As I’m writing this, it’s Saturday in the Free Press house, and after three intense days of too much work and too little sleep; of trying to balance going to class with conducting interviews, signing purchase orders, and going to Gorham to cover sports for the section I have left without an editor, I think that the only thing I can communicate in my exhausted sigh of relief-that-I-survived-my-first-week-as-executive-editor is how proud I am.
I am not proud of having put together a paper-that happens every week. It has to happen every week.
I am proud because throughout the day, as many as 12 people were in this house at one time, talking, eating, editing, and generally enjoying themselves and this process. I am proud because my number one goal for this semester, my last at USM, is to create a community, and today, for the first time, I saw a glimpse of it.
What do I mean by community? A group gathered as friends in common support.
Last semester, Mike Tardiff, our dedicated sports writer and columnist, wrote a column about the community he saw at Ohio State University when he was there to watch a football game.
I, too, got to see OSU in its full glory-visiting a friend in Columbus as I drove back to Maine after Christmas, I was just off-campus during the OSU-LSU championship game. Mike’s “sea of red” was not exaggerated. The 65 degree weather allowed packed bars to open-and pack-their porches, and you could go nowhere without hearing the game from somebody’s window.
Before I left after finals last semester, I went to the 8th annual USM Drag Show to witness something like 600 people attending a university event in support of one of Portland’s strongest communities.
Community. A group gathered as friends in common support. 10,453 people, give or take, who got an extra day of vacation last Monday.
23 people who passed a motion in the faculty senate to change the shape of USM. 22 people whose hard work is represented by this 16 page document. 17 men who waited out a power outage to work their shorts off for, and lose, a game of basketball.
12 people on the top floor of 92 Bedford Street.
If it does nothing else, I hope that this paper represents these people, these communities, at USM.
Sarah Trent
Executive Editor