[headline censored] -- A brief break from my standard voice

If you read the editorial, you’ll get more information on the Leader’s recent brush with censorship. The editorial gives you a glimpse of the soul of the paper. If you were to take the newspaper out to a nice seafood dinner and flatter it with compliments, these are the opinions it would ramble about.
My column reflects solely my views.
Story by-lines reduce the writer to a line of black text, but a real person took those photographs, wrote those headlines, and reported on those lectures that were so boring that everyone else skipped out to watch Teen Mom in their dorm rooms.
When you see a member of the ed board bleary-eyed on Monday morning, it’s not because they were out partying all weekend, but because they stayed up until obscene hours laying out the latest paper. These are the most committed students I’ve ever met, and my time at Elmhurst has been defined by their friendship and encouragement.
Yes, we make mistakes. That’s what happened in a student-run paper. We try to report accurately and fairly, but sometimes we slip up. But in all my time on The Leader, we’ve always cleaned up after our mistakes. We’ll correct, rewrite, apologize, and learn from whatever messes we’ve created.
And it’s paid off. At Illinois College Press Association last year, we won second in state for our division, plus tons of other awards for individual writers and artists. Campus response to each issue shows how important The Leader is to Elmhurst—when the paper is just a few hours late, faculty and staff both wait impatiently for the new paper.
But even without the awards or the praise, The Leader has heart. And that heart comes from the writers and photographers and artists who commit to The Leader even though they have classes, social lives, and the occasional desire to sleep.
In the end, whether you study physics or history or literature or exercise science, your time at Elmhurst should be defined by one thing: passion. The Leader is our passion. We’re students, but we’re also reporters and artists and storytellers. When we’re threatened, that passion is what holds us together.
We’re always talking about “The Elmhurst Experience” and “what college ought to be,” but how many people have seriously considered either of those statements? Lately, I have. My Elmhurst Experience is about finding my voice and the confidence to use it. My college ought to be a place where I am never scared of self-expression. Until two weeks ago, Elmhurst never faltered on encouraging these precise things. And if I were to stay silent now, when every molecule in my body is telling me to speak up, I’d be self-censoring.
And I promise, next week I’ll go back to writing about burritos or puppies or how to survive college without showering. Because those things are important, too.