Student story: Life on the Kedzie Krier for three days

By Emma Eveld/Advanced Writing

The conversations that happen on the “Kedzie Krier” staff aren’t typical teenage fodder.

“Overpack. Is that one word or two words?”

“Two, right? I mean, I think it is.”

“Someone go to dictionary.com!”

“It has to be two words. I swear.”

“Nope, I just checked. It’s one. Ha!”

This is just one example of the types of conversations floating around the “Kedzie Krier” “Royal Purple” publication room. These kids aren’t the normal staff as fewer campers applied than previous years. And they have less time since workshop days are shorter by about three hours.

These Flint Hills Publication Workshop campers applied to be on the “Kedzie Krier,” the camp newspaper, to get the fast-paced experience of life on a college newspaper.

“My teacher [Alison Long] thought that applying would be good for Maura [Eveld] and I because we’re going to be co-editors for our newspaper next year, and we need to experience that sort of time crunch and work together,” said Delaney Bates, from Notre Dame de Sion High School in Kansas City, Mo.

Their goal is to produce a copy of the newspaper in only three days -- in time for other campers to have their own copy to take home.

“It’s a little overwhelming because we have to be done with the paper in three days when usually at my school we get about two weeks to finish it,” said Jen Manning, from Kapaun-Mount Carmel High School in Wichita.

Some staffers described working in the grape purple room as crazy and chaotic, while others said it was laid back. Kyler Jost, from McPherson High School, described the room’s atmosphere as a “five person ant farm.”  

As for the work load, the “Krier” staffers agreed it seemed like a lot as they scurried around campus to interview people and then bolted back to write and layout graphics and pages.  

In their temporary newsroom, papers were scattered in clumps and wide-screened Macintosh computers lined the wall of windows. Chairs squeaked and chatter faded in and out. The click-click tapping noise from keyboards was a common sound.  

They even had a giant white board perched at the front of the room with names, story ideas and assignments that needed to be attended to.

“Once someone completes something, Caroline, one of our editors and teachers, checks it off,” said Maura Eveld, from Notre Dame de Sion. “It really keeps us organized.”

Staff members are excited for the paper to come out the last day at camp and agree it will be top notch. Even if the room seemed a little chaotic, they said everything was going according to plan.

“I guess the best way to describe it is ‘organized chaos,’ ” Manning said.