Ed Underhill joined the Northern Star as a reporter in 1980 during his senior year at NIU. Ed began reporting on the Student Association, eventually covering the Illinois Board of Regents and the Illinois Board of Higher Education, a fortuitous beat assignment, as events would later prove. Ed’s friends and colleagues remember that Ed had more energy than good sense, and that he enjoyed a good story regardless of who wrote it.

After graduating from NIU in 1981 with a B.A. degree in political science, Ed attended the NIU College of Law. He graduated from law school in 1984, and shortly thereafter joined the Chicago law firm of Masuda, Funai, Eifert & Mitchell, Ltd. Ed is a full partner with that firm, specializing in commercial litigation. Ed currently chairs the firm’s Litigation Department.

In 1985 Ed joined Jim Slonoff and Mike Burke in organizing “Alumni for a Free Press” in response to the improper removal of Jerry Thompson as Star adviser by Clyde Wingfield, then the president of NIU. As a spokesman for Alumni for a Free Press, Ed petitioned the Board of Regents and the IBHE for the removal of Wingfield and the reinstatement of Thompson. After several months of intense public pressure and private machinations by Alumni for a Free Press, the Board of Regents accepted Wingfield’s resignation. Thompson was immediately reinstated by Wingfield’s successor, John La Tourette.

Ed also has provided counsel to the Star on numerous occasions, including in 1993, following the “storming” of the Star’s facilities (then in the basement of Altgeld Hall) by several hundred students who were upset with the Star’s coverage of minority issues. One member of the administration attempted to use this orchestrated event to remove Thompson and assume limited control of the Star’s personnel and editorial policies. Ed counseled Thompson and Sabryna Cornish,the Star’s then editor-in-chief, in fending off the attack; this effort to impede the Star’s independence, like so many before and since, came to naught.