--James Ellis

So I wake up Friday morning.

I groggily lean forward, hit the switch on my power bar, and snag the keyboard from its resting place atop the tower case at the foot of my bed. My computer boots up.

Still only partially conscious, I log into my Internet account and check my mail. A reply to the column I'd submitted the day before catches my bleary eye. I select it.

And there, from the paper's Hotmail account, is a two-word message:

One was an outright lie, in fact-- it was claimed that, by printing the URL for a website I put up, with a link to that revisionist Holocaust ad, I was going against the Board's decision not to run the ad. Problem is, I consulted him on that first, and was told that that would be fine. In fact, after I finished and submitted the column in question, I was told that I'd misunderstood what they planned to do, and that they were, in fact, going to be providing the URL to the group's website. I left the article as-was anyway.

Then the paper came out, and my article was the only one with a URL. When I asked the Editor-in-Chief why, I was told that he decided that, since I provided it anyway, they didn't need to print it themselves. Nowhere was it implied that this was a problem, in any way. Until now, when he apparently went looking for an excuse.

'Twould also seem that I'm a negative force on the Editorial Board, and the Editorial Board feels that this is a Bad Thing, and that those who don't agree with the paper's policies should find a new paper to write for.

You may feel free to substitute "the Editor-in-Chief" for "the Editorial Board" and "the paper."

The problem, it seems, is that he takes any criticism of either the paper, or anything he says in his own editorials, as being a personal attack. Thus, since I've criticized both, he's accusing me of being personally motivated in my column. The irony is that, by doing so, the only one indulging in personal attacks is, in fact, himself. Until this entry, perhaps.

Anyway, the straw that broke the camel's back -- at least officially -- was apparently an aside in this week's column. It was mostly about the Littleton thing, but it did contain one allusion to his editorial of last week, in which, just in passing, I pointed out the absurdity of the position he took in the editorial he wrote last week, in which he rebutted my editorial.

He didn't take it very well.

He also misunderstood the sentence in question, misquoting me as saying something I never had... but without having chapter and verse to cite right here, I guess there's not much point in trying to analyze the whole thing any further.

The thing is, at this point, nobody there is about to take him on.

Well, almost.

I can't get into details right now. But at least one member of the "old guard" is going on the warpath, and he's prepared to do whatever it takes to get me back in. And we have a pretty decent pool of connections to draw on. So we shall see.

When I was editing the thing, my criteria were that the writing be intelligible, and that a clear argument be made... and that was for individual, one-time editorials. I was willing to waive those for proven columnists, provided that they didn't make a regular habit of it. :-) Or so went the criteria I started typing up when I took the position, and my analysis of semesters past to others on the Board. I never got the chance to fully put this to the test.

Still, in general, when it comes to stuff in Opinions, you have to bend over backwards to avoid even the appearance of bias, or censorship. Especially when you're the only one student paper on campus.

Dropping a columnist because he doesn't follow the paper's "party line" sure sounds like censorship to me, doesn't it?

That the English Department just gave me a couple of awards for my column just adds icing to the cake, really. There's no way they can claim the writing or content isn't any good, under the circumstances.

In those respects, he's good for the paper, I suppose. Even where I disagree with him on that sort of thing, I'll grant that his approach is better than having no leadership at all. Now, if he'd only stick to administration, and stop trying to control all the content in the paper, leaving that to the individual section editors... and if he'd stop taking everything so personally... well, things might be better.

Should that turn out to be impossible, I just hope he fixes everything up in time for somebody more qualified to step in. But I still hope he'll learn.

It seems clear he'll be getting a chance to do so very shortly.