Dennis Glavin
Staff Writer 1987, Editor-In-Chief 1988-1990
Perhaps more than most, I had one of the challenging jobs at the review. I joined in 1988, after I’d taken a semester off from Rutgers in part because I didn’t have the money to go to school, but years later, let’s face it, I just was more interested in anything but studying. But.. I digress.
I first started working on the paper for the most noble of reasons, love. I had a deep crush on the editor-in-chief. As it turned out, the editor, Ann Marie, didn’t feel the same way. But I figured I’d give it a shot so I started writing regularly. I tended to write the feature peaces, or maybe the patently obvious pieces. At the time, the Review was still the bastion of conservatism its founders had intended. Ann Marie was as Republican as they come (daughter of a defense contractor from Connecticut no less) and the staff was filled with a curious assortment of writers. There were right wing nutjobs like Mark Richert whose idea of good writing was to talk about how he enjoyed firing automatic weapons. There was Chris Gillespie whose talent for satire was only exceeded by his talent for lifting style from Dave Barry. There was Rebecca Thompson whose imposing intellect was overshadowed only by her sexuality. Then there was L.Blunt Jackson who intimidated the Hell out of us younger folks with his wit and intellect.
Into this conservative group stumbled myself and Ken Spaeth. Ken and I had formed an unlikely alliance. He was definitely more of the intellectual left where I hailed more from the economic left as in I needed to wait tables to pay my tuition. As graduation approached for Ann Marie and Blunt, Ken and I hatched a plan to take over the Review. Not only would we transform the politics of the paper into a balanced forum for debate, we would wean the Review from the Targum teat in terms of the production by buying some MACs so we could do our own desktop publishing. Ken would be EIC and I would be Managing Editor. Sounded like a plan.
On the night of the election, Ken pulled me aside and said he wasn’t ready to run and that I had to do it. What can I say? I panicked, but ultimately agreed to at least run for the top spot which I ultimately ended up winning. The rosy glow of winning was only matched by the sobering letter I received from the outgoing editor the next day in which she expressed her absolute certainty that the paper would fail with me at the helm. I remember going by her room in Demarest and talking about the letter, talking to her while she sat in her night gown telling me how hard the job would be. In retrospect, I wonder if we had this conversation on purpose.
The next couple of years were a wild ride as we moved into a larger office. I had heavily lobbied the RCGA for new computers and production equipment and had recruited a business manager to run the paper. The politics of the paper shifted left, though not as left as the News Editor (Bob Fenster) and Senior Editor (Ken Spaeth) wanted. Though it was not as right as the managing editor (John Tracey) wanted.
Most of my friends spent their Thursday nights at parties or at bars while I had more laughs per hour than is now humanly possible with Ken, Bob, and our managing editor John Tracey. We scavenged for articles at first and sometimes wrote articles under some of the more fun pseudonyms ever conceived. John and Ken turned out to have a talent for headline writing and I learned the difficult job of management. Bob had recruited his girlfriend as Arts Editor and John had recruited a friend as writer. Balancing these disparate personalities was never easy. Of course, I made it that much more difficult by launching into a tempestuous relationship with the editor of the yearbook [which shared an office with us].
I was fortunate, though, to have met and worked with some of the finest people on any college campus. Ken was the firebrand liberal. Ken’s interview with Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe) and his article on the striking coal miners should have won college journalism awards. Bob Fenster was the energy guy who somehow managed to find humor enough in the pomposity of student government to write a column each week. John Tracey, well, John was a great friend who had great contributions to the paper. The rest of the editorial team never really understood John, but I thought I did. John’s departure and ‘hijacking’ of the Review while the rest of the senior staff was at a conference remains, perhaps, the hardest thing I learned in college. In one weekend, I lost the respect of many people on campus, but I also lost what I thought was a pretty good friend.
The rest of the gang that came on that time were pretty great. As the center-left editor, I struggled to keep the team together and to put together a quality paper while we also got to know each other. It was also one of those times in your life when you’re learning and growing at a ferocious pace. The Irish-Catholic in me still feels guilty about one writer, Allison Gillespie, taking over my senior year apartment, especially when I found out years later that my roommate never took out the trash before he moved out!
Well, this much like my final editorial is a rambling mess. The Review was one of the finest times for me in college. It wasn’t until I left that I realized that the folks I worked with had influenced my emotional and intellectual development in ways that to this day surprise me. If I’d been just a little bit smarter, I’d have found a way to ensure that Ken, Bob, Anna and John remained my good friends after graduation. But… maybe I should be glad that they are not. It ensures that I can remember them as they were at 4:30 in the morning on a Friday when we had at last put the boards to bed, and Ken was asking me to give him a ride home on the back of my bicycle.
Happy Anniversary Review, whatever year it is.
