When I was first told that our current office is soon to be torn down, that we will have to move decades of history into a then-unknown location by the end of the semester, my heart stopped. I was walking across South Quad, home to our headquarters, and as the news registered, I looked to the South Dining Hall and nearly tripped over my own feet.
All of our archives, all of our books and posters and computers, all of the silly mistakes, Inside Editions and achievements tacked or taped along the walls, all of our chairs and desks and supplies, our stash of Coke and animal crackers, all of the mysterious or bizarre items left in desks and corners; it all has to be relocated. We have to be relocated. For over 25 years, The Observer resided and thrived in the basement of the South Dining Hall — and soon it will all become a food prep area.
And as much as all of the material history and ephemera that surrounds me in that office means to me, I mourn the space that I found my college purpose and family in. The space that’s always been open to me for work, leisure and community. The space that holds some of my fondest memories of college thus far. I experienced my first college all-nighters in this space, my first big interviews, monumental scoops, my first commencement week boot camp, dozens and dozens of meetings, discovering new music, the 2024 election, South Quad’s annual snowball fight, an unquantifiable number of laughs and several cries.
“Not again,” I thought to myself.
This isn’t the first time I've been a part of an office relocation. During my spring semester as a senior in high school, my journalism teacher stood before us one morning and told us the same somber news. I remember Mr. Smith’s words caused silence, then an eruption of questions and outrage. That classroom was home to me for all four years of high school, to which I had just as much attachment to as our current Observer office. Spending almost all of my homeroom periods, many a lunch period, and every class I had as part of the newspaper in this room, I couldn’t fathom us going anywhere else. And what was I to feel, if I were to come back and visit and nothing be the same?
We spent an entire week packing up my journalism classroom before spring break, putting everything in boxes and asking Mr. Smith all sorts of questions about the history of our school paper. We unearthed all sorts of things from our archives: yearbooks older than our grandparents, photo negatives, design mock-ups, a particularly meaningful toy accordion. My personal favorite find included some of the first-ever issues of the Crimson Messenger from 1924.
Our most prized possession of the entire classroom, dubbed the “J-couch” and made of cardboard and paper mache, was one of the last things put into storage. I remember all of us visiting it and taking our photo together, the seniors signing their name on the back of it to memorialize our time dedicated to our high school publication. My heart felt ripped out of my chest, demanded that I leave it behind. I feel the same now with our Observer headquarters.
Now, as we all work together in the next couple months to clean, organize and pack everything that is important to keep in preparation for our relocation, I cannot help but feel transported back to senior year. As difficult as it was to say goodbye to that space, I’ve realized in hindsight why spaces in particular become so important to a person. While attached to a specific location, it is the significance of the memories made and history recorded that creates such a significance, not the office or classroom itself. Without the computers, the yearbooks, the intriguing and out-of-place items, without people there to run a paper, the classroom and office are both nothing more than square footage defined by man-made walls. (I am still trying to come to terms with this, of course.)
There is no doubt that more tears will be shed, more laughs to be heard and more sleep will be lost in this office until we close our doors for the final time. There is no doubt this office will be missed deeply and profoundly by everyone who’s valued it as much as I have. But I have looked toward our Observer ancestors, who were forced to move from LaFortune Student Center after 30 years to South Dining Hall, and I have hope that we can make our next space a home for future staffers just as they did for us.
I like to think the best thing about journalism offices is that every object tells or symbolizes a story of a past generation of staffers, who worked and loved the office just as much as we do now. Though we will certainly keep and rehang all of our important pieces of history on our new walls, surrounded by (hopefully) new furniture, I look forward to what our new office will look like for our Observer descendants in the next 10, 20 or 30 years and what history we will make in our new space.
