The other day, I was pulling out tacks upstairs that must have been stuck in the wall for at least 15 years. They were holding up a campaign poster for Bill Weld, the gubernatorial candidate who ran against John Silber in 1990. As other editors and I tore the poster out from behind the filing cabinets that had covered it for who knows how long, it finally hit me – two days after our last issue at 842 Commonwealth Ave. – that we are leaving behind one of the most historic offices on the BU campus.
The walls are almost completely bare now. There are a few campaign stickers we can’t reach and a few boards and pictures that are too important to take down just yet, but for the most part, the walls of The Daily Free Press are almost as empty as they were in the 1980s when the editors moved there from Cummington Street.
It’s easy to get caught up in the commotion of a newsroom every day and night, to become jaded of what you are really doing. Sometimes a week seems like a day, and sometimes a month seems like a semester. For our readers who have never stepped foot in the FreeP office, moving may not seem like such a big deal.
But this isn’t just any move – not like a BU administrative office moving from one monotonous floor to another. We’re leaving behind a run-down building that means more to most of us than our own dorm rooms (those couches can serve as beds on some nights).
When I first entered 842 Comm. Ave. as a freshman, I felt like I was walking into a foreign place that for some reason felt like home. The editors were busy talking on phones and typing, while a few who were standing around greeted me. I got my first story that day, and my life was never the same. But it never occurred to me that two years later, I would be tearing down the memories I had pinned up on those walls.
We all have our own goals at the Free Press. Right now, mine is to make sure anyone can walk into our new office at 648 Beacon St. and feel the same way I did as a freshman. So long, FreeP, and welcome to your new home.
Yours,
Matt Negrin Editor-in-Chief, Spring 2007 ‘ Fall 2007
