A journalism department tradition here at Hastings High is for the seniors to take down a tile from the J-Room ceiling and to decorate it to their heart’s content. Due to this, the ceiling in the J-Room is adorned with brightly colored tiles depicting the names of journalism students of yesteryear.
Earlier this week, I was feeling bored during my fourth and sixth period opens. Done with all of my homework and feeling curious, I decided to look up some of the former journalism students on Facebook.
On the Tiger Cub tile of 2000, I found a particularly interesting entry. An Italian flag surrounded by self-proclaimed titles such as Lord of the Nerds and Italian Stallion signified Bob Scaccia’s mark on the tile. A quick search on Facebook led me to the Italian Stallion himself.
I took a picture of the tile and messaged him asking if this was indeed his handiwork or if I had the wrong Bob Scaccia. It wasn’t until about five hours later that I got a response from him confirming that he was the Online Editor for the Tiger Cub all those years ago.
Scaccia was shocked to learn that his tile was still on display in the J-Room.
“I can’t believe they haven’t replaced those tiles yet. That’s 17 years old. Me and Tyler, not sure if he’s on the tile or not, were the first ever Online Editors of the Tiger Cub. We put it on the Internet for the first time,” Scaccia said.
After learning that the Tiger Cub is an almost entirely online operation nowadays with a literary magazine published quarterly, Scaccia reminisced about print only problems.
“Funny, if everything is mostly online now when there is a ‘mistake’ you can fix it in a matter of seconds. I remember our Editor-in-Chief making a mistake, and all of us feverishly crossing out parts before handing out the paper,” Scaccia said.
Scaccia provided a specific example of a mistake that needed to be retracted before handing the paper out to the student body.
“There was a picture that he took and didn’t have time at the moment for a quote, so under the picture he just put ‘Some dumbass quote will go here’ and it got sent to the printer like that,” Scaccia said.
It’s funny how a little bit of curiosity led to me, the current co-editor of the Tiger Cub, to the first Online Editor, one of the men responsible for bringing this publication to the digital age. Maybe if we all took the time to take in our surroundings and listen to messages from the past, we’d all learn a thing or two.
