By Katherine Love
Expectations might define Linda Puntney as the Miranda Priestly of the K-State Publications department: perched dawn to dusk in a big leather chair in a big elegant office taking phone calls every 10 minutes in-between dissatisfied moans towards the final, student-edited copy of Royal Purple. One might assume she collects Dolce and Gabbana purses and wouldn’t have the time or care to meet the masses of student campers who dream of meeting or interviewing the renowned Linda Puntney.
But Puntney does not comply with expectations.
First, she is simple but cute.
For first impressions, a five-and-a-half-foot tall, gum-chewing, light-blond short-haired woman dressed in a white camp T-shirt, white pants and lavender Converse covered with white polka-dots, walks with spring in her step towards the front of the noisy, student-packed ballroom as she kicked off the Flint Hills Student Publications Workshop Sunday.
She is energetic.
Skipping across the front of the room, she shouts, “Who wants a hat? Who wants a shirt?” as she grabs handfuls of K-State apparel from a Tupperware box and tosses them into the loud, cheering pack of teenagers.
She is funny.
After welcoming the students and introducing the staff members, she says, “What happens in Manhatten, does not need to stay in Manhatten.”
She also announces that the Flint Hills Journalism Workshop is her favorite week of the year.
“OK, enough with the soapbox,” Puntney says, switching gears to explain camp rules, including that boys and girls in the same room past 11 p.m. must leave the door open and keep feet on the floor in addition to a resounding “No drugs. No booze. No babies,” with help from the rest of the staff.
She is quick.
To pass the time while guest speaker Judy Thomas takes a break, Puntney jumps up to the front, exclaiming, “While we wait for Judy, we are going to get pumped up! We’re going to do a cheer!” The students jump to their feet and follow along with the thigh-patting, hand-clapping, publication name-shouting action.
She does the small jobs.
During dinner in the hotel ballroom, she greets campers as they walk in the door, telling them, “Hi! Sit wherever you’d like.” She constantly checks that the food bins are not running low.
As it turns out, there is no Dolce and Gabbana. Rather, from style to spirit to work ethic and everything in-between, Linda Puntney clearly defies the posh and bossy workaholic stereotype who both teaches and travels extensively in planning national conferences as executive director of the Journalism Education Association.
When Meredith Osborne, an Advanced Newspaper Writing student, asks what position Puntney holds, group leader Barbara Hollingsworth responds, “Everything… If she retires, we will have to hire five people to do her job.”
Katherine Love is a junior at Notre Dame de Sion and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publication Workshop.
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