editors and surrounded myself with them.

Among my treasured possessions to this day is a bound volume of every issue we published that year. When asked to write this column to commemorate the 125th anniversary issue, I pulled out that book-the largest if not the most scholarly work I own. As an avid reader of the current Student Life I was struck by how much things change and stay the same.

Our first issue was published on Aug. 31, 1976 and the lead story trumpeted a shortage of student housing. Students also were complaining about a lack of parking. That seems familiar. It was also news that a brand new campus radio station, KWUR, was transmitting 24/7, though of course the term “24/7” had not reached popular culture yet. Left Bank Books and Art Mart were regular advertisers, like now, but ads for cutting-edge technology lured students to buy the latest calculators, not computers.

Our best issue was published on April 29, 1977. It also happened to be our last issue and we wanted to go out with the proverbial bang. The three stories on the front page (we were a tabloid then) all were hard hitting investigative pieces we had been working on for some time.

In the lead story, we had used the newly enacted Freedom of Information Act (which has become a staple for U.S. news-gathering organizations) to obtain the Washington University federal tax return and published the names, pictures and salaries of the highest paid WU employees-all doctors at the Medical School. This news may seem tame by today’s “full disclosure” standards, but in 1977 it caused quite a stir.

The second front-page article reported that WU’s nationally recognized darling of liberal, environmental issues, Barry Commoner, had accepted $49,000 from the government of Iran-a dictatorship with a long history of human rights abuses. According to the article, Commoner could not be reached for comment, but Chancellor William Danforth, to his credit, took the heat in stride. He said, “It used to be said that if you went to Iran you couldn’t walk around the streets without seeing several university presidents over there with their hats out trying to money through this program or that program.”

Dr. Danforth was always there for Student Life, both in times of pride and times of embarrassment.

The final front-page piece detailed two potential conflicts of interest that existed on the WU Board of Trustees. It seems that McDonnell Douglas Corporation (Boeing) and Interco Corporation had given WU real estate, presumably for the tax write-off, and WU leased it back to the companies at what was hinted to be a favorable rate. The McDonnell Douglas and Interco CEOs were on the board. Dr. Danforth denied the conflict of interest, stating that the two CEOs were not involved in the decision to lease the properties back to the companies.

The 1976-77 Student Life also made some journalistic history in other, more whimsical ways.

In November 1976, Doonesbury was easily the most popular comic strip in the United States-at least among young readers. Many newspapers had moved the strip off the comic pages and on to the editorial page. Suffice it to say that Doonesbury was big, with a price tag to match, and it was out of the financial reach of all but the largest paper in each city. Here, it was the private domain of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

But on Nov. 15, 1977, Doonesbury’s author, Gary Trudeau, pushed the envelope of family newspapering. In his series of strips for that week, he had two of his fictional comic characters who were not married to each other (now get this!) in bed together. This was such a steep departure from morality that the Post-Dispatch, and most other daily newspapers, refused to run the strips. Their refusal became national news.

You might find it surprising to learn that then, as today, Student Life had a slightly different approach to morality. The entire week’s Doonesbury strips were smuggled out of the Post-Dispatch by a reporter there who will be my “Deep Throat” to my grave. (Note to current students: “Deep Throat” is a reference to an anonymous White House inside source who helped the Washington Post break stories that led to the resignation of President Nixon. See your history books).

Since Student Life only published on Tuesdays and Fridays, Greg and I decided to run the whole week’s strips on Tuesday, days before their licensed publication in the newspapers that actually paid for them. This bold move was quickly followed by a lawsuit-threatening call to Student Life from King Syndications. Luckily, the best defense to any threatened lawsuit is insolvency.

Later in the year we were the only newspaper in the entire Midwest to publish verbatim the highly offensive comments of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. The statements got him fired and got us double the circulation that week. We “exposed” a small football coaches’ junket at a time when all other sports at WU were being drastically cut. We covered the annual tuition increase announcement. We were kings of our domain.

I have not had another year like my senior year at WU and likely will not ever have so much fun again.

I have been faithfully reading Student Life since those years, and what has not changed is the commitment to excellence by the volunteer corps of editors and reporters. I will always feel like a small part of Student Life. Yes, we miss the mark sometimes, but sometimes we get it just right, and that feeling lasts forever.

Mitch Margo, Student Life co-editor in chief in 1976-77, is a lawyer in St. Louis, Mo. He is the current president of the WUSMI board of directors.

Alyssa Gregory

Mostly, it was the buzz.

I liked to write. I liked asking people pesky questions. I liked reading my story in the newspaper a day after writing it.

But it was the buzz that hooked me.

I felt it first at Student Life, and I feel it in my newsroom today. It’s the adrenaline of looming deadlines, of never really knowing whether you’re going to finish on time, and then always, somehow, finishing on time. It’s the energy that pulses through a newsroom-any newsroom. It’s the biting sarcasm that reporters everywhere love to toss around, and the sense that you’re on the inside. It’s midnight pizza and Chinese food delivered. (Once, unable to find a single utensil to eat our chicken fried rice, two of us fished a spoon from the trash, washed it off and chowed down. Now that’s quality college bonding.)

My first assignment for Student Life was to write about the new St. Louis Science Center. What I remember most is the large photo of a giant dinosaur that the editors put next to my story. The only problem was that the dinosaur had nothing to do with the Science Center. Oops. They had to run a correction.

Through my freshman year, I went on to write nearly every week. I cut out each story and taped it to the back of my door. When I ran out of door space, I pasted them to my bulletin board. When I ran out of bulletin board, I put them into a scrapbook. If you had told me then that some day I would casually throw away clips published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, I really don’t think I would have believed you.

Sophomore year, I became the Tuesday news editor, and when the Friday news editor quit, I took over both issues. If anyone thought it was a power grab, they didn’t care, no doubt relieved that another person was willing to spend all her free time at the paper.

We weren’t always the most exciting of sections. I remember the features editors, who proclaimed: “Features: We put the ‘life’ in Student Life!” The sports editors responded, “We put the “stud” in Student Life!” That left us at news with: “We put the ‘ent’ in Student Life!”

Luckily, some of us thrive on the ent.

For the staff, the highlight of the year came near April 1, when we put out the annual “Student Libel” edition, filled with private jokes that we found hilarious and an occasional item that regular readers might enjoy.

A few days before the issue went to press, someone in the newspaper’s business office said to me, “So, did they get you in racquetball class?” Turns out, the sports editors had sent a photographer to take pictures of me, a basic effort in mockery (and inside humor). Lucky for me, I skipped class that day. Still, I’ll never forget the story they ran: “Mad Dog Meckler Extends Incredible Winning Streak.” That was the first and last time my name appeared in the sports section of a newspaper.

A couple of days after our Student Libel issue hit the streets, events took a 180-degree turn for the sadder. Student Gregory Delos jumped off the 11th story balcony of Eliott Hall, killing himself. A Student Life photographer heard the commotion and rushed to the scene, capturing a photo of paramedics trying to revive him. The photo was tasteful and not the least bit gory. But somehow word got out that we had a photograph, and Delos’ friends launched a campaign to try and stop us from publishing it.

It was the most wrenching decision I’d ever been part of. Delos and I had mutual friends, and some of them were appealing to me on the most personal, anguished terms. I knew that from a journalistic point of view, there was no reason not to publish the photo, but I wondered if using it was worth upsetting so many already broken hearts. I’ll never forget sitting on the grass outside Graham Chapel with Jack Grone, who was editor in chief, talking it through and deciding the photo would not appear in the paper.

At the time, I thought the most important thing was whether to use the photo or not. I realized later that the simple process of making a decision was what really mattered. Like so much in journalism, I know now, there was no one right answer.

Today I serve on the board of directors of the nonprofit corporation created to publish Student Life. We try to give smart advice when asked, and we offer ideas for how to improve the paper. I think back to the wrenching decision about whether to publish that photo and know that we could have used some smart advice.

By senior year, I was editor in chief, hooked on journalism in heart and head. I prided myself on innovations, some of which are still around 13 years later. I came up with an idea for an arts and entertainment tabloid. I distinctly remember a small group of us trying to agree on a name for the new section. At a stalemate, we consulted a thesaurus, looked up “excitement” and found “cadenza” on the list. We’d never heard the word before, but we liked it.

What else do I remember? Great stories.

We wrote about the weakness of the sociology department one year, and then next semester, we broke the news that the department would be closed. We spent the next two years covering student and faculty protests.

We wrote about the misdeeds of a dean of student affairs and about a WU graduate who was kicked out of the military because he was gay.

When Thurtene refused to tell us how much money they raised at their storied carnival, we went to the beneficiaries and found out anyway. (It turns out that the carnival was raising peanuts for charity.) Another personal favorite: I wrote a column calling on Thurtene to admit women. I’m not saying my column is what prompted a pair of women to sue the university for discrimination, but I’m proud of being out front nonetheless.

I don’t get to make up stories any more, not even on April 1st. I don’t have final say over what goes into the newspaper. I can’t just create a section because it seems like a good idea. For better or worse, I left all that behind in college. But the buzz came with me, and so did the memories.

Student Life, happy anniversary. I hope your editors know how much fun they’re having.

Laura Meckler, Student Life editor in chief in 1989-90, is a reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She chairs the committee planning a Student Life reunion to celebrate the 125th anniversary, scheduled for September.