opinion

100 Years: Today marks our 100th anniversary

Over the past few months, I found myself sitting on an empty floor with seven other editors in an abandoned building on Brevard, sifting through one hundred years of newspapers. The abandoned building was our former newsroom.

Today, our old old office sits vacant of everything except for decrepit bound books—filled with news stories of Tallahassee's past, all labeled, "keep." With each day sitting on that floor, we grew closer together and got deeper in these books, sharing stories we found of streaking and Beatles conspiracy theorists, of editors getting into physical altercations with politicians and the impending threat of communism.

It's 2015, and according to the cynics, newspapers are dead. But we are captivated by these faded broadsheets, they are still so alive, howling at us about racial segregation, riot police occupying campus, rape allegations and serial murderers terrorizing the university. Print was and is the last living artifact of our history. We shouldn't lose it.

In this commemorative issue, we've compiled the richest, most compelling stories we found from Florida State's comprehensive history—from World War I to bus boycotts during the Civil Rights era, the Bobby Bowden era and when girls were finally permitted to dance with boys. We invited past editors to write about the FSView-Flambeau and share how the publication personally touched them. As you flip through these pages you will find yourself amongst frozen snapshots, stories locked neatly and permanently in print for all time.

In these past few months, our staff poured ourselves into these books, traveling through times when women couldn't vote but vowed to use their voice anyway. I read about our first editor Ruby Leach, the "ladies of Florida State" and how they firmly called out the men at the Alligator for being chauvinists.

They published the first African Americans to enroll in school much to the dismay of politicians in the area. Others tried and tried and tried to stop them, but the Flambeau voice could not be stifled.

In the 1950s, former News Editor Martin Dyckman toed the line of censorship when speaking out in the Flambeau against racial segregation. Back in the Flambeau for the first time in 50 years, Dyckman discusses on page 8 the paper's role at the university during its tumultuous, racially segregated past.

Dyckman said the question was never, "Is it news?" but, "Dare we print it?" Politicians were never happy with us—Dyckman said Doak Campbell tried to censor the Flambeau several times over their progressive views on racial desegregation. Eventually, the university managed to kick us off campus in the 1970s. Our funding has often been taken, our buildings seized and our voices criticized. But the Flambeau voice is powerful and unyielding.

Editors of the FSView-Flambeau often tell new writers that our publication is Florida State's journalism school. None of us have learned much of value from sitting in a classroom—the true learning comes from publishing a photo of your commendable African American classmate even though the University president told you not to, and dealing with the consequences. It is our staff coming together last November to deliver the most compelling, comprehensive editorial coverage in wake of a tragic shooting in our own school's library. It is challenging authority and speaking even when told not to.

As the mantra of the Flambeau has always been, we have managed to "to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." We have done so for the past 100 years. I don't think we'll ever stop.