By Greg Horner, Informer.
Alright, maybe I went a little rough in the last issue. My email has been buzzing nonstop and two faculty members tried to mug me when I walked out to my car last night. There’s been a lot of hurting on both sides of this thing — I’m not sure who said what first — but things were said.
I never meant to offend the people of Delta College — I simply wished to hold a mirror up to their faces. That can be hard for some. I couldn’t look into mirrors from junior high through high school — I was frightened by my cold-dead eyes and my pill-faced complexion.
But yeah, the responses to my last column have been inspiring for me. I was pretty sure that no one ever reads the Informers Corner; my editor actually wanted to cancel the column and replace it with a weekly ranking of Delta’s hottest students and faculty. But thanks to the underwhelming support from my three fans (Darryl, Julie and Marge) and the overwhelming hate-mail from the College, my family and from international pop sensation Kid Rock — the informer is still here!
In a slightly smaller corner and with several stitches from an attempted mugging — but still very much present! I managed to fight against the tide of parasites calling for my dismissal and even managed to win over a few friends in the anarcho-syndicalist community.
Now that I have tenure (do I have tenure? How do I get tenure?) I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for doing nothing wrong. It’s hard being the inspiration that gets hundreds of students out of bed every morning — and it’s even harder to watch movies about flawed characters trying to grow and improve and realizing that I have nothing in common with them.
Do you get the joke? I’m not perfect either people! After reading last week’s column, several of my professors felt obligated to inform me of my faults. Some of them went into great detail listing everything they disliked about me — there were powerpoints and charts — the works.
It can be difficult: reaching out, trying to make change, doing the best you can do at your job until you go home tired; only to have some dumbass overprivileged community college student say that you suck. There are a lot of dedicated faculty at Delta who try their hardest to improve the school and there are some faculty who just collect a paycheck.
I want to acknowledge the people who care and let them know that I say things to start a conversation. It’s important to be reminded of our flaws, our faults and our shortcomings even when we’re working as hard as we can. Because at the end of the day we all suck. You suck. I suck. The people who care suck and the people who don’t, really suck.
I haven’t done the best job being the reporter that I can be. Sometimes I procrastinate in stories, sometimes I violate proper FOIA procedure and sometimes I ignore deadlines ‘til the last minute because I’m really, really, lazy. I’ve approached stories with condescension and I’ve gone into interviews with preconceptions and prejudice. But if there’s one thing I think I’ve got going for me it’s that I listen, and I try to do my best to truthfully repeat what I’ve heard.
The Collegiate kind of sucks too. We need to improve our own outreach to students and recruit a more diverse crowd from across the Tri-Cities. Most of our reporters have never been to the Ricker center and our presence in Midland is practically non-existent (for good reason — Midland sucks.)
We’ve covered concerts in Bay City dive bars, but for some reason can’t find a reporter to talk about the bus situation in Saginaw. We suck. We’re going to work harder to improve the situation, and when we do we’ll still suck.
The point isn’t to be perfect or fulfil everybody’s desire, it’s to keep striving towards improvement every day. Progress isn’t possible without a little conflict — without a heckler in the crowd pointing out the problems.
That’s why I like to write articles about your dumb conspiracies, or attacking the students of Delta for being apathetic or claiming that the town of Munger doesn’t have the right to exist. Because it’s true and if you don’t think so, prove me wrong.
So tell your friends, teachers and family that they suck. Then look in the mirror and tell it to yourself. Then get on your computer and write a letter telling me the same. Only then will we have peace.