Students working for the College’s newspaper, The Wooster Voice, made public remarks about their plans to finish an issue worthy of more than kindling on Monday, March 29, 2010. Many have watched painfully as the paper experienced several periods of inconsistency throughout the past several decades. Tenured professors particularly grimaced noticeably at these remarks, as they were actually on campus to witness prior pitfalls and “successes” of the campus paper.
Reporters admitted to other reporters who told other reporters that they might not have been trying as hard as they could have when writing up 500 words on “some guy who came to Wishart to talk about the environment in some Asian country three months ago” or when trying to write a fresh recount of a performance by the “Woostery Opera, or whatever it’s called.”† Claiming that their intentions still remained pure in October, it was mid-November when Voice editors began to feel the pinch.
“I mean, I’m like, a senior” said news editor Allana Mortell, who apparently was trying to explain a struggle with mother/father time, but was otherwise inarticulate. Spectators can only guess that she was referencing Senior Independent Study as a possible academic commitment consuming her creativity and mind. “Yeah,” commented Mortell.
“Oh, I don’t know,” commented sports editor Matthew Yannie. “I tweeted about trying hard on my column this week and put on my fitted cap and lost a little momentum after that,” he adds. As of March 30, three-dozen YouTube video windows surrounded his Microsoft Word document like a digital graveyard. Chris Weston and Maggie Donnelly, Sports co-editors, reported approximately 2.3 sentences had been written by Yannie as of press time.
Students have loyally used The Wooster Voice over the years for awkward last-minute Secret Santa gift-wrapping, paper boats and silly hats. Editors feel a sense of looming possibility, however, post-I.S. Monday.
“I’m no prophet, but I think I can make people read this newspaper,” stated one of the Voice’s Editors in Chief, Jonah Comstock. Comstock, freshly accepted to Columbia School of Journalism, was recently spotted writing an article for the Voice more than 12 hours before the issue went to print. His colleagues admired his approach.
“I mean, [Comstock] is a real stand-up guy. When he was writing a story about some Ö† social movement, or whatever, I was pretty damn busy making grits. That’s what people from Alabama do, and I don’t care what you say,” commented the Voice’s other editor in chief, Andrew Vogel ’10, in a notoriously unrelated comment.
At the urging of Comstock, editors reported that their collective plan was to produce a “decent, or something” issue of the Voice by 2010 commencement. Speculations, however, predict that editors will procrastinate on such an issue until the final week of the semester, forgetting that the Voice does not print during finals week.
Still others say that readers will likely not be able to tell the difference between a mediocre issue and an ordinary one, for they simply cannot be bothered by the task known as “reading,” and will continue to carry their New York Times subscriptions in public so as to appear relatively informed to possible mates and professors. “I mean, what do they expect?” muttered an anonymous sophomore. “Reading isn’t something I do, it’s just something I talk about doing.”
Ultimately, the strength of a collective effort at the hands of Voice staff members remains unknown. Sources report that a collective effort from staff may last anywhere from seven to 14 minutes, though, of course, as you are reading The Wooster Voice, this figure remains unverified. But they’re reading the Vice.
This story was run as part of The Wooster Vice, an annual April Fools publication.† It is a work of satire.