Billikens, I have a confession. We all have our own guilty pleasures in this world and mine is reading the SLU Scoop every week in this very paper. I’ve been an avid reader of the UNews for three years, but no column, no article, no interview has given me greater joy than the SLU Scoop column. Food and music reviews are great and all but they do not make me cackle.

Whenever the SLU Scoop is featured I squeal with delight and then proceed to read it aloud to my friends, roommates, strangers, statues, squirrels, whoever is around at the moment. I then proceed to cut it out of the paper and hang it on my fridge to marvel at throughout the week like it is my third grade art project or a test I got an A on.

The comedy literally writes itself. elevator entrapments, accidental injuries, found quarters, stolen bath towels, non-criminal property damage, peace disturbances, fire alarms, untied Shoelaces, broken pinky swears. There is nothing more hilarious than reading about how someone’s bath towels were taken from the laundry room without a trace, or how two drunken students punched each other in the face on Laclede.

All of this makes me wonder, who, on instinct calls DPS when they break a fingernail?  Now I know there are, on occasion, serious news reported in this section. The occasional car break-in, theft, serious property damage, etc. are all important things to report to DPSEP and should help us all become more responsible Billikens. But, c’mon, someone slamming his or her ingers in a doorway in a residence hall is not an incident that requires DPSEP attention or news coverage.

This also begs the question, how often are DPSEP’s emergency phone lines tied up because someone is reporting something trivial, when there are people out there with real safety concerns or serious events going on that they need to report? If I get robbed and cannot get through to DPSEP because someone is trying to report stolen towels I will probably come by and steal their sheets as well.

If I were a better person, I would point my finger at all of you who report trivial things to DPSEP and tell you to stop doing it. But I’m not going to do that because I do not know how to live without the laughs from the SLU Scoop in my life.  I found myself rather upset that this past week was apparently a slow week for hitting our friends in the face with baseballs, because only three stories were featured. Three stories for campus of over 8,000 students? Really?  C’mon friends, do not hold out on us.

I might have to start calling DPSEP every time I spill my hot coffee on myself or burn myself on the oven or accidently trip on West Pine just so I have something to laugh about when the paper comes out.  In fact, I think we should all start reporting so much that the editors have to sift through all the reports to pick the best ones to print. I would love to see this campus band together and get fired up about campus safety. So stop, call and report, you $20 bill finders, laundry room police and paper cut sufferers. Without you I don’t get to laugh on Thursdays.