Dear Fleabags,
Every issue, I ask my writers to scrounge the campus for any student they can find to ask them our bi-monthly Whatcom Voices question. As a team, our staff will sit around our conference table and try to pick a winning question.
This can take a while because I very strongly detest basic questions.
No matter the question, the student body can be quite predictable. We answer the questions ourselves as way to vet the basic b—-s of the northwest. If my writers come up with a cookie cutter answer as soon as the question is suggested, it’s nixed. Everyone and their mommy will give you the same answer.
If anyone thinks our questions are lame, I’d like them to write in some suggestions! Ask some students yourself, see what kind of answers you get without asking them to change their answer! Try! If you can get unique questions and answers, please sign up next quarter and mentor me. No cap, let’s go.
Don’t give people examples, because they’ll just say “oh, uh, that one.” Dude, I gave you that example so it would grind your gears, not mine.
Our writers even have a little difficulty with completing the task. It’s frequently an issue for us here on production night, calling our writers and asking, “Do the students have last names?” just to have them reply, “I did not get last names, sorry.”
Jeremy, you’ve worked here before, how did you forget to ask for their last names? All the information needed is a full name, age, major, and an answer with an explanation.
If you don’t want to be in the newspaper, maybe do say yes when we ask? If you take time to think of an answer, and then tell us you don’t want your picture taken, we’re not putting you in the paper, man. It would be great if you could figure that out before we waste our class time.
Honestly, no one wants their picture taken with little to no notice, but it’s all relative, you look fine. Please swallow your pride and get published. We really only need your pictures to fill space.
I mean, I get it. If some random students with a camera and a few note pads came up to me asking a weirdly specific question, I would be a little apprehensive as well.
When I did Whatcom Voices, back in the day, I tried to converse with students to try and get them thinking. Occasionally we’d get some good banter, but more often than not, they still gave us lame answers. I guess some people just suck.
Also, why do people not smile? Why do they have to look so serious? No one cares. What if their future bae is reading this right now, and now thinks they’re unapproachable? Not their future bae anymore.
Because our stories always relate back to the Whatcom community, we want our student body represented in a positive light, but more importantly, the most realistic and sincere way. We just want your genuinely unique answers to show just how vast this college campus really is. This is our way of including current student life in a simple way. We simply ask you to please cooperate.
Don’t you think it would be cool to show your kids a picture of you smiling in the newspaper and say, “look [your kids name here], I was famous”?
The whole point is to get a sense of our community. It’s called Whatcom Voices for a reason, we want to hear students’ individual voices. Honestly, we have a lot of fun ripping apart and applauding the answers we get from students.
At least I can say we haven’t gotten many of the expected answers, and we rarely receive answers similar to our own.
I guess I just wish students roaming the campus, vulnerable to our reporters have some courage in the future.
