A friend of mine approached me one night, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Graham, I read your columns every week.”

“Wow. Thanks a lot,” I replied.

“But I don’t like them,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m getting kinda sick of them too,” I admitted. “Tell me what you don’t like, and I’ll try to improve.”

“Well,” he mused, “it’s just that they’re getting boring. You should write about other stuff. You know, stuff that happens outside of Binghamton. Stuff that’s ACTUALLY important.”

“I agree with you 100 percent!” I exclaimed. “The problem is that I’m not allowed to.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“My overlords, who we’ll refer to as Liam, Norman and Matt Zeidel, have a rule for all columns: every single one has to relate to student life in some way.”

My wise friend was aghast, “That’s pretty lame, you should be allowed to write about whatever you want.”

“I agree,” I said, “Their restrictions are pretty flaky. Limiting the subject matter only serves to detract from the quality of the op/ed section.”

Not long after that conversation I broached the subject with Liam and Norman. I was informed that they, and Matt Zeidel, felt that since Pipe Dream is a student newspaper, it was appropriate to limit the subject matter to material that specifically relates to students.

What silliness! The notion that the only stuff SUNY-Binghamton students will read about is campus-life is ridiculous. It makes Binghamton students sound horribly self-absorbed, when, in fact, not every student is.

So here’s my plan:

If anyone reads this, and agrees that we should be allowed to have a much broader range of subject matter to draw from — or even just doesn’t like Pipe Dream and likes to give the editors hell, write a letter to the editor saying so. He can be reached at editor@bupipdream.com. Feel free to be belligerent and obscene in the e-mails. You might want to throw in some references to the smegma fetish I hear he has.

Graham Kates is a junior political science major.