UPEL STUDENT NEWSPAPER

E-in-C thomas “pengi” LLOYD production manager

Interim copy editor will PATE entertainment editor mari¢ve MacGREGOR news editor Nick STEWART sports editor steve MCMANUS reporters jon SMITH robert MacPHERSON

advertising manager matt O'HALLORAN distribution manager

Nick sexpert : Stephan MacLeod contributers : —- Brad Deighan

Mark Cameron Brandon MacKenzie Rebecea Shorten

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ed 10 times per semester. There are meetings open S

to anyone Mondays at 4:15 in room 213 in the W.A.Murphy Student Centre. The deadline for sub- missions is Thursday at midnight. The opinions expressed within The Cadre do not necessarily rep- _ resent the views of UPEI or the UPEI Student

Union Inc.

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The Cadre

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Contact the editor & Letters: Email: tlloyd@upei.ca MSN: tdotballs@hotmail.com Phone: 566-0629 Room 213 SUB

Editorial 7: In My Defence, or:H ow I Leaned to Stop W orrying

There's an article in this issue which rips into my role as Editor-in- Chief. I've tried to think of a way to address the letter, and I could defend myself by addressing each concern as they arise. Yet at this point I feel that the aggrieved parties and myself have talked enough that there is no more need for this tic for tac arguing.

But what has this fighting cost? Attendance at our weekly meetings has dropped from an average of 20 people down to six at our last two meetings. Two paid staff have left, and our con- tributors have all but vanished. People are asking why. What the hell happened to cause so many people to leave? There was no one big event that hap- pened, no outburst, no big fight. The paper was just being self-sustaining, people wrote articles and the paper got put out. The paper just sort of occurred. I thought it was going okay, and then I went to a conference for a weekend and when I came back there was a posting online of the plans to overthrow The Cadre.

Which gave myself a jump on

‘ defending the Cadre. As it turns out the

group of people who were not happy with The Cadre were planning to write all their concerns down and then sub- mit them to the SU. Which would have been very constructive, and would have made the two groups' concerns known. But the posting “blew their cover,' before they could approach the SU with their concerns. And then it dissolved into personal attacks, with no concerns ever being forwarded to me. All I could figure out were three concerns. The internet posting said "unorganized." Our production manager was quitting because the office was "unprofession- al." And a few people complained that Will Pate's and my control over the paper was "undemocratic."

Brad's article addresses these problems. Yet I still haven't offered my theory on why these problems arose. Brad raises valid concerns which are problematic in the office. Yet most of them are not unique to this year. There is one thing that is different this year, and that hasn't been seen since four

years ago. Four years ago also saw the Cadre torn apart and the paper dissolve into two separate camps.

- Yet then two years ago and last year all went fine. And I have a theory as to why. Three years ago Kent Bruyneel was Editor-in-Chief, and he was in charge. It was that simple. And people didn't like that, and there was always staff problems. Then two years ago you had Matt Dorell become Editor-in-Chief, after having minimal involvement in The Cadre. That year saw the idea of an oligarchy fly out the window; decisions about the Cadre were decided by everyone. There was Matt Dorell, Jeff Coll, Stephan MacLeod and Joel Meggs all making decisions, and it was a fun place to work. Then last year we had Matt Stewart as Editor-in-Chief, who came into the role having never set foot in the Cadre office. And there were no complaints last year. And who made the decisions? I made a lot, and there was Matt Stewart and Catharine Sweet. The three of us were a team, and there was no one who had actual final say in decisions.

Yet this year there isn't that group which is always in the office. There isn't the group of us which goes out for dinner in the middle of produc- tion, or that does shots of booze togeth- er for fun, regardless of the time. Yet

- there is a Cadre crew, but many are

friends of mine and don't write for the paper. I can see how that makes people think of the office more of a hangout than a newspaper office. But we're a student newspaper office; there needs to be that unprofessional ambiance, the piles of paper, the empty beer bottles, quart bottles and two-litre wine bottles. The Cadre has always been disorderly, yet now that people are assailing The Cadre, they are condemning the prac- ~ tices which they used to sanction.

Our production manager quit due to the unprofessionalism of the — office. I was surprised by that, and fig- ured that she had other problems with the office, which she outlined in a letter

of resignation. Yet because unprofes- sionalism?

So this week I'm being produc- tion manager, while | train an interim

_P-Man.

' It's strange how you can never appreciate someone's concerns until you're put in their shoes.

It's Sunday night, and I was hopping to get to Souris tonight, yet that's not going to happen. I have yet to get any copy, so don't know if there's two pages still to come in, or six. I've had to take all the articles I received, . and put them in the paper so that I can get a rough idea of what kind of room I need to save. I did a nice full colour Hallowe'en page, only to find out today that we had a full page colour ad that had to take the page, so I had to move it and grayscale all the pictures.

The deadline is Thursday at midnight, Friday is for copy editing, Saturday and Sunday are for layout. This is not happening. Honestly, every issue this year has had me finishing up the paper from midnight Sunday until 7am on Monday. And a lot of mistakes aren't caught. Ads don't get in, copy is lost, pictures aren't included with the end file, fonts are wrong, and our pub- lisher does not like that.

Yet no one has really brought up this time problem. And I would argue that this is much more of a press- ing issue then the smell of the office. Our distribution has been the most unorganized and biggest pile of shit this year. Yet is this brought up? No, but the off-hours intemperance of the Editor is.

There are a lot of problems around here. They're being worked.on, but first they have to be brought to my attention. Some people have come for- ward with their issues, and some have just decided to leave. Things are already starting to look better, and maybe sometime in the future we'll be back to the days when we had over 20 people come to our meetings. But for now we'll have to work through these problems, so that next years Editor-in- Chief won't have to put up with this

-Thomas Lloyd, Editor-in-Chief

UPEI Cadre November 10 2003 page 2