Knowing that our school newspaper editor required us to "write on a 6th grade level," should have told you all you need to know

I began freelance writing for the school newspaper, The Delta Statement. It was the biggest piece of garbage I had ever read. Even though we are college students writing for college students, the editor told us to write on a sixth grade level so “everyone could read it.” Week after week nobody would read the paper.

The Delta Statement had more grammatical errors than a country school special education class. My friend Burt and I began joking around with the idea to take all of the old newspapers and build a three-piece sectional out of them. Seems like a good plan, huh?

Well we left for home in May and nothing else was mentioned about it. In August when we came back to school, I decided that I was going to write full time for the paper. I loved it. I would scan my articles and purge them of the problems that the others had. The same editor had me do a story on the Student Government association and I uncovered some problems. Well I turned in my article and that was that. Monday, before I turned in the article Burt, three other friends and I decided to take the papers. Thursday when the papers had come out I realized that my article wasn’t in the paper.

The editor had claimed that I falsified evidence and decided to completely rewrite my article. Well it just so happens that we took the papers that night. It was awesome! Ryan and Kurt got sick off of a Coffee slushie drink and kept having to go to the bathroom. Needless to say we only got about 900 newspapers that night. I went home for the weekend and got an anonymous phone call from a Fraternity (Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia) brother saying that the cops had been looking for me.

When I got back at 11:00 Sunday night.. I was arrested for grand larceny! The police had searched my room and not found the papers but had still somehow been led to believe that I had stolen them. How can you steal a free newspaper? Only Burt and I were arrested, but we all got in trouble with the Student Court. The editor tried to have me "socially expelled" so I couldn't stab another group in the back. Because of my major (music education) they couldn't do that, so I got off free of any negative marks on my record.