In the process of creating our student newspaper, we have grown accustomed to asking questions to stay informed. However, there is one question that gets asked of us that we cannot, for the life of us, find an answer to: What does “Rip” stand for?

There has been some conjecture over the years that it began because the paper would “rip” into people, but we find the morbid “Rest in Peace” more fitting after we’ve finished an issue, sent it off to the printer and finally are able to put it to bed.

However, to truly express what “Rip” stands for, we must first express what we as a newsroom stand for.

First off, the students in the Journalism programs B26 and B27 make this newspaper. Some of us have been on our high school papers and have experience, while some of us come in with absolutely zero knowledge of how to write an objective news story or take a journalistic style photo. What matters, though, is that we’re all set on making a quality paper and that means we’re all just rolling in potential, ready to go through the semester and learn the lessons we need to learn.

On any given day, someone in the newsroom is on a computer researching intently. They are possibly searching for story ideas or preparing for an interview, while simultaneously listening to the riveting, interesting pontification of our adviser.

When we’re not in the newsroom, we’re out finding relatively interesting people that we feel need to be featured. We contact officials and administration to cover the campus’s really important problems.

Sometimes after all that work, it seems writing it is the easy part, though we’re all still trying to master the Associated Press style so we hope readers will overlook our randomly incorrect punctuation. Then we take a blank computer screen and turn it into what we think is a reasonably ingenious page.

Once our paper is hot off of the presses, we distribute it to those on campus who rely intently on our publication for campus and community information.

This process of news judgment, taking pictures, finding, writing, editing a story, laying it out on a page and then having it published really ignites passion for this job.

While many would want our name to mean something risqué, ideological or powerful, we feel we don’t care much what the name “Rip” means as long as we continue to be reliable, independent, and proud to be so. In the end, we’re just a bunch of journalists in progress.