Thank heaven it’s spring, the season of renewal — and change.

Most specifically, the season when new Daily editors are chosen — especially the entertainment editor.

Somebody, please, tell me whose payroll Sarah Wolf is on, because her interests and sympathies patently do not lie with ISU and the university community.

Perhaps there was a survey conducted that I slept through where ISU students expressed an overwhelming interest in the “high culture” of Des Moines. That would explain the serious over-coverage of the Des Moines Ballet, Opera, Botanical Center and Living History Farms, all at the expense of local and ISU-sponsored entertainment. Either that, or she’s in training to take over the society page of the Register.

Maybe she’s actually a business major who just follows the money around — that might explain a half – page coverage of opening bands at Hilton, and the exclusion of monetarily lesser headliners at small-potatoes local venues.

Then again, she may be acting in loco parentis, deciding that ISU students should be studying more and being entertained less — that could account for the crying lack of a weekly events listing during her tenure.

By now, you’ve probably skipped to the end of this letter to find out who this bitter writer is and why. You may be surprised that the Maintenance Shop is a trifle teed off at the Daily.

That surprise could only be due to the fact that you don’t know what’s been going on at the M-Shop —because the Daily isn’t telling you.

At a time when students are clamoring for a place where you don’t have to be 21, like the M-Shop, as all the coverage outside of the Currents section has plainly stated — where’s the coverage of the M-Shop, the existing venue where you never have to be 21 and where $40,000 of your student fees are allocated annually so we can offer reduced ticket prices to students?

At a time when the Daily itself is making a serious effort to increase coverage of campus, faculty and staff news, where’s the coverage of the M-Shop, which was on campus the last time I checked, and where I (staff) work with (student) volunteers to bring quality entertainment to the ISU campus?

We treat the Daily like all the other news outlets in the area — they’re regularly bombarded with calendars, press releases and reminders of upcoming events.

We go out of our way to supply contact numbers for band interviews, bios and information to all area media outlets that ask on a daily basis.

I guess Sarah doesn’t care and won’t assign stories to any of her staff who do care, either, because the Daily is curiously devoid of M-Shop articles, while my office is overflowing with clippings from Cityview, the Register, Inside Iowa State and even the Campus Reader (a publication I thought was considered in direct competition with the Daily — everyone knows that the first rule of business is to keep up with the competition…)

I don’t expect major coverage of every show at the M-Shop, but I do expect balance, and I do expect coverage of big shows.

If you knew that De La Soul played at the Shop in February, you didn’t find it out in the Daily; they printed nary a word.

If you’re beating yourself on the head because you missed WAR last Sunday (y’know Low Rider, Cisco Kid, Slippin’ Into Darkness — that WAR) — talk to the Daily.

Sarah evidently thought (as usual) that the Botanical Center, Living History Farms and Friday night’s opener at People’s were more important.

If, as students, you want consistent information about local events that are available to all students all the time, you’d better start reading another paper, because you sure won’t find it here.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, though — the Daily is, after all, a student paper, and maybe Ms. Wolf is still just studying to be a journalist.

If so, she sure isn’t ready to pass an exam in the subject yet. Better luck next year, ISU.

Rusty Poehner is the Maintenance Shop Coordinator.