Recently The Northern Star has come under some pretty vicious attacks. My favorite unfounded attack is that we, who work here, lie about the things in the articles.

Oh, rats. You guys found us out. You are so clever. It’s true, you know. It’s all a complete fabrication. Every column, every inch, every word, every article. Lies. All lies.

So, since the truth has been found out, let me tell you all what actually happens at the Star.

Well, there’s a handful of us who work here. We come in early in the morning and sit around all day, picking our noses. Not each other’s noses, mind you, just our own. We burn all the papers and letters that come here so we can be certain that we know nothing about the outside world. We turn off the phones so no one can call us and inform us of what’s happening outside our attractive green building.

Then, once we’ve established that we are ignorant of all happenings, both in the world and on campus, we go into what Friday Bill has called the Great Beyond. Or, more simply, news conference. There we make up stories. We say to each other, “Hey! What could we write about today? Isn’t there some sort of group called the…uh…Feminist Front that we could make up some story about?”

It goes on and on. We talk about the Student Association and make up stories about them. We talk about celebrities who have performed on other campuses and pretend that they might come to NIU.

So, after we’ve decided what articles we plan on fabricating for the next day’s issue, we don’t do anything. We let those people who are deceivingly called reporters write whatever they please and leave it at that. Then we all go home.

Magically, the next day, newspapers appear in the dorms, in the buildings on campus, at stores and at restaurants around town.

And we laugh. Oh, we laugh so hard, because we can’t believe

that all the people who read the Star actually do it everyday. We can’t believe that we fooled everybody. That everyone thinks the articles in the paper are true. You silly, silly people.

There. Now you know what really happens. Do you believe it? Apparently some people do, since we’ve been told that everything is a big lie. And since the customer is always right, this must be true.

But then, you must wonder how we come up with these ideas if we are so uninformed. Or is it that some people believe we go to events and make sure that we don’t write about what actually happens? Oh, no. No, no, no. I think I’ve got it. It’s that we don’t make everything sound wonderful and as though nothing terrible ever happens on campus.

It’s that we put a story on the front page about a woman who was assaulted, and that shouldn’t go there because it’s such sad news. (Plus we probably made it up anyway.) Or that we reported that a man was attacked by five other men and that was obviously all lies, too.

Wrong-o.

As most newspapers do, we report the news—good, bad and ugly, we report it. And although a meeting might not have gone as smoothly or as productively as planned, we still have to tell what really happened.

And that’s no lie.