When I was a first-year living in a program house with the FYLLP program, my housemates and I decided to throw a party. In true first-year fashion, it involved a stack of paper Lowry ketchup cups, two handles of Colonial Club pilfered from some juniorís party a week before and someoneís iTunes blasting the Beatles.
It had just started to acquire the edge of what might have been a devastating party when the knock came on our door. Right in the middle of Lennon singing ìI Donít Want to Spoil the Party,” our resident assistant did just that ó caught seven of us in the incriminating taking-a-shot position and, incidentally, one taking off his pants. (It was a good party.)
We were in trouble. The RA gave us a few pitying looks while compiling the two-page-long list of partygoers to submit to Security ó probably because we hadnít even had the opportunity to crack Handle #2 ó but other than that, there wasnít much comforting about the situation.
Then we had our alcohol awareness meeting, standard procedure and likely quite familiar to those of you in this situation, which consisted of an awkward living-room chat with all the poor underage chumps whoíd fallen afoul of the Security windbreaker that week, mediated by a twentysomething counselor who likely just wanted to get out of the meeting so he could hit the bars himself.
As the meeting began (ìPlease, share why youíre here”), and I surveyed the faces, I realized the absurdity of the situation. I knew everyone there. Literally, everyone. We caught each otherís eyes and grinned, all of us inexplicably thrilled ó not by the mistake, or the punishment, but by the collective experience that united us across the party and its ramifications, too, more than any drunken night might have.
I snapped back just as the counselor asked us to share where we lived. ìMiller,” each of us said in turn ó the same cadence, the same tone. ìMan,” the counselor said, ìmust have been a hell of a party.” And it was: not by any virtue of that vodka ó I donít think it has any ó or the music, or the deviance even, but by the simple fact that all our names had been on that list.
Strange as it sounds, this is how I like to think of The Wooster Voice. We do a lot of work every week. Many of us write two or three articles, meet on Sundays, arrange interviews, edit, photograph and spend eight or nine hours on Wednesday nights laying out. Thereís not a whole lot that is comforting about the situation. Thereís no phone reception down here, which is probably a good thing, because weíd get a lot of drunk dials from friends telling us all about how amazing their Wooster Wednesday has been. Iíve never been to Happy Hour ó it takes place during layout ó and those wine classes at the Wooster Inn interfere with the paper.
But in the Voice office, thereís the sense that weíre all in this together, that if Iím here late that Iím not alone, that thereís more people who fall asleep in their 9:30 a.m. Thursday class not because of a hangover but because they had to resend the .PDF four times and the printer jammed. I know that thereís a group of people who celebrate with me over a great story, who will agonize over a spelling mistake and who will wake up at 7:30 on a Friday morning just to take the damn paper out to Lowry Center.
Sure, the Voice means long hours, independent work, no pay and an office whose circulation recalls comparisons to Dante.
But man. Hell of a party.