Little did I know that there was a little tradition where the previous e-i-c would vandalize the office in some way before handing it off to the next e-i-c. When I went in the office during the first day of my new job, I was confronted with... let's just say very graphic bits and pieces of several adult magazines. The group had done a very thorough job of... decorating my office. It took me weeks before I found everything: between the folders in the file cabinet, taped to the bottom of my phone, in every single drawer of my desk, between seat cushions, etc. In mortifying weeks to follow, at least one person a day would come into my office, reach over, and hand me a bit of pornography and say "Oh here, you missed one." It was at least January of the next year before I felt completely confident that I had purged my office.

Oh no, folks. It gets worse. One day, I was talking to a student who I had been mentoring in one of my previous jobs. I was sitting next to her at one of the armchairs in front of my desk. As I was listening to her, my eyes wondered up casually to the blinking smoke detector. To my horror I saw, taped to the outside of the smoke detector, plain as day, a cut out picture of male genitalia.

My breath caught. I stopped mid-sentence. Do you know how many people had been in my office by then? I had held interviews for my entire staff, I had interviewed important people for story articles and I had hosted campus administrators. How many people had done what I had just done while sitting in that armchair and thought that I, a sweet, innocent, young girl was some kind of pervert? And how could I have missed such an obvious place for almost 6 months?

I turned bright red, trying to keep calm. My mentee asked me what was the matter as she looked up to see where I was looking at. She started to ask, "Hey, is that a--" I violently shook my head, grabbed her by the arm, said I wasn't feeling very well and led her out the door, promising to call her later to continue the conversation. Quickly, I climbed on my desk, ripped off the offending bit of paper (and it was just a bit, poor guy) and tore it into many pieces before throwing it away.