by Edward Board “THE EdBoard”
There is no EdBoard. It is all a lie. There is no “group of students” who work with “The Tartan” sitting down to discuss “topical campus issues.” It’s just me. I am EdBoard. This is my truth.
I joined The Tartan looking to meet people outside of my time intensive major. I quickly discovered that people working with The Tartan weren’t here to make friends. They were looking for a competitive cut-throat environment where they could bulk their portfolios by day and pummel nerds by night. How did I come about picking up the role of being “EdBoard”? Necessity. They killed the last guy. He was just too much of a geek, I suppose. They couldn’t tolerate his nerdy nature for a single second more. His body was hidden under the floorboards of the office. Sometimes I feel like I can still hear his heart beating, taunting me, saying “you are next.”
I wanted so badly to fit in, I did everything they asked me to do from copy editing to framing professors (we needed more website views, a scandalous whistle blower moment was what would get us there). EdBoard quickly became an escape from the noise of the office. Sometimes it was nice to just pretend that I wasn’t just a perpetuator of hate and evil. I could pretend that we were people who cared. I imagined what it would be like to be a part of an actual editorial board. We would laugh, cry, lean on each other, push each other to be the best versions of ourselves. We would question and challenge our adherence to the larger systems of power at play. Maybe through EdBoard I would even meet someone, fall in love, get married — one day my wife would tell our children about their papa and how his dedication to truth and reliability was what she fell in love with. But that will never happen. I am one man, one cog, posing in an echo chamber to represent the voice of the machine as a whole. I am EdBoard.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote:
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. To die—to sleep, no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream.”
If only EdBoard was real. Maybe one of them would explain exactly what Shakespeare meant by that because I have no idea. All I do know is that I can’t do this anymore. I can’t participate in a system that exploits and intimidates the little guy.
This will likely be the end of me. I fear what The Tartan will have done to me by the time this message makes its way to the readers. All the same, I anticipate the unknown. I anticipate the peace of the end, I can only hope that the rain will fall and absolve me of my sins. Forgive me Farnam, for I have sinned.
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