“The noise” in Forest Grove is still an enigma, but I think I have solved this. I believe media arts professor David Cassady creates this noise late in the night during layout week, as a way in letting The Pacific Index editorial staff know that their ledes are getting lazy and their grammar needs more work.
I think Cassady creates this noise ahead of time, records them and then presets it to the hours where he knows the editorial staff is still in the basement of Walter Hall. For every issue of the Index, Cassady makes edits to the published issue and gives it back to the staff with red marks all over the pages. Since he has been teaching at Pacific University for decades, I think he gets tired of having to mark up the same grammar mistakes in almost every issue. So, he created this noise.
“I heard this noise before late in the night, it’s a high pitch sound that’s pretty irritating once you know it’s there,” Student Life Editor Rhayn Abner said.
Co-Editor-in-Chief Janae Sargent has also said she heard this noise late in the night.
“The first time I heard this noise was at 11:30 p.m. on a Monday night during a layout week, then I heard it again at one and this was all during the time when I was writing an article,” Sargent said. “It was really weird, it was like something knew my I needed to reread my article and look for grammar mistakes.”
At one point, this noise was so frequent during layout nights on Monday and Tuesday that I thought it was for sure Dave making his presence known that he has eyes everywhere. Then, “the noise” started to happen throughout the week and even on the weekends, which weakened my theory. But, then I started to realize that this noise was becoming more and more frequent as I was writing my capstone articles for Cassady. Coincidence? Maybe, but I still think this is my advisor telling me that I still need to do a lot more work on my articles.
During a capstone meeting with Cassady, I happened to notice a notification pop up on his computer labeled, “editorial staff needs work” with time slots next to it. This may not be enough evidence to support my theory and this may just be senior paranoia, but I am sure the mystery noise is Dave Cassady howling in the night.
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