The Northerner office is connected. We have five phones, an email account, Internet access, two voice mail accounts, a fax machine and, for purposes of nostalgia, a mail box. Information makes its way into the office every day.
Among the newspapers from other colleges and press releases from campus organizations, things slip in that seem strange for a university newspaper to receive.
“When your home is not your castle; Nationwide regulations dictating a home’s color and design violate owners’ property rights,” read a headline from an editorial put out by the Ayn Rand Institute that came in hot off the fax line.
The editorial, in part, criticizes a series of laws started by the Lake Tahoe Regional Planning agency, which seeks to put an emphasis on the natural beauty of the area by controlling the size and color of new homes.
“This sort of power abuse is an inversion of the very purpose of government,” wrote the author who was clearly moved by the ordeal. I decided to leave this one off the editorial page after careful consideration of The Northerner’s reader demographic, which revealed, surprisingly, no homeowners from Lake Tahoe.
The fax machine also produced “Thousands to protest in Sacramento, Sept. 23 over U.S. crack down on California medical marijuana caregivers,” from Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Judging from the DPS reports, this story may have sparked an interest with some students. Unfortunately, we bumped this one for another, more timely story, the name of which escapes me now.
A free sample of “Michael: For the Triumph of the Immaculate” made its way into the mailbox the other day.
The four page paper is billed as advocating “a social credit economy in accordance with the teachings of the church through the vigilant action of heads of families and not through political parties.” O.K., whatever, nothing strange yet.
The lead story, though, exposes the evil of “electronic money” including microchips implanted in humans that act as a kind of debit card. According to the article the “High Financiers” are pushing the technology in a bid to gain control of the masses.
“The Y2K problem seems to have been invented by the Financiers to make all the people change over their old computer for a new one, in order to be able to run it with the biochip,” says the author of the article. “And they will bring a one-world government, and will force people to take the ‘mark of the beast’, the biochip, underneath the skin.” Sounds like a juicy investigative report.
Sadly, we were unable to follow up on this story because government agents infiltrated The Northerner office and threatened to harm us if we revealed the truth.
But they didn’t stop our mail service.
A letter addressed to the “campus weekly papers” arrived in the office the other day, postmarked Los Angeles/Hollywood, CA.
The letter was written in messy print letters, starting with “dear campus weekly papers department” and following with a list-
“1.) I miss reading your campus paper.
2.) I (word that looks like ‘covet’) mail service for one semster.
3.) In Kentucky there is Army: Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
4.) My Visa credit card.”
The writer went on to give his credit card number for, I assume, a subscription.
How this letter made it’s way to NKU is a mystery. The stamp isattached upside down, the address line doesn’t include a zip code, and the city is simply referred to as ‘Heights’.
The letter made me stop for a minute and think about the reach of the paper. Someone in California wanted a copy and was willing to pay for it. Was he a former student? Who knows? If so, the English department would probably cringe.
I looked back over my stack of mail and wondered what people were reading in Lake Tahoe.