It really sucks when you see your work being disrespected. If you have put your time toward something and worked hard on it, it would be really rewarding to see other people reading your work and enjoy it. Yet in this schoo,l the majority of students do not appreciate other student’s hard word. This is extremely evident to me on days of Black & White’s distribution.

After our newspaper comes back from the printer, we distribute them out to the student body. By the end of that day, the school is littered with them. They are spread through the lunchroom, the floors and classrooms. Pretty much every trash can is filled to the brim with copies that have been thrown away. On top of that, we also occasionally get word of some student being idiotic, trying to do something with a large amount of the papers. For example, threatening to burn them in a bonfire. In this case, our online editor takes matters into her own hands and deals with the aggravating sophomores accordingly.

People do not realize how much time and money goes into making the newspaper. The majority of the staff dedicate every third or seventh hour and multiple hours outside of school to get issues out to the public. Editor in Chief Andrew Maresca stated, “ It takes me about 33 hours to complete an issue and send it to the printers.” a lot of time out of for something that a lot of students to just throw away or tear them apart. Then factor in the money, each issue costs approximately $1.56 and we print 1000 each news cycle. That adds up. And guess who has to raise it all! Us, we, me, the newspaper staff. It was extremely difficult to raise all of that money and to see it go down the drain like that actually hurts. Badly.

So please, for our next distribution day if you do not want a newspaper, do not take one. We will find someone else to take it. Instead of throwing issues away put them back on the news stands around the school, come drop them off in room 622 or something. Just do not throw them away. And dear golly, do not be a jerk about it. Do not try to be funny by wrecking our papers, or hoarding them, use common-sense. These situations have caused a lot of stress for my editors and myself. This hurts. Be kind.