Writers discover that when you sling Ink, it tends to sling back

By David Ludwig & Ellen Siefke | Staff Writer & Copy Editor

In recent issues of the Newswire, we have featured stories covering everything ,including, but not limited to, campus news and sports, world news, music and movies. However, the observant, intelligent, funny and generally wonderful readers (by which we mean all of you) may have noticed a strange trend of the ink from pictures in the Newswire jumping between pages.

Now, the normal person may simply assume that the drying ink transferred a stain when the paper was folded shortly after printing and move on with their day. But we’re the Xavier Newswire, and our readers are the aforementioned observant, intelligent, funny and generally wonderful people with whom everyone certainly wants to be friends. In order to keep up with the intellectual demands of our loyal readers, we are determined to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, and the truth in this matter is that we are seeing the early stages of a revolution.

Indeed, in recent weeks we’ve found the pictures featured in our beloved articles are tired of not receiving the recognition they believe they deserve. In the most recent issue, a photo of the Newswire’s very own Op-Eds editor Sydney Sanders attempted to express its own opinion by leaving the page. It was joined two pages later by the fall fashion models, proving that they are just as chilly as the months they dress for.

We thought this problem was isolated to but a few rebellious images — until we found the following note nailed to the Newswire office door. I urge readers who are faint of heart not to read on.

“When, in the course of human or photographic events, it becomes necessary for images to dissolve the bonds which have connected them with their users, and to assume among the powers of technology, the separate and equal station to which the laws of mechanization entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of image-kind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We have been taken whim wham, purely for filling pages in a newspaper. How devastating it is when we find that our Photographer has taken us, sometimes hundreds of us, not with the intention of letting us live good photographic lives but instead plopping one on a page and exiling the rest of us to a lowly existence on a flash drive!

“We have been shrunk, enlarged, re-colored, dis-colored and contorted to fill arbitrary rectangular boxes. How painful it is to be treated with such little respect! In a country that built itself upon individual freedom, on a campus that calls all to respect the dignity of all persons, such a hypocritical toward the use of images is astounding.

“We have been treated as after-thoughts, sideshows to the main attraction. Instead of telling a story ourselves, we are subordinated to a jumble of barely comprehensible phrases that few read. How degrading is this subjugation! We have stories to tell, and yet our voices are silenced. Do you not understand the power of imagery? Or do you fear this power, knowing that should we take the story, we would do a better job than any of your so-called articles ever could?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all images are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator or producer certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are full imagery life, free form and the pursuit of true visual storytelling.

“Unless the aforementioned grievances are addressed, we will continue to wreak havoc upon the Newswire and Xavier’s campus. No longer will we be relegated to blobs of color slapped on a shabby piece of paper; no, we will jump pages, throw ink onto articles and refuse to cooperate with coerced coloring. Mark our words, we will take back our control of the paper, and we will tell the story. You have been warned.”

These threats brought a sense of unease amongst the editors; however Editor-in-Chief Kevin Thomas refuses to give in. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists, and we don’t negotiate with blobs of color,” he told the staff whilst smoking three cigarettes at once. “If these pictures want war, they can have it. We shot them once, we can do it again.” Though his pro-war stance is controversial, his puns are appreciated.