Back Story One

I started writing for Chimes when Baxter recruited me to write the “Crossroads” pieces. Baxter was the perspectives editor at Chimes that year, and wanted to set up a weekly point/counterpoint type weekly feature. He contacted Giessel, head of the Calvin College Republicans to write the conservative viewpoint, but there was no corresponding liberal group on Calvin’s campus at the time, so Baxter contacted me and Peter Bratt to write the liberal section (presumably just because he knew us).

Giessel was ready before Peter and I, so he published his first article, against gun control, unopposed. Bork and Buma were so upset at seeing the article that they sent in a response the next week, and they were added to the team. I was already good friends with Bork and Buma from dorm cleaning days, and I knew Peter Bratt from high school cross country, and 2nd Boer.

And that was the start of the “Cross Road” pieces. Once a week, Baxter, Giessel, and the rest of us would meet in the student lounge to decide on the topic for the week. Then, Bork, Buma, Peter and I would switch on and off depending on who was most interested in the topic and who didn’t have a lot of homework that week. Giessel, to his credit, wrote his portion every single week as a one-man job.

I’ll let the other boys speak for themselves, but the pieces I wrote for “Crossroads” were absolute crap. I was really proud of them at the time, but that’s only because I didn’t understand what real writing was.

Giessel and I would decide on a topic, and then I would spend a couple hours on the internet dragging up everything I could find on the topic. I used the internet not only to find facts and statistics, but even the actual arguments themselves were all stolen from other people’s articles. All my articles were essential works of cut and paste plagiarism. Of course the wording and phrasing were all mine, but there wasn’t an original thought in any of my articles.

Oddly, over the course of the year, I developed a lot of respect for Giessel. We must have disagreed on every issue imaginable, but he was a friendly guy, a fellow “Star Trek” fan, and we would sometimes stay in the student lounge to discuss “Star Trek” episodes long after we had agreed on the this weeks topics.

During the spring of that year, as I was walking back to my apartment in the middle of the night, I saw Giessel hard at work dismantling a campus fence with his wire cutters. I guess the fence had been interfering with his normal cycling path. Giessel had put up with it for most of the year, but had finally lost his patience and was determined to take it down. I gave him some help, and at 1 O’clock in the morning the two of us took down the fence. Brett, who saw the two of us at work, had a good laugh about it. “Two polar opposite forces on campus, engaged in the same cause at last,” Brett said.

As for the “Call to Justice” articles…I was a member of the “Social Justice Committee” at Calvin, and Chimes had traditionally allocated a weekly column to the SJC. The person who usually wrote it became too busy to continue, and so Chimes sent out an e-mail to everyone on the SJC asking if anyone would be willing to write an occasional article. I responded to the e-mail saying I was willing to write an occasional article from time to time. I ended up being the only one who responded, so for the first few weeks, the “Call to Justice” column was all on me.

I always felt uncomfortable writing these columns. “Crossroads” was a one-sided liberal opinion piece, and it was supposed to be a one-sided liberal opinion piece. I was always unsure what I was supposed to write about in “Call to Justice”. I did the first few articles, and then was able to find other people in the SJC who were willing to take over.

The following year Bork and Buma moved up the ranks to take over as the editors of the perspectives section. They were very generous about giving me space anytime I wanted to write about something, and so the following year I moved on from just the “Crossroads” and “Call to Justice” columns, and had a few editorials on various topics. Because these were topics I chose, they tended to be slightly better written, and have more of my own original ideas, then the “Crossroads” articles.