By Kabs Kanu
The Warden of Students, Dan Decker (Dan Diddo), was a very interesting individual. He used to have his plate full of complaints whenever AUREOL TIMES came out. The AUREOL TIMES of those days was the epitome of satirical journalism, lampoons and jokes in bad taste. Girls of Lati Hyde used to run to his office crying after being stung by the biting sarcasm or lampoon of the AUREOL TIMES.
It was the days of very brilliant and creative satire in journalism.
Some of us working on that paper or editing it barely escaped rustication. We came close to being expelled. Winston Webber, Andrew Bangali, Mohamed El Yayyib Bah, Abioseh Porter, Emmanuel Grant, Fresco Staffa, Mohamed Jalloh, Kenneth Segun Osho, Kwame Fitzjohn, Sylvester Moses, Larry Domingo (who was the student lawyer inundated with libel cases) and others still alive are living witnesses. Rustication was one of Dan Diddo‘s favorite words. Dan was a firm but fair disciplinarian. May his soul rest in perpetual peace. Though a disciplinarian, we loved him, despite his constant threats to ‘rusticate’ us.
One day, I was summoned to his office by Gbessay, his office help. I went there only to meet a bevy of Lati Hyders, fuming and demanding my expulsion because they thought that some scurrilous jokes made about them by AUREOL TIMES were written by me. Dan Diddo was vexed and his famous moustache that often helped accentuate his moody and angry face, were standing on end. He sympathized with the girl and said if I did it that was lowdown and mean. But at the same time, being a fair man, he wanted to have proof that I was actually behind the sardonic jokes. The ladies were insisting that they knew because it was my style of writing on CHUKS press. However, Dan Diddo wanted tangible proof, but they could not provide it; so he discharged me ( Another of his favorite words ) but with a very stern warning behind his critical- eyed glasses to me to stop testing his patience.
But nor men O. Dan Decker liked me a whole lot. He said it one day when Kwame Fitzjohn dragged me to his office for some blistering articles against him, Sorie Dumbuya and a short, temperamental student, Carew, who were members of the Sorie Turay camp that was vying for power with the Foday Kallon group that had people like Kanji Daramy and your humble servant.
Like the father he always also tried to be, Dan Diddo resolved the matter between me and my buddy Kwame Cumale, and he appeased him by saying some complimentary things about his father, former Ambassador W.H. Fitzjohn, with whom he once worked in government when Dan was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence. Then right before Kwame, Dan said that though I was a troublesome young man, there was one thing he could not take from me. I was helping him a lot through my journalism on campus because I was exposing anti-social students behaviors that he would like to look into, because they fell within the purview of his job. One of them was an editorial I wrote in my newspaper, COCORIOKO about a girl a student ‘imported’ from Freetown, whom he later let loose in the dorm and the drunk girl was preyed upon by two other students. Dan was worried about the event, which was never reported to him and he was not aware of, at all.
He said he was an avid reader of my articles on CHUKS PRESS and in the various college newspapers, he said. When Kwame had left, still dissatisfied, Dan Decker told me to be careful with personal, defamatory attacks on students; but he said I was helping him a lot in his job and hoped I would continue it. He was even pleased with a follow-up article I wrote on CHUKS Press, titled: DAN DECKER CONCERNED ABOUT WELFARE OF FEMALES IMPORTED FROM DOWNTOWN BY STUDENTS. During the Freshers Dance at the Amphitheater that year, Dan D. spoke glowingly to my date and joked that though I was a troublesome young man, whose rough edges needed chiseling (Another famous Dan Diddo expression), she was out with somebody who was helping him by exposing delinquent student activities on campus.
Some “righteous “students held a dim view of CHUKS PRESS and campus journalism. They considered CHUKS PRESS a cesspool of prurient, lascivious, licentious, uncontrolled and reckless journalism, but these prudes were wrong. CHUKS PRESS had its unsavory days, especially during bitter press wars between contending campus writers and opinion leaders. But it was also the battleground for the intellectual and reasoned arguments and debates on national and campus politics. We had brilliant writers and debaters, though many went into oblivion after graduating from college.
