COLUMN: Valediction for a Colleague

A colleague of mine took his life last month. I also liked him. It was affection borne of the respect a former student journalist feels for a present one; rooted in the ineffable affinity one who has devoted his college career to "The Paper" feels for another who has made the same outwardly inexplicable choice; and nourished by my certain knowledge of and admiration for the sensitivity and integrity, keen intelligence and sheer talent he brought to his job. Steven was a colleague indeed. College journalism is a fraternity unto itself, an endeavor that, wherever practiced, attracts a small band of hard-core devotees whose commitment to informing the university community often borders on obsession. That endeavor exacts a high price, transforming the traditional badges of a student's collegiate experience. Texts mutate into newsprint, beer becomes black coffee and rock songs are displaced by the telltale clackety-clack of Associated Press wire machines. Peers perceive those who rise to the editorial rank Steven attained as masochists, people bent on sacrificing endless hours in the pursuit of largely thankless and often lonely jobs, with only the pride of seeing the fruits of their labors distributed to the campus community each morning to serve as remuneration. But that can be remuneration enough. Some forty-odd years before I served my undergraduate school paper, The Cornell Daily Sun, as associate managing editor, a man named Kurt Vonnegut filled a similar role. At a banquet celebrating the paper's 100th anniversary, Vonnegut spoke of his involvement with the school daily. "Those who know me know I am an atheist," he noted. And yet, he added, as he made his nightly trudge up the hill from The Sun's offices to his home -- "so late at night and all alone" -- after putting the paper to bed yet another time, "I knew that God Almighty approved." Journalists are widely regarded as unrepentant cynics. The mien of trained suspicion, however, conceals an ironic truth: journalists, especially student journalists, are hopeful romantics. As student writers tilt at the windmills of apathy and ignorance, their quixotic efforts breed a shared belief in the inherent value of giving something back to one's immediate community, of keeping people informed. To do so day in and day out over the course of one's college career is not cynicism; it is the optimism that gives wing to the belief that one can make a contribution, a difference. Somewhere, somehow, that optimism deserted Steven. Wordsworth comes to mind: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Steven gave his heart away. And that act of giving both enriched, and stands as an example to us all. Keith Eisner is a second-year Law School student from Colorado Springs, Colorado. His Daily Pennsylvanian column, Bound and Gagged, appeared during the spring of 1991.

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