Before my cab picked me up and brought me back to Florida, I spent my last hour as a prospie walking around Norris, depressed about going back home. I had spent the last two days wishing I were already an NU student, not some girl from retirement-town looking forward to a hot, dull summer.

I had been Editor-in-chief of my paper in high school for two years, and was pretty sick of journalism and everything it meant in my life. Then I picked up my first copy of the Daily Northwestern.

While stories about Evanston politics or student group philanthropies didn’t interest me, that day’s column immediately drew my attention. Until today I remembered the story as a really progressive look at bondage and S&M in gay relationships, as written by a gay student columnist.

While none of it really applied to my life, I was in awe that any student newspaper could print information about sex and dating outside of the normal “school board reviews district’s abstinence only policy,” type of story I was used to covering.

When I was Features Editor of my high school paper administrators had removed a story about the morning after pill because it was “inappropriate.” Two days later a friend of mine went through a pregnancy scare, primarily because she didn’t know Plan B was legal. That was the moment I learned how much student newspapers could matter.

That column prompted me to rejoin a paper when I came to college, and now I’m going to be Spring Quarter’s Forum Editor. I’m calling for columnists to come in once a week and write around 550 words on what matters to them, whether it be volunteerism, global politics, Greek life, or fetishistic sexual practices. Okay, so there are like two words the Daily doesn’t print. But we can work around that.

I want columnists who have been around the block. Studied abroad, been in a cool student group, gotten arrested a few times. But even more than a judicial record I want a voice: people who really feel and care deeply about what’s going on around them, and take it on from their own, unique perspective.

So apply to be a columnist for the spring. You’ll almost definitely like it better than walking to bars in the snow. Email two sample columns and a 200-word bio to [email protected].

I just spent the last hour looking for that column I saw three years ago. Turns out, I totally misremembered it. Instead of an in-depth look at the sexually alternative lifestyles of NU students, it was a joke column filled with 2006 pop culture references to “Brokeback Mountain” and “Lazy Sunday.” The columnist was complaining that four months after “Brokeback” came out no one was laughing at his gay cowboy jokes anymore, including his dominatrix girlfriend, who had refused to whip him after one too many bad jokes.

Ok, so a little embarrassing for me. A huge part of my life is based on one potentially homophobic, certainly ridiculous column written by some guy who graduated before I even got on campus.

But here’s the thing. Three years later, as we read his column out loud, the whole newsroom was cracking up at jokes that at the time were oh-so-passé. And that’s what’s cool about writing a column. Because sometimes you just can’t know what kind of impact you’re going to have.

Weinberg junior Liz Coffin-Karlin can be reached at [email protected].