The Spectrum Volume 60 Issue 71

The Independent Student Publication of the University at Buffalo ALUMNI EDITION v April 8, 2011 Vol. 60 No. 71 v ubspectrum.com

Dear The Spectrum, Congratulations on publishing for 60 years.

When I served The Spectrum, from 1980–1983, we never took publishing for granted. Publishing required dedication from an ever-changing cast of unpaid students who typically pursued degrees in something other than journalism.

The student editorial staff had to research and to write timely newsworthy stories with clarity and credibility. The student production staff had to assemble all of the editorial and advertising content into an attractive package available for everyone in the community to read the next morning. The student business staff had to manage and to maintain scarce financial resources in an economically challenged community to ensure that the paper could be printed and distributed. Then they had to do it all over again two days later.

The Spectrum relies upon leadership that develops organically and changes annually. We understood that we were temporary stewards of a remarkable enterprise. As we began, we received excellent mentoring from experienced

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students nearing graduation. As we worked, we maintained the excellence of the paper. As we neared graduation, we provided excellent mentoring to future leaders. I served The Spectrum for a mere three years, and it remains the model enterprise of my life.

Constant news production can be a daunting grind. The lyric reverberating in my head was from Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage”: every day, the paperboy brings more. It was hard for students to publish excellent work every day, but The Spectrum had its moments.

I hope that this bit of nostalgia inspires a fresh set of students to become the stewards who will write the companion to this piece for The Spectrum’s 100th anniversary. Congratulations.

Long may you publish.

Sincerely, Terry Canade BA Economics, 1984 The Spectrum, Staff Writer, Campus Editor, Managing Editor

Dear Alumni, Reading your submissions on a speedy Mac computer, “Googling” names to double-check spellings, taking breaks from time-to-time for some video-game relief, and digitally scanning the archives to capture moments from the past six decades has, admittedly, left us feeling guilty.

Electric typewriters? Medical research at the library and not on WebMD? Firsttime airplane rides? Sifting through administrative files undetected? Really?

Not only have you all made us feel guilty, but young, too!

More so, however, reading your submissions left the current Spectrum staff feeling proud. One editor shared, “it’s great to hear my own views about working for The Spectrum voiced by someone who did it almost a decade ago,” another added, “some things don’t change with time,” and a third – known and loved for his humor – wrote “it would be rather sadistic of me to hope for another major water contamination or nuclear plant meltdown, but it would be nice if we had the opportunity to cover stories like [our alumni].”

Your acknowledgments of the invaluable lessons learned outside and around the various Spectrum offices remind us not only how important our jobs are, but how useful the skills we’re developing will prove. Your words have been an inspiration to us all, and we’re proud to be carrying on your legacies.

Looking back through the archives, the layout of the newspaper has changed drastically over the years; we’ve actually made a big change ourselves, as the difference between the looks of this semester and last semester is significant.

We can see, though, that no matter what the paper looked like, it was always full of important, informative, and entertaining articles, and it always represented the voice of the students. We can only hope that though we’ve changed the appearance of the paper yet again, we will never change that.

Sincerely yours, The Spectrum staff

Clever Cleaver KEN LOVETTEditor in Chief ’88 The chief philosophy during my years (1984-1988) at The Spectrum was never to consider it simply a “college” paper. Doing so would make it too easy to shrug off mistakes.

Maybe it’s one reason (the other is that I’m likely crazy) that now, more than two decades after the fact, I still remember a misspelled front-page headline in the first edition of the first semester that I was editor in chief.

An attacker was going after females on campus with a meat cleaver, not a “clever” as our headline blared.

That one mistake from that first edition drove a lot of us – particularly me – during that year to do better.

And now, looking back at my time at The Spectrum – a staff writer in my freshman year before moving up to assistant campus editor, campus editor, managing editor and finally editor in my senior year – it continues to amaze me how a university with no real journalism program supported a high-quality three-days-a-week publication.

The Spectrum also helped springboard many of us from that time-period into the journalism profession.

Ron Lesko, a Spectrum sports editor, went on to a long career with the Associated Press. Gerald Matalon, another sports editor and managing editor, is still a producer at ESPN. Doug Oathout, former managing editor, is a longtime editor at the Erie

I’ve carved out a career that has taken me all over New York, highlighted by a more than eight-year stint at the New York Post as a political reporter. During my time at the Post, I covered such things as the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the 2000 presidential recount, the 2004 national conventions, the 2008 Obama campaign (briefly), and the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case.

For the past three years, I’ve been the Albany bureau chief for the Daily News during a time of unprecedented turmoil at the state Capitol.

I think if you quizzed any of us who stayed in journalism – and many of those like Ralph DeRosa who succeeded in other careers – they would point to their times at The Spectrum as the highlight of their UB careers.

The late nights in the basement of Baldy Hall (the paper’s old location).

The 60-plus hours a week of assigning, reporting, writing (on typewriters, no less), editing and producing the paper so it came out on time every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The Nerf hoop games to relieve stress. The happy hours to relieve more stress. The pizza calls. I won’t even get into the number of classes missed because of the paper or the special skill you develop of begging for grades or make-up chances from sympathetic professors.

For a lot of us, The Spectrum was our fraternity. It was our real major. I was a communication major. But everything I learned to prepare for a career in journalism I learned at The Spec-

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Times-News in Pennsylvania. He’s joined there by Gerald Weiss, a former Spectrum-ite. (I apologize to those I have missed).

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trum or from various summer internships my Spectrum experience helped secure It wasn’t all great. The paper was in financial trouble for much of my four years that almost cost us our independence. And we had one year when an editor in chief was busted for sending himself drugs from overseas. But even that, with time, became simply another funny story to tell when looking back.

UB was different during our four years there. It was a time of transition.

There was no Student Union. There were no Division I sports. Hell, there wasn’t even a pizza parlor on campus.

I remember writing a good-bye column my senior year admitting that it would be hard for me to donate to a university I felt went out of its way to make it hard on students. There was little at the time to make people proud of being a UB graduate. But the one exception, I wrote, was The Spectrum.

I’ve softened over the years. I recall UB much more fondly and even find myself donating annually to the campus to help make up for years of state subsidy cutbacks.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is my feelings toward The Spectrum.

We had a faculty advisor, the late Lee Smith, who was a former editorial editor for The Buffalo News. Lee was always there with encouragement so that we were able to see the quality of the total product – even when obsessing over embarrassing meat “clever” mistakes.

Happy 60th to The Spectrum. And thank you. Here’s to 60 more.

Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com

Preparing For Reality PAUL GIORGISpectrum Alumni

H: 52 L: 38

1950

H: 55 L: 45

Of all the things that I did in college, nothing has prepared me better for the “real world” than working at The Spectrum. Actually, it’s not fair to say “work”: it was fun. Imagine if your homework was going to the movies and concerts. Imagine a big test consisting of going to Los Angeles to attend a movie premiere and then spending two days interviewing the stars and filmmakers. I certainly was the envy of my friends who were engineering majors. Thank you Prodigal Sun!

H: 62 L: 54

But that was the easy part. My friends missed the late nights at the Sun desk, with the electric typewriter, writing in proper journalistic format. But The Prodigal Sun, and The Spectrum, offered something no college class did: reality. Nearly every college student pulls all-nighters, writing essays that only one

person reads. With The Spectrum, the whole campus read it.

How much effort did everyone else put into studying for tests that were forgotten as soon as they were turned in? I still have every copy of The Prodigal Sun from my four years at UB. There could be no making up for missing a deadline with extra credit; there was no haggling for a grade. There was a paper to create, every week, and dealing with that finality prepared me far better for my life away from school than anything else I can think of. What I actually did for a grade in my classes are a vague memory: what I did for The Prodigal Sun remains vividly clear.

The hardest part of working at The Spectrum? Getting the nerve to walk through that door the first time and ask if I could write for it.

Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com

A few college credits short for graduation?

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ALUMNI ISSUE FRIday, APRIL 8, 2011 v THE SPECTRUM

Editorial Board Editor in Chief

Andrew Wiktor

Managing Editors

Luke Hammill, senior Amanda Woods News Editors

Lauren Nostro, senior David Weidenborner Danielle O’Toole, asst.

Investigative Reporter

Amanda Jonas Arts Editors

James Twigg, senior Jameson Butler Vanessa Frith, asst.

Life Editors

Jennifer Harb, senior Mike Tyson, asst.

Sports Editors

Matt Parrino, senior Carey Beyer Brian Josephs, asst.

Photo Editors

Clinton Hodnett, senior Megan Kinsley Alex McCrossen Renne Fok, asst.

Sam Zakalik, asst.

WEB Editor

Adam Cole

PROFESSIONAL STAFF Business Manager

Debbie Smith

Administrative Assistant

Helene Polley

Advertising Manager

Marissa Giarraputo

CREATIVE DIRECTOr

Jeannette Wiley

Advertising Designer

Aline Kobayashi

The views expressed — both written and graphic — in the Feedback, Opinion, and Perspectives sections of The Spectrum do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board. Submit contributions for these pages to The Spectrum office at Suite 132 Student Union or spectrum-editorial@buffalo.edu.

The Spectrum reserves the right to edit these pieces for style or length. If a letter is not meant for publication, please mark it clearly as such. All submissions must include the author’s name, daytime phone number and e-mail address.

The Spectrum is provided free in part by the Undergraduate Mandatory Activity Fee

APRIL 8, 2011 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 71 CIRCULATION: 7,000

The Spectrum is represented for national advertising by both Alloy Media and Marketing, and MediaMate For information on advertising with the Spectrum visit www.ubspectrum.com/ads or call us directly.

The Spectrum offices are located in 132 Student Union, UB North Campus, Buffalo, NY 14260-2100 Telephone: (716) 645-2468 Fax: (716) 645-2766 Copyright 2010 Buffalo, N.Y. The Spectrum is printed by The Buffalo News 1 News Plaza Buffalo, NY 14240

The Spectrum is Value-Added MICHAEL LUCINSKI Editorial Editor ’02 Fact: Being a Spectrum alumnus is not a well-lit path down Journalism Road after graduation.

A cursory examination of my Facebook friends’ employers confirms this. Only half are employed in fields where words are the primary output.

With my employer - Child Labor Services, Inc. (“Your mine, our minors”) – my primary output these days is throwing No.2 pencils into ceiling titles and chasing squirrels with a fireman’s ax.

Tears of Rage AL B. BENSON III Co-Managing Editor ’72 Circa, 1970. “Tears of Rage” seemed a suitable title to capture the emotions of the university, the city and the nation during a tumultuous spring 40 years ago.

It also had the panache of words/music

by Richard Manuel and Bob Dylan. War, military draft, poverty, ecologic ruin, racial strife, urban decline, public education, labor issues... Undoubtedly sophomoric (literally in my case), pen-to-paper (no word processing then) became an essential outlet to conceptualize the evolving turmoil beyond my role in production and artistry at The Spectrum.

local and national debate. Forfeiture of our educational resources will impede the innovation, intellectual capital, workforce development, and competitiveness that our country will surely require to provide for our citizens and to maintain its world status.

Although we all commiserate with those facing economic uncertainty, short sided and even impulsive reductions in educational programs will fail to meaningfully reduce individual financial hardship for the short term and certainly result in long-term collateral damage. In the span of 50 years, New York State had the foresight to construct an ambitious public university system stimulating economies across the state and providing affordable education and advancing the careers of many tens of Figuratively hiding bethousands. SUNY at hind the back of Feature Buffalo students (e.g., Editor Susan Trebach, The Spectrum), and my first approach at comfaculty should conmentary was handed to tinue to promote the AL B. BENSON Editor in Chief Linda Hanarguments in support ley. Thus began my foray of public education, as a writer, albeit now in both to the public and medical research and editorials, and has the government as a counterbalance to solidified my indebtedness to my former the negative rhetoric. colleagues at The Spectrum and to SUNY I am sure that many of my fellow Specat Buffalo. trum alumni can look back at the intenCirca , 2011. There is plenty of rage and sity of our experience knowing that it many tears shed in our present world. complemented many aspects of our colThe elapse of the past four decades has legiate life, including friendships and done little to mitigate our disharmony. development of many skill sets that have With the exception of the U.S. military influenced what we have become today. draft – war, poverty, ecologic ruin, racial Personally, I am most grateful to the strife, urban decline, public education, amazing people I worked with during my labor issues – the digitalization of com- Spectrum tenure, all of whom I rememmunication has made the role of the stu- ber, and some of whom I see regularly, dent press no less relevant, but rather has or at least at various reunions. In fact, extended the opportunity to reach out to this month, while lecturing in China I students in ways not previously possible. will visit with my former Spectrum comanaging editor, Susan Trebach, who Dissemination of diverse ideas and ob- has recently moved to Hong Kong with servations encompassing popular cul- her husband Art. ture, politics, regional/world events, and other life experiences, is not only an im- Happy 60th anniversary to The Spectrum. portant learning experience for students My wish for the current Spectrum staff honing future skills, but also provides and their student colleagues, is to thrive integral dialogue among the university in their public education experience, to community. Indeed, many career paths, promote justice and truth particularly from journalism to medicine, are con- in situations where it is lacking, to fosstructed from solid foundations forged ter lifelong friendships, to become lifefrom lessons in observation, synthesis of long learners and writers, and to honor information, discourse, and prose. all those who have come before you and those who are there for you to guide Certainly, of the many pertinent topics your dreams and aspirations. for the student press, the state of the public university bears intense scrutiny. The recent student protests against tuition increases in the University of California Al B. Benson III, M.D is a Professor of Medisystem, and innumerable proposed cut- cine in the Division of Hematology/Oncolbacks in both university and primary/ ogy at Northwestern University’s Feinberg secondary education systems across the School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He country, articulate the potential phenom- is also the Associate Director for Clinical Investigations and Chair of the Clinical Proenal harm to a generation of citizens. tocol Scientific Review and Monitoring SysI am a product of public education in- tem for the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive cluding my residency and oncology fel- Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institutelowship (University of Wisconsin). My designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, wife and children have thrived because at Northwestern University. In addition, he of their public education backgrounds. is an Attending Physician at Northwestern The value of a public education that is Memorial Hospital, a Staff Physician at Jesse comprehensive and accessible to our Brown VA Medical Center, and a Consultant population as a whole, requires urgent to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

The Death of ‘Fluffy’ Features

But, back to the fish. “This is a great story, really,” I remember Brett saying, nodding and smiling as he handed me a note with the word MIREX scrawled in caps. This one will be deadly dull, I thought. This one will never make the front page with a cute graphic.

DENISE STUMPO HYLAND Managing Editor ’78-’79 I’ll always remember my second, and least fluffy, assignment for The Spectrum, back in the fall of 1976. Features Editor Brett Kline saddled me with a story on Lake Erie fish: Were they safe to eat?

As a sophomore who had signed up for features, I was not the least bit interested in chlorinated hydrocarbons that might be mucking up “Lake Dreary,” as it was dubbed for its grey-brown color.

Besides, I had already found my journalistic niche: fluff.

My first effort – a fun, almost effortless piece about life as a transfer student in the new (but leaking) Ellicott Complex – had made the front page, with a cute graphic attached.

Fact: Being a Spectrum alumnus, in and of itself, does not increase your attractiveness to potential sex partners.

Straight women and gay men were immune to my advances.

Lesbians simply laughed.

Fact: Being a Spectrum alumni does not increase children’s respect for you.

My illiterate son (Class of 2031) does not care how many opinion columns I wrote years before I could read him “Goodnight Moon.”

He still laughs at me every time I cry after Stevie Johnson drops a touchdown pass in the end zone.

Over the next couple of days, I went to the library to look up information on lake chemicals, using the periodical indexes and microfilm machines. (“Googling it” was not an option.) Then I interviewed a biology professor who told me that current lake levels of the chemical mirex, an insecticide that had been banned by the EPA that year, were nothing to worry about. Ho hum.

In those days, the typewriters in The Spectrum newsroom were not in great shape, with stuck carriages and missing keys the norm. So it happened that I was in my (leaky) dorm room typing up the story on my automatic-return Olivetti, on deadline, when the phone rang. It was Brett.

Fact: Joining The Spectrum will make it harder to get that degree your mother is happy you pretend to care about.

I only managed to an “A-” in my Weimar Germany history class!

Outrage.

Fact: The Spectrum is a worthwhile institution and worth your time and energy.

There were numerous moments of note during my tenure at The Spectrum. The time we printed a blank front page on purpose. The time we impeached the editor in chief. The time assholes made the Empire State Building the tallest building in Manhattan. The time we beat Generation magazine at LaserTron. All in all, some noteworthy events.

1959 Nice Girls Who Like To Write LINDA HANLEY FINIGAN Editor in Chief ’69-’70 Linda Hanley (Finigan) was editor in chief of The Spectrum in 1969-70. This fictionalized account of a freshman joining the paper in the fall of 1966 is adapted from her new novel, LOVE AND WAR, just published by cobalthouse.com.

The celebrated jewel of the State University system, Canaswego’s campus was the furthest away you could get from home in the State of New York without leaving the country. Her parents would seldom visit. Molly Drayton knew from her first glimpse of the quad’s bustling courtyard, a vibrant, sprawling, safe city of the young, that here was a place she’d been searching for all her life.

Following her high school guidance counselor’s advice to find an activity that would bolster her résumé, she joined the campus newspaper that fall of 1966, journalism being one of her vague career options.

The day she went to apply, five men who looked like Allen Ginsberg sat around a cluttered table in The Spectator office, assigning stories. A woman with long braids played guitar in the corner.

Reporters were typing at desks in the center of the room. No one looked up. A teletype machine spewed out long rolls of printed paper, the steady click of type punctuated by periodic bells.

“Five bells!” one of the men called and all rose from their chairs, rushing over to the wire service machine.

“Holy crap.” One of the bearded editors grabbed the copy, ripping it off the roll as soon as it was printed.

Molly wanted to know what the big story was, but the editors huddled by themselves across the room. A wiry puppy shredded a bundled stack of newsprint beside a fresh pile of poop and no one seemed to notice.

“Excuse me,” Molly interrupted a young woman furiously typing at the front desk. “I saw you were looking for reporters.”

Jet black hair hung straight to her waist; her silver earrings shimmered under fluorescent light. She didn’t stop typing.

When she got to the end of her sentence, she glanced up once. “Have you ever written anything?”

“Have you heard the news?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “The DEC (state Department of Environmental Conservation) just told people not to eat fish from Lake Erie.

Levels of mirex are too high.”

Thinking my article was now moot, I explained that a professor had just said the fish were OK. Was I off the hook?

“Get in here, right now,” Brett said. “This is called breaking news.”

With a rewrite of my lede, the story about lake chemicals became top campus news that week – and a slight embarrassment to the bio professor. I don’t remember if it made the front page. But I do remember the realization that “feature” does not automatically mean “fluff.” Sometimes, it can even mean “news.”

Brett Kline and other Spectrum editors like Jay Rosen and John Reiss were fellow students, but they were also among the journalism colleagues who would continue to shape me as

These moments populate the highlight reel, but are no means the sum total of why working at The Spectrum meant so much to me. I’ve drifted out of the university’s orbit since graduating in 2002. Still, I wager a common complaint from students remains the impersonal, anonymous nature of campus life among the teeming, forsome-reason Red Sox-hatted multitudes.

You need to join something in order to feel like you belong insight only available after years of toil in the real world. It’s not enough to be a student at UB. Academics alone make a long and boring four (or more) years. That buzzing, shuffling multitude of your classmates is always present, most barely recognizable. (“Did I just pass that dude from Saturday night’s party? He wasn’t bent

“I worked on my high school paper. I had a weekly column.”

Behind the desk, the editor laughed.

“That’s just what we need.” She opened a drawer and handed Molly an application. “We’re always looking for nice girls who like to write.”

The Spectator didn’t let her do that, of course, not right away, but when the regular proofreader broke her arm, Molly was summoned to fill in on the copy desk. Punctuation and spelling were her forté; they asked her to stay.

That was the semester the conservative town printer censored The Spectator, refusing to typeset a line in a sophomore poet’s ode to sexual discovery. Molly was an English major—she knew the poem was terrible, but it was the principle, not the work, that mattered. Censorship, the editors argued, must be opposed. A protest rally was called later that week on the steps of the library.

Molly had never been to a demonstration.

The braided editor played guitar; several others gave speeches. A collection was taken for various causes. Then, in a moment of breathtaking transition, an art department grad student urged the men to hold up their draft cards.

“It’s not just censorship we’re up against today,” he told the crowd. “Everywhere we look, America is at a crossroads, and we are summoned as never before, brothers and sisters, to answer our own conscience. We’ve ripped the lid off Pandora’s box. Now it’s time to let ’er burn.”

The art student held aloft his draft card.

How puny they were. Smaller than an index card, not much to look at, for all the power they held over people’s lives.

“Let ’em all burn!” a bearded young man on the steps of the library shouted and the crowd took up the call. Let ’em burn!

The long sputtering flame of a plastic lighter nibbled at the paper for a moment before it took the art student’s draft card in a flash. The crowd whistled and cheered.

Molly felt light-headed, giddy, in the midst of this swirling elated throng. Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, looked at from another point of view, everything she had been brought up to believe in could be wrong.

She was the daughter of Republican parents; in a few years, in fact, her father would be Under Secretary of Defense.

She’d been at the paper three months, but Molly knew somehow she’d crossed a line. She was through with her life as scion of the establishment. She was free.

a features reporter, as features editor and later as managing editor. Under the guidance of our Spectrum advisor, teaching assistant Michael Sartisky, we refused to let each other off the hook when it came to getting the story, and going deep.

In April 1979, when an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor threatened to release radiation into the countryside near Harrisburg, Pa., The Spectrum sent a team of three reporters and two photographers to cover the scene in the streets and at the state Capitol building. My “feature” on a local woman and her concerns opened my eyes to the personal nature of dependence on nuclear power.

Ironically, the accident at Three Mile Island occurred 12 days after the release of the movie The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas. Antinuclear sentiment was running high on campus and in May 1979, The Spectrum took the lead in chartering buses to Washington, D.C., for a No Nukes dem-

over a porch railing throwing up what he ate in December, so I couldn’t tell.”)

I didn’t want the multitude to disappear. I just needed to know some of them. I saw an ad in The Spectrum for writers. I signed up.

After one semester as a writer, I was invited to come aboard as an editor, features and then editorial. The Spectrum office quickly became my clubhouse.

Not exactly a home away from home, but more a sanctuary from home. Living with the parents has benefits, no doubt.

The toilet is always clean, and by someone else. But it is enjoyable to have a place to go where the people around you find it odd if there aren’t soy sauce packets in the pencil cup. I belonged somewhere, even being agnostic toward soy sauce.

For all articles Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com

onstration on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Again, a weighty topic was able to be presented in a meaningful way through feature articles about the rally.

Of course, not all Spectrum features in the late 1970s were meaty. We covered the advent of frozen yogurt and mopeds; introduced a recipe column called The Impoverished Chef, and published fashion photo spreads from time to time. I joined the ranks of campus security for a “day in the life” feature, which resulted in the addition of a regular Spectrum Police Blotter listing of oncampus incidents.

And then there was The Blizzard of 1977, a Lake Erie storm that caused drifts of snow up to 30 feet high, and took the wind-chill factor to 60 below.

My feature on how to survive an upstate winter? I thought it could be something light, with a lot of earthy Buffalo-style humor thrown in.

Then people started perishing: 23, in fact, died of blizzard-related causes. So much for fluff.

If you’re interested in a career in journalism or communications 1) I can hear your mother crying and 2) The Spectrum is a terrific experience, especially as an editorial staff member. But please don’t view this institution has a resume padder. It’s an opportunity to bond with your peers, broaden your worldview (you might learn those of a different philosophy aren’t babyeating savages) and make some good friends.

Plus, you know, eternal glory.

Shape the past for future generations. Your name and tales carved into the stone of human history. Just watch the typos.

Stone does not autocorrect.

Fact: Working at The Spectrum was the best decision I made at UB. ALUMNI ISSUE FRIday, APRIL 8, 2011 v THE SPECTRUM

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A Connection to the Campus MICHAEL B. LIPPMANN Former Production Manager My wife Lynne (then Lynne Traeger) and I were on The Spectrum staff from 1969 through 1973. I was copy editor, managing editor and then production manager. Lynne was on staff and was also an editor. Those were exciting years, coinciding with the campus sitins at Hayes Hall, the police occupation in February 1970, and the protests over the Kent State killings. I can still remember the acrid smell of teargas in Norton Hall after the police rushed the building. There were many changes over the

years as the campus came to grips with the activism of its students. We graduated as the Watergate scandal was breaking with Woodward and Bernstein’s reports making journalism history.

The Spectrum staff was an incredibly talented group of reporters, photographers and cartoonists, many of whom are now household names in the world of journalism and media. They included Howard Kurtz, Tom Toles, JoAnn Armao, and Eric Schoenfeld, among others.

The technology at our disposal was state-of-the-art for the time. We were able to set our stories on magnetic tape and edit them with a second correction tape. The tapes were then placed in separate readers and the final story typed on an IBM Selectric Typewriter with different font balls to vary the type and which could justify the copy. The printed copy was then literally pasted onto sheets and sent to the printers.

This was heady stuff in an era when the computer classes used time-share on the

mainframe with punch cards for programming. We never foresaw the technology revolution which would make this all obsolete.

Being on the staff enabled us to feel more connected to the campus and afforded us insights into the workings of the university not available to many other students. The pressure of working under deadlines helped us learn to prioritize our responsibilities and focus our efforts on the tasks at hand. We did not continue in journalism. I am currently a physician with the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division and Lynne is the Research Administrator for the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. However, the journalism gene continues in the family, as our daughter Rachel is a reporter/producer for KWMU, the National Public Radio affiliate in St. Louis.

1971 Outside Looking In CLEM COLUCCI Staff Writer and Editor, 1971-1975 In the end, maybe we just went soft. The stakes were lower by the time we came along. We had missed, by a few years, the tear gas and truncheons. Though the 2-S deferment was gone, drafting and shipping off to the Southeast Asian meat grinder the sons of families that could pay for college, and during an election year, was seriously inconvenient to the powers that were – eventually.

Men of a certain age still recall, nearly four decades later, the number they drew on lottery night. On civil rights, the big battles were over; white and black students could politely ignore each other – each knowing what parts of Buffalo to avoid. As for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, they had gotten the memo: middle-class kids with a modicum of discretion, and support systems to deal with any consequences, could go to hell in their own way. It was almost as if they were greasing the skids for a long slide into several low, dishonest decades.

We wouldn’t admit it then, but we were never really in the fight. And the show wasn’t going to last much longer, either. One thing I had figured out even then was that The Revolution Would Not Be Subsidized – at least not much longer.

But while it lasted, The Spectrum’s office, then on the third floor of Norton Hall, was the best seat in the house.

When, as a callow freshman, I offered my services, the campus news editor, Jo-Ann Armao, dragooned me into her bureau. Although I would have teachers I respected, and friends I loved, Jo-Ann would be the most important single person in my college life, turning me into a halfway decent reporter, licensed to wander into affairs that were otherwise none of my business, take notes, and crank out copy on electric typewriters that didn’t even have correcting ribbons.

I would edit – directly on the hard copy – ruthlessly. Jo-Ann and others would do the same, though gradually they would need to do it less, as I began to learn my business. The bylines started coming. Production could hold space for late-breaking stories because I could write to a line-count. As a Spectrum reporter, and, later, editor, I learned the most important skill

I can write better than anyone who can write faster, and I can write faster than anyone who can write better.

- A.J. Liebing I would ever develop. As A.J. Liebling put it: “I can write better than anyone who can write faster, and I can write faster than anyone who can write better.” I owe just about everything I’ve accomplished since to that.

It was quite a show in those days, and when I inherited the Wednesday op-ed column, which I headlined Outside Looking In, I had an even better seat. I did humor and satire in those days, before reality outran my ability to lampoon it.

Nixon and company made it easy, with their upfront thuggery and creepiness.

The lines were clearer; the cards were on the table in those days. Nixon went down, of course, however little we had to do with it, but that was only an Indian summer, though we didn’t know it then. Later they would get smarter and put up sunny pitchmen and genial frauds to front for the darkly competent men who did the dirty work. Nixon, at least, had the liar’s wary respect for an objective reality he had to shape his lies around; his cheerful successors got over with the bullshitter’s easy contempt for it.

Closer to home, I could recount the strutting and fretting of campus politicos, sometimes borrowing the gonzo style of Hunter S. Thompson to chronicle the antics of our Norton hacks.

Campus politics was so vicious and so entertaining because so little was at stake.

And then the show was over. We slunk through the Disco Era and the ’80s, about which the less said, the better. Then, for a while, it began to look as though things might be different. But we proved soft and undisciplined, unfit to deal with people who – mostly – weren’t, and we got more smiling empty suits, and more men behind the curtain with the hammer. Every so often, I can’t help wondering what it would be like to get my old seat back, front row center, recounting the latest outrages, reviewing the latest obscene farces – and with word processing!

But enough maundering from a cranky old fool reliving his youth. Let’s just end this cleanly, the way we always used to: -30-

[Note to editor: In my day, we put a -30- at the end of our copy to indicate the end. I don’t know if you still do that.]

Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com

4

ALUMNI ISSUE FRIday, APRIL 8, 2011 v THE SPECTRUM

Lessons in Writing and Life

from my brilliant editor, Tim Switala.

EILEEN LEE WERBITSKY

ď&#x20AC;´Spectrum Alumni, Prodigal Sun Reporter

Courtesy of EILEEN LEE WERBITSKY

My first article for The Spectrum was published Oct. 6, 1978. It was a review of a band that played at Clark Gym and bared so little resemblance to the original type-written copy I had submitted that I double-checked it line-by-line to see if someone else had covered the same concert.

I was almost embarrassed to walk into The Spectrum office the next day, but my student editors took my grammar and writing styleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or lack thereofâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in stride and handed another assignment to me, then another, and slowly, very slowly, my copy began to bleed less ink.

As a reporter for The Prodigal Sun, I was appalled at the disco craze inexplicably sweeping the world at the time, was less interested in new wave acts like Blondie and Devo, and kept my focus on heavy rock music in all its illustrious forms: fusion, southern, metal, progressive. This not only earned me a niche on the paper, but the fond sobriquet, â&#x20AC;&#x153;acid queen,â&#x20AC;?

With the perk of comp tickets, I saw and reviewed The Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, and Van Halen, to name a few. And when Led Zeppelinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drummer, John Bonham, died in September 1980, I wrote the centerfold expose for The Sun: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Confused and Dazed,â&#x20AC;? compiling the storied bandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s checkered history and speculating on its future. (I did not have the prescience to foresee Robert Plantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solo Grammy in 2010.)

My student editors urged me on to harder news like the Love Canal debacle and I spoke with Lois Gibbs and then-medical school dean John Naughton about the medical schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s planned study on the effects of toxic waste on local residents. But I kept my hand in The Sunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pages interviewing Joe Perry in person when he broke with Aerosmith in 1982 to start the short-lived Joe Perry Project.

No matter the topic or my proficiency, I felt welcome in the Spectrum offices on the second floor of Squire Hall, where there was always someone skipping class, a vacant typewriter and an Ivy-League view of Abbott Library, Harriman, and Foster Hall.

Our windows overlooked â&#x20AC;&#x153;the courtyardâ&#x20AC;? where Spring and Fall Fests of the day raged and I can remember leaning out of them to guesstimate

the crowd watching Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes on the steps of Harriman Library â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 5,000 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at Fall Fest 1979.

Looking back, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I could have written another word after that first heavy rewrite at the dawn of my career without the encouragement of The Spectrumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s student editors, handing new assignments to me even as their ink on my previous ones had barely dried. In fact, I felt so at home at The Spectrum offices that I often was late for classes, because I knew the real lessons in writing and life were taking place on the second floor of Squire Hall.

I think it shaped many of us, no less me, an undecided major in 1978 who struggled to narrow down my choice of study to just five majors: math, economics, music, English, or communication. In the end it was my Spectrum days that shaped my future most. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell you where most of my fellow writers are, if they ever wrote another word after they left Squire Hall, but I haveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;millions of them, both for a daily city newspaper and features for a nationally published magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and I am often reminded that I owe part of who I am today to my Spectrum editors and their helping handsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;dripping as they may have been in corrective ink.

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For all articles Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com

ALUMNI ISSUE FRIday, APRIL 8, 2011 v THE SPECTRUM

5

CLASSIFIEDS HELP WANTED

CLASSIFIED ads may be placed at The Spectrum office at Suite 132 Student Union, Amherst Campus. Office hours are from 9:00 - 4:00 p.m. Monday thru Friday. Deadlines are Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 12:00 for display and 2:00 p.m. for classifieds for the next edition.

Weekly rates are $10.00 for the first ten words and 75¢ for each additional word. All ads must be paid in advance. The ad must be placed in person or send a legible copy of the ad with a check or money order for full payment. No ads will be taken over the phone. The Spectrum reserves the right to edit any copy. No refunds will be given on classified ads. Please make sure copy is legible. The Spectrum does not assume responsibility for any errors except to reproduce any ad (or equivalent), free of charge, that is rendered valueless due to typographical errors. Please call 645-2152 for any additional information.

3 & 4 BEDROOM apartments near south campus. 1 bath, kitchen with dishwasher/ disposal, laundry & carpeting. June 1st or August 1st. Call: 688-6497.

SPRING – SUMMER job openings. LASERTRON Entertainment Center is currently hiring for Go-Kart operators, servers, referees and general customer service. Candidates must be available this spring, summer and possibly beyond. Working at a fast, detail oriented pace and having excellent customer service skills is a must. Starting at approximately $10.50/ hr, must be available nights and weekends. Apply in person: LASERTRON, 5101 North Bailey Ave, Amherst.

1, 2, 3 & 4 BEDROOM semi-furnished with washer/ dryer.

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2-BDRM MAIN St. South Campus. Appliances, carpet $500 month + utilities & security deposit. Call 884-7900.

5 BEDROOM HOUSE fro rent. Prestigious Highgate. One block from Main Street campus. Nice quiet family neighborhood.

Excellent condition. Updated electric and heating. Off-street parking, 2 full baths, living room & family room, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer & dryer. $1300 per month, $260 per tenant, water included. June 1st – May 31st lease.

Must have references. Call for appointment at 716-491-9105.

Showings begin February 27th.

3-BDRM - WALKING distance to south campus, appliances, laundry, security, parking, June 1st, (716) 568-1600.

7 BEDROOM houses. Walking distance to south campus, appliances, laundry, security, parking. June 1st (716) 568-1600.

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SOUTH CAMPUS 4-bdrm house updated. Hardwood floors, new furnace, free laundry, parking, walking distance. $295+/ person & security deposit. Available June 1st, 716-239-5244.

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STUDENTS WELCOME. 3bdrm lower, E. Morris off Main Street Buffalo. $400.00 per room, per month. Utilities are not included. No parties in this nice quiet neighborhood. Sec. deposit references and lease required. Available now. Please call: (716) 208-9069.

ROOM FOR RENT

2.3.4 BDRM SPRINGVILLE, Englewood, close to Main St. quality, furnished, laundry, parking, June 1st, Aug 1st lease, $300/ $270+ per, 440-3251, Sam Lam.

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WAITSTAFF NEEDED for retirement community 11-2 or 3:15 – 6:45. Will train. Apply at Amberleigh 2330 Maple near Transit or call Colleen at 689-4197.

PAINTERS WITH experience in house painting. Need reliable transportation, an eye for detail. Call 716-472-4910.

DELI POSITION: Full Time, part-time. Apply in person. Feel Rite Fresh Markets 3912 Maple Road, Amherst.

NATURAL FOODS STORE. Part-time sales/cashier help needed. Natural foods knowledge helpful. Apply in person.

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1,2 & 3 BEDROOM apartments. Walking distance UB South Campus.

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4,5,6 & 8 BEDROOM REMODELED apartments to choose from. Located at University at Buffalo Main Street Campus off Englewood. Beginning June 2011. 32 apts. to choose from $275/ bed plus utilities. Washers & dryers included. Contact Bradengel37@gmail.com 301-785-3773, or Shawn 716-984-7813. Check out our web-site: www.bufapt.com.

AMHERST, 3 BEDROOM apartments. Kitchen, 1 ½ baths, living room, dining room & finished basement. June 1st. Call: 688-6497.

4 OR 5 BDRM, absolutely gorgeous, w/w carpeting, 1 ½ baths, new windows, furnace, security system, stainless steel stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer/ dryer, off-street parking 4-cars. Must see! $335 person + utilities, Gino 830-1413.

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2-1 bdrm/1 bath apt for rent in newly renovated carriage house (1 upper/1 lower); quiet setting; off-street parking; located just minutes from UB’s South Campus. New features include all new finishes; new high-efficiency heating & cooling, windows and much more. Upper unit features vaulted ceilings.

No pets/no smoking. $695 lower; $795 upper unit. Call Jennifer at 716-743-7398 for more info.

AMHERST – SOUTH CAMPUS/ safe side of Main. Quiet Architect students looking for serious male roommate. Excellent condition, private bedroom, big closet, laundry, parking & dishwasher. Available now & May. 5 minute walk to Crosby Hall. $295+ share of utilities, 716-400-9663.

HOUSE FOR RENT

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Available 3 bdrms at Holly’s Vineyard and 4 bdrms at Alexander Estates Sweet Home Road North Campus

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DAILY

DELIGHTS

Crossword

SPONSORED BY University Village at Sweethome and Villas at Chestnut Ridge

Visit ubspectrum.com/games for our online game of the week Also see the crossword and Sudoku answers from last issue

Crossword ACROSS 1 Group of quail 5 Humane org.

10 Apparel 14 Hodgepodge 15 Joyous outburst 16 Eurasian range 17 Watermelon part 18 Turbaned seer 19 Signature 20 Dawn horse epoch 22 Forwarded on 24 Stone monument 25 Brags 26 Facile 28 Princess topper 32 Strong connection 35 A Gershwin 37 Glossy paint 38 Eco-friendly feds 39 Peace Prize founder 41 Mir successor 42 Pinball palace 45 Underwater shocker 46 Nix 47 Tenth US president 48 Syrup brand 50 Gaucho’s nooses 54 1950s record 58 Open 61 Mild protests (hyph.)

62 Tree anchor 63 Unmoving 65 Formic acid makers 66 Miner’s quest 67 “Cannery Row” star 68 Crawford’s ex 69 The — the limit!

70 Wave hello 71 Son of Aphrodite DOWN 1 Drills 2 George who was a she 3 Lombardi 4 Called from the Tyrol 5 Domed recess

6

ALUMNI ISSUE FRIday, APRIL 8, 2011 v THE SPECTRUM

6 Got a load of 7 Porous gem 8 Brief guest appearance 9 True inner self 10 Mediterranean country 11 By mouth 12 Monopoly or solitaire 13 Husky’s burden 21 Teachers’ org.

23 Envelope abbr.

25 Pita sandwich 27 Calculator key 29 Yves’ girl 30 Break 31 Too 32 Ready to drop 33 Nashville landmark 34 Ocean compound 36 Homer Simpson’s dad 37 La senorita 40 Cartoon shrieks 43 Fills with fizz 44 Trickle down 46 120 or 240

49 King, to monsieur 51 Mimicry 52 Male vocalist 53 An Astaire 55 Train restaurant 56 Lead-in 57 Slalom runs 58 WWW addresses

59 Alcove 60 Buffalo Bill — 61 Dele canceler 64 Tpk.

Sudoku – Difficulty 3/5

The Spectrum in the ’60s

So, I presented my portfolio of drawings to Bob Budiansky, the Graphics Editor of The Spectrum at the time. Bob said that I had zero talent, but to keep trying.

RICHARD SCHWAB Former Managing Editor

Although I partly agreed with his assessment, he was kind of rough on me—which propelled me to work even harder. And I did.

If I could give some advice to current Spectrum staffers, it would be this: keep a journal. What a joy it would be for me if I could reopen a log and relive those halcyon days of the late 1960s, when I was so closely associated with The Spectrum!

Two years later, I was the graphics editor of The Spectrum thanks to my professor Don Nichols, Tom Lincoln (editor of Ethos Magazine), and the visionary Student Editors Brett Kline and Jay Rosen. They could see talent in development, and I appreciated that. I have to admit that the “Steve Stagnation alias Clint Coolberg” series I authored in Ethos was kind of juvenile.

However, it sure was fun creating a retro-’60s drug-culture cartoon.

A Broad Spectrum of Thanks to The Spectrum KEN ZIERLERGraphics Editor ’79 In 1975 I was bored. It was difficult to stay awake during Professor Pope’s lecture on U.S. Western Expansionism. Gallons of java from “The Underground” did not help. It seemed the only exercise that I was interested in was illustrating, and I had no formal art training.

While I received a bachelor’s degree in economics and politics from UB, I really devoted a majority of my time and energy to The Spectrum. The newspaper office was my home on campus, pretty much the center of my social life, and the launching point for a satisfying career in journalism.

I learned so much about creating a newspaper during those years. The late nights listening to WBUF, working with Pam Jensen and the photo crew developing pictures at midnight. I even learned about the business side of selling ad space, which has helped me get where I am today: vice-president, associate creative director at a large pharmaceutical/health care advertising agency in New York City. Now I can apply my business and creative talents together in one career.

As a freshman, I was assigned to interview the dean of students, Dr. Richard Siggelkow, on UB’s interpretation of the “in loco parentis” doctrine. I came back with a jumble of notes as the dean talked all around the subject without really making anything clear.

But he was a pleasant and engaging fellow, and I kept in contact with him over the years and long after his retirement.

The Spectrum: Thanks for everything.

As a sophomore, I covered the Student Senate, and surprised a few of

the senators with accurate quotes, including such gems as “jeez!” and “zounds!”

I shared managing editor duties my junior year with Richard (Dick) Haynes, and those duties included overseeing paste-up of the paper at Partners Press. For me that meant taking a bus ride once a week to the printers’ shop on Delaware Avenue, where I got my first real introduction to a union shop, and learned skills I later utilized as a weekly newspaper editor in Hawkinsville, Ga.; Idaho Springs, Colo.; Friday Harbor, Wash., and Ligonier, Pa. One of my favorite assignments was attending a preview of a new movie

by Mike Nichols in New York City. Student editors from across the country were invited to preview The Graduate, and then discuss it with the director. We all loved the ending, of course, and the music by Simon & Garfunkel.

That movie did fairly well at the box office.

It wasn’t all work and no play. After the latest issue was put to bed twice a week, we often ran out to IHOP for pancakes, or to one of the nearby watering holes for a beer and a beef on ‘weck. This was when the legal drinking age in New York was still 18, and before “Buffalo wings” were invented. We also hosted quite a number of Spectrum parties at our apartment on Lexington Avenue. UB President Mar-

tin Meyerson was a surprise guest at one such affair, but didn’t stay long.

Near the end of my junior year, students wrote a new constitution and decided to shift to a “town meeting” type of government. My editor, Mike D’Amico, and the SA president, Stu Edelstein, talked me into running for president, which I agreed to do – and I won. So I spent my senior year (196869) trying to figure out how to operate this new form of government amidst a rising tide of student discontent.

I learned I’d rather be writing the news than making it, but we did make headway on the important issue of developing an integrated workforce to construct the “new” UB campus.

I also got to meet Governor Nelson Rockefeller in Albany.

I returned to writing for The Spectrum after my term concluded, concentrating on statewide issues. The skills I learned helped me launch my career in journalism at the Olean Times Herald, and then on to editing a series of weekly newspapers.

Looking back, I think The Spectrum did a great job of reflecting the tumultuous times we lived through in the late 1960s because we had such a talented and enterprising staff, and I’m proud to have been associated with the publication during that era.

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For all articles Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com

3/22/11 1:20:58 PM ALUMNI ISSUE FRIday, APRIL 8, 2011 v THE SPECTRUM 7

An Accidental Beginning

with paper coming off the wire.

My entry to the world of The Spectrum was accidental, arising out of the swimming accomplishments of my then-boyfriend and the UB swim team not being reported on. When I asked why they weren’t, I was invited by sports editor Danny Edelman to report on them. My reporting jobs grew; I became assistant sports editor, and then, sports editor – pretty unusual for a college girl in 1969 and 1970. After others covered most of the varsity football games, I decided to assign myself a game, and rode with the team to Philadelphia (my first air-

SHARYN G. ROGERS Sports Editor ‘69 ‘70 Spectrum Memories …1969, 1970… deadlines, hanging out at The Spectrum offices at Norton Hall (the original one), and the excitement of being at a real center of activity and “happenings” (including, right outside our windows, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations complete with tear gas and police in riot gear), and keeping up on the news – the old way,

plane ride!) for the UB-Villanova game in November 1969. During halftime, I was interviewed on the Buffalo radio station broadcasting the game back to Buffalo!

As I wrote, interviewed, edited, and attended athletic events, I learned a lot. I still enjoy watching football and other sports. I constantly write and edit as an attorney (and I still have to meet deadlines!).

To this day, I remain amazed at the raw talent of The Spectrum staff in those years. It’s always a thrill to see their current bylines and work in journalism

.

Contemporary American Ethnomusicology

1983

BILLY ALTMANMusic Editor ’73 Did you know that were it not for The Spectrum, punk rock may never have happened?

It was the spring of 1973, and after nearly six years as an undergraduate (don’t ask), I was finally nearing the end of my nearly-as-long run as music editor on the paper’s arts & entertainment staff. My Spectrum career had started back in freshman year, when I sent in so many letters complaining about quality of the music pieces that were running that the then-entertainment editor, Jim Brennan, sought me out and called my bluff.

If I thought I knew so much about music, he said, maybe I should prove it by writing my own pieces for the paper.

Suffice it to say that I took the bait and started contributing to the paper, and the following year, when Brennan became editor in chief, I became music editor, and before long I was devoting far too much time to the paper and far too little to my studies (which is why it took me six years to graduate).

In fact, so consumed was I by listening to and writing about rock and roll that at some point I successfully petitioned the school to let me pursue a double major: English and (to give it a ring of academia) “Contemporary American Ethnomusicology.”

While earning a BA in Rock from an accredited institute of higher learning was certainly a cool thing in its day (while it’s never directly gotten me a penny’s worth of work, it does look good on the resume), I’m probably prouder of my two biggest personal achievements at The Spectrum.

In either 1969 or 1970 (too many brain cells under the bridge for me to recall precisely), we were getting so many music, film, theater and literature articles bumped from the Monday and Wednesday editions because of (ostensibly) more important news stories that I led a small revolt, which resulted in the establishment of the freestanding Friday arts sup-

A Sportswriter’s Springboard STEVE SCHUELEINSports Editor ’64-’67 plement The Prodigal Sun. I named it, Tom Toles drew the logo for it – and the rest, as Spectrum staffers and readers for decades to follow know pretty well, is history.

History also notes that, in the spring of 1973, the first issue of the first magazine ever called Punk appeared – as a “special supplement” to The Spectrum!

How did we pull it off?

Well, in those days, The Spectrum used to budget a monthly feature magazine called Dimension which, under the supervision of the paper’s different departments, focused in on various topics and issues. And when I found out that it was the music department’s turn that year, I decided to try and create a “fanzine” that reflected an emerging new musical aesthetic – one that frowned on things like progressive rock from the UK and country-rock from Southern California and, instead, touted the more, shall we say, “primitive” values of old school garage rock and new school glam rock as ones to aspire to.

With the considerable help of my fellow Spectrum music freak, the late – and great – Joe Fernbacher, I managed to talk Editor in Chief JoAnn Armao and Managing Editor Jeff Greenwald into giving us the go-ahead for the project, and with the layout and production crew’s unquestioning assistance, we made our out-of-left-field dream a reality. On May 7, 1973, stuffed inside issues of that day’s Spectrum, was the 20-page inaugural edition of Punk Magazine devoted to (as I said in my editor’s

A College CourseSaving Story RICHARD KORMAN Editor in Chief ’76-’77 I was a skinny, scatter-brained freshman in late fall, 1974, when I found my way to the old office of The Spectrum on the Main Street campus in 355 Norton Hall, now Squire Hall. The newsroom had a casual grandeur. On the tables and desks were old manual typewriters with parched ribbons, but on top of some files along one wall were piled carelessly the august black bound volumes of past years’ issues, including the intriguing Spring, 1970 semester with coverage of the student demonstrations and police occupation of the campus.

Leaning back on a chair with two worn boots up on one of the desks was a boy with gold hair falling around his face.

His name was Gary Cohn, one of the campus news editors. His reputation for

note) “rock ‘n’ roll, sports, and anything else that isn’t boring.”

On the cover were the Seeds, the snotty mid-1960s L.A. quartet known for their one-hit wonder “Pushin’ Too Hard,” and inside were stories on topics ranging from the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Hawaii’s Don Ho being separated-at-birth twins to Happy Humphrey, Fritz Von Erich and other stars of professional wrestling, as well as a double-truck horror fantasy comic strip (written by me, drawn by the aforementioned future Pulitzer Prize winner Mr. Toles) starring David Bowie and Lou Reed as lab-created rock star monsters.

That first issue of Punk drew great response; we actually made some noise nationally. While I only wound up publishing one more issue on my own before graduation, and the realities of actually trying to make a living as a writer led me to finally leave Buffalo and seek fame, if not fortune, back home in New York City, my Spectrum memories remain some of the happiest and most cherished of my entire life.

Just remember, Brennan, it’s all your fault.

Billy Altman has spent more than 40 years writing about “rock ‘n’ roll, sports and anything else that isn’t boring.” A consulting curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a past winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Journalism, he teaches in the Humanities Department of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

gung-ho relentlessness and willingness to challenge the authority of the university administration led some of the other editors to refer to him affectionately as Mad Dog. He and the other editors had a junior and senior class hauteur that I admired.

A short while later, in January, The Spectrum’s editors put me into a brief partnership with Cohn.

The university was in the process of reigning in its several experimental colleges, where instructors could qualify via life experience rather than with traditional academic credentials. The vice president for academic affairs, a law-and-order educational conservative named Dr. Bernard Gelbaum, took the lead. A mathematician known for his boldness, Gelbaum had actually appointed himself to take charge of running the Colleges. With the 1974 spring semester a couple of weeks old, he canceled more than a dozen classes offered

by College E, courses that included Bob Dylan and Bhakti Yoga. He said instructors hadn’t filed proper credentials or letters of sponsorship from faculty.

Times were changing everywhere during the 1960s. When I began my freshman year in the fall of 1963, seniors ruled the campus. By the time I graduated in the spring of 1967, freshmen had taken over.

I had dabbled in sports journalism as a high school senior and enrolled as a liberal arts major. I wasn’t completely sure that I wanted to pursue a career in journalism – I think my parents always hoped I would be a lawyer – but I followed my passion. My years at UB convinced me the decision was right since I always found myself attracted to the Spectrum office with its endless cast of colorful characters and creative energy.

I look back gratefully for my time at UB, first for providing me with an education that could be applied to my writing, second for furnishing an environment that made me think, and third for giving me a chance to learn and grow as a writer at The Spectrum.

I recall as a freshman watching an undersized defensive end named Gerry Philbin use Rotary Field as a proving ground for all-pro stardom with the New York Jets and as a senior accompanying the football team to a game at Tampa University. I thought a warm November weekend in Florida was a nice perk to the job but encountered an unexpectedly tough news assignment when most team members were stricken with food poisoning from their last meal before the game. Players were sprawled along the sideline vomiting, but somehow the game was played as UB lost handily.

I remember long-time athletic director Jim Peelle as an old-school administrator who tried to strike a proper balance between establishing policy and staying informed on one hand while giving coaches and the press breathing room on the other.

To student editors it looked like a deliberate blow directed at the heart of innovative education—and a grand inconvenience to all students who had registered for those classes.

Some combination of Cohn and Campus Editors Larry Kraftowitz and Amy Dunkin put me on a reporting team to assist Cohn with the story. The next evening we arranged for a tall, cornstalkthin hippie with waist-length gray hair and beard—his name was Benjamin, no last name—to bring me to a small, basement office belonging to Gelbaum’s assistant for the Colleges. Benjamin directed me to a file cabinet.

At a later stage of my college life I might have paused briefly before riffling through the files of a university administrator. But I was a freshman and I was teamed with Mad Dog Cohn.

I found many of the instructor credentials for the cancelled courses in the file and copied the contents. It was Wednesday, January 23.

The next day Gary wrote the main text, documenting Gelbaum’s hasty overstep-

The basketball coach at that time did not see the role of the campus press the same way.

I wrote one story expressing disappointment with a downgraded schedule in which several opponents had been replaced with weaker ones. Although I considered the story relatively innocuous, the coach called me on the carpet and told me that as a student at UB, it was my duty to look through rosecolored glasses. His background was apparently not in journalism.

The most interesting story during my time was not in sports. During my freshman year, the famous Thallus of Marchantia hoax took place. A group of student pranksters sent out press releases of dubious credibility that a controversial leader from the Middle East with that questionable title was scheduled to speak at UB at a future date. More releases were sent out as the date neared, and local newspapers bit hook-line-andsinker, only to discover at the airport a turban-clad UB freshman masquerading as the fictitious figure.

Red-faced professional media had violated the basic tenet of simply checking your facts.

The Spectrum experience enabled me to earn summer internships at the since defunct Courier-Express during the summers of 1965 and 1966, further assuring me I was making the right career choice.

After graduation, I enrolled at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, where I earned an M.A. two years later. I often felt the knowledge gained from the varied liberal arts courses during my undergrad days complemented the later knowledge acquired in graduate school journalism classes to prepare me for a career that has lasted more than 40 years.

After working as a sportswriter for the since defunct Syracuse Herald-Journal from 197077 and The Buffalo News from 1977-81, I moved to California to continue my career in newspaper and magazine sports journalism. I still follow UB sports as well as I can and only hope that current Spectrum staffers find their experience at UB as invaluable as I have.

ping—there had been miscommunication about the instructor credentials, obviously—and the clumsy responses of other administrators. I chipped in information and typed up summaries of the instructors’ credentials. The Spectrum’s talented graphic artist, Bob Budiansky, drew an illustration of Gelbaum ripping apart a university course listing. That became the Spectrum cover for the issue delivered Friday, January 25.

opinion than to time-consuming investigative stories, but only some of the slack has been picked up by not-for-profits such as ProPublica. Gary and other investigative journalists, such as Brant Houston of the University of Illinois, have served as role models for this vital but underfunded type of public service.

Their work can never be completely replaced by ProPublica, or a website such as Wikileaks, especially at the local level.

Within a few days the university’s president, Robert Ketter, restored most of the canceled classes. And so on the cover of the next issue of The Spectrum appeared another illustration of the course schedule, but this time with a band-aid binding the halves that Gelbaum had “torn.”

As for me, I experienced a visceral journalistic thrill that has never completely faded. It has led to a life of interviews, deadlines, documents, facts, ideas, rejections, triumphs, travel, tweets, and words, mountains of words. I trace it back to the course-cancellation story, the detested Dr. Gelbaum and the Spectrum journalists who generously mentored me.

For the moment, The Spectrum had helped to repel the conservative assault against educational innovation. And John Dewey smiled down on us. Gary became an investigative reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize and is now a freelance journalist and part-time faculty at the University of Southern California. Newspapers and media companies these days devote more attention to blogging and

Richard Korman was editor in chief, 1976-1977. He is managing senior editor of ENR.com and his freelance writing appears on Miller-McCune.com.