Salutations, comrades.
It’s just about here. That’s right. You battled through seven weeks of below-freezing temperatures and grueling classes. Now, we’re halfway through the semester, and it’s finally time for spring break.
But the week that has preceded our sedentary and sand-filled plans was filled with news and features at The Post.
The week began on Monday with news of a house fire at 68 Stewart St. Luckily, no one was in the house at the time and there were no injuries. The state fire marshal, as is common in large fires, opened an investigation.
A day later, we received a news tip that the tenants of the house — one of whom was a columnist for The Post last semester — were recently evicted. After some records requests, reporter Allan Smith found that the court case ending with the students’ eviction was anything but smooth.
Smith dug deeper and contacted the people named in the court documents to understand the full story. On the other end of the receiver, Smith was met with a number of lengthy conversations and a handful of very short ones.
In the interest of transparency, I want to make clear that it is still undetermined whether the events preceding the fire had any effect on its ignition. State and local investigations are ongoing as of press time.
The ugly eviction itself is newsworthy, and The Post would have written about it before the fire had we been aware of the court case — somehow it slipped through. Similarly, the fact that one of the evicted tenants, Phil Morehead, formerly wrote an opinion column did not affect our reporting in any way.
As of right now, officials have not yet even declared the fire an arson. We felt the facts that came before the blaze are important and should be shared, but we will continue to allow officials to conduct their investigations.
In the meantime, The Post will continue reporting on this and other serious stories. But you, dear reader, should enjoy a well-deserved break.
But, of course, spring break also marks the halfway point of the semester. In mere weeks this fantastic dream will all be over. Every day, Gene Wilder keeps popping into my head:
We have so much time and so little to do.
Wait a minute. Strike that; reverse it.
Thank you.
Ryan Clark is a senior studying journalism and the editor-in-chief of The Post. Email him about Gene Wilder at rc348710@ohiou.edu.
