YOUR ELI: Some love for our student writers

We couldn’t deliver the diverse and lively content you see in Eli without our MSU student writers. They know things we don’t know, they have connections we don’t have, and they are creative and passionate in their approach to getting a great story.

My family lives on a street of student rentals, and I’ll admit that there was a time when I breathed a sigh of relief at the end of MSU’s academic year. We liked students, we got along well with our neighbors, but it was quieter in the neighborhood, during the summer, and easier to go to the restaurants and stores downtown. There were no groups of roommates blocking the aisles in Meijer to debate the merits of tomato soup vs. chicken noodle as cheap sustenance.

In recent years, though, I’ve felt real sadness as we watched our student neighbors load vans, trucks and U-hauls at the beginning of May. Sometimes we meet their parents when “the 544 guys” or “the blue house girls” return in caps and gowns after commencement ceremonies. Other times the packing is just for the summer, until they come back to a new place in August after a few months of travel, internships or waiting tables back home. When we’re lucky, they come back to us for another year.

We get very attached to them. Not just the students we see on a daily basis, but the palpable waves of energy coming from the other side of Grand River. It doesn’t look like Mayberry, but MSU students are our neighbors while they are here. Every clueless freshmen, overworked T.A. and intense doctoral candidate is our version of Andy, Barney and Aunt Bee.

They are not “other;” they are “us.”

This year, my connection to MSU was strengthened by working with student writers. When I took on the role of Eli’s Managing Editor I reached out to Laura Julier, Associate Chair & Director of The Professional Writing Program at MSU. Dr. Julier posted a call for writers, and I was deluged with messages and resumes. Some didn’t work out, but the “keepers” exceeded our expectations in every possible way.

Freshman Peyton Lombardo, given her first assignment to cover a concert at Wharton Center, wrote to tell me that she had found the headlining performer on Twitter, made contact with him and secured an interview. Peyton led me to Junior Ashley Griffin, whose take on every assignment was that it sounded great, and she’d love to do it.

I also reached out to Rosalind (Roz) Arch, a friend of my son’s, and she jumped in ready to pursue leads, explore the City and use her MSU networks to get places I could never reach. By March, all three of these women began to send me their own story ideas, and it was a pleasure to green-light their interesting and diverse plans.

This summer Eli loses all of these contributors for a while, but I’m pretty sure we’ll see them next year. Peyton has an internship in Traverse City, but it hasn’t started yet; she just wrote to say she “missed ELI.” Needless to say, I found her an assignment she could do from home. Ashley is in Florence, Italy for seven weeks, posting pictures of bridges, gelato and piazzas. Roz is headed to Amsterdam in July, but until then…she’s ours.

We have a new student writer starting this week. If she has half the skill, dedication and energy of the other three we’ll all be very lucky. And when they all graduate?

I’ll cry.