It’s past deadline and my column isn’t written, so here it comes.

I started writing this column after a couple of things happened.

First, another columnist failed to submit content one week. The other thing was a friend suggested a column would be a good way to, in an off-hand manner, get items of particular importance to me into the newspaper.

However, there are problems to this approach. If I reveal any of the “dirty little secrets” I know it will most likely led to vengeance of some form…which reminds me of a story my late friend JP Goodwin used to tell. I am going to tell that story, because it is so far in the past, because it is only hearsay, because JP has passed away, and because of many other reasons that make me believe that at this point it is relatively “safe” to publicly tell this story. As for my other stories, I’ll manage to think of some way to publish them.

JP used to relate a tale which I believe was from his undergraduate days, way in the past, like maybe the 80’s. JP had also worked for The Mass Media back then, which lent an amazing perspective to his views. Anyway, at the time The Mass Media was located on the fourth floor, in the large area where CPCS is now located, with a variety of offices and a conference room.

As the story goes, perhaps as told to me in a dream where I am visited by my dead friend, The Mass Media editors decided to publish some type of story about the chancellor then, Sherry Penney. As the dream goes, The Mass Media’s property was, perhaps gently, placed in carts and the staff was informed, perhaps politely, that their new offices consisted of the three small offices we currently occupy, far away from wherever you, my gentle reader, may possibly be.

Far away from the fourth floor of the Wheatley Building, where most student clubs and their activities are located, which perhaps would be items worthy of photographing.

Far away from the student life offices, where we must deposit our ad revenue checks or pick up our paychecks, or submit any of the numerous forms we need to submit.

Far away from the student governments, which it is our moral and ethical duty to report on.

But it wasn’t only the location that was detrimental to the organization, the space allotted is also detrimental. In three smaller than average offices we house about a dozen computers and twenty staff members. We have between four and six people assigned to each office, which average about ten feet by fifteen feet.

We have filing cabinets stacked in the hallway. We have no windows. The walls and carpets look as though people have been chained and severely beaten at this location at some point in time.

And so on.

I mentioned all of this to a student, about how this previous chancellor had done a disservice to the newspaper-by making their task of covering the campus community more difficult-that this individual in question had very effectively muffled the newspaper.

And the individual replied, “She didn’t only do a disservice to the newspaper, but also to the entire student body-by muffling their only voice.”

Michael Rhys can be reached at [email protected]