If you had an hour to relive, which one would it be?

Josh White Jumping the Gun

At the end of this week, the end of an era comes. Perhaps not so noticeable by the University community as it will be for about a dozen seniors, The Michigan Daily's staff changes in the wee hours of Friday morning. With the change comes the end of three and a half years of hard work and tireless dedication; with the change ends the most meaningful part of our college careers, an era most of us would gladly go through again and again and again.

It hasn't been an easy ride, to say the least. From long nights that seem to last until dawn (and often literally do) to long debates about policy, coverage and ethics, we have seen a little bit of it all. For all of our ability to experiment, strive, forge ahead and accomplish, we owe none other than the University community and the students who make it such a lively place; without the school's dynamism in so many areas, our jobs would not have been nearly so interesting.

In examining the past several years, as outgoing editors are sometimes want to do, things appear as little pieces in the larger puzzle. Some of those pieces are made of wonderment and glory, others are made of grief and defeat. Some of the pieces stick out more clearly, and still other pieces are the crux of our identity yet hide in obscurity. While I hesitate to quantify the vast number of hours we have all poured into the walls of the Student Publications Building, it is the finest and often not-so-finest hours that pop into reminiscence at day's end.

What I have been asking myself this week, and what I think we should all ask of ourselves now and again, is: "What hours would we most like to relive?" I don't mean to ask which ones we would like to redo, because that is a fruitless enterprise. I merely mean to pick out those moments where fates were decided (well, maybe not fates, but you get the idea) and energies ran high. I mean for us to focus on the moments that define each and every one of us and to make those the ones we use to guide us in the future. By remembering our best hours, we can turn them into our best possible days, years and later, lives.

For this newspaper, there have been many hours that fit this billing in the past four years, as there have been many that have ultimately had a shaping effect on the community. For me, the most memorable hour of my first year was when then-University student Jake Baker was arrested by federal marshals for his postings and e-mails on the Internet - an issue that later ballooned into a national story about the use of the virtual world and First Amendment rights on the Internet. It was not surprising that the University of Michigan was at the center of the debate nor that such issues affected all of us; it wasn't until a week later that I discovered Baker's roommate was in one of my classes.

Sophomore year will probably be most memorable for me because it was the year President James Duderstadt resigned from his post in a swirl of controversy and the year a maize-and-blue hockey team won that pesky National Championship in perhaps the most exciting and wonderful game of hockey I have ever witnessed. That also happened to be the same year Unabomber Ted Kacynski was tracked down - and his roots tracked to the University. The hour in Cincinnati (against Colorado College in OT) was nerve-wracking but blissful, the hour in Ted's history was hectic but rewarding.

Last year was memorable for a host of reasons, from the terrible Comair plane crash (which elicited some of the finest work I have seen this paper produce despite the horrible situation) to the embarrassment of the alleged NCAA violations by our basketball team. We were given our current University president (the third in my four years here) and President Clinton was elected for a second term. Perhaps the most interesting hour of the year was the one spent in the Daily's Batcave discussing how to cover both a presidential election and the selection of a new University president (election/selection day, as it has come to be known).

This year has been beyond description and the hours countless. The best hour, in Pasadena, was spent with friends and a national championship (Michelle, this one's for you). It wasn't all cheers, as we mourned the death of friends - Tamara Williams and Jefferey Reese - and saw the University attacked with lawsuits. But each hour brought us closer together and has made us stronger.

No doubt these hours are mine, and there are many others that hold important places in my heart. But most of these hours were spent in an old building on Maynard Street, behind computer screens and in discussion, and most notably with friends. I will take my best hours with me as I leave the Daily; I can only hope those who follow can have so many.

- Josh White can be reached over e-mail at jswhite@umich.edu

01-27-98