On Thursdays, Nass Alum Harold Parker couldn’t be found in the ivory towers of Princeton, but rather amidst the chaos, camaraderie, and cheap-boxed wine of the Terrace Library. Though now housed in Bloomberg Hall, the Nassau Weekly was a place where Parker could “throw ideas around for upcoming issues,” and let conversation run as freely as the vino. The Nass workplace was far more than just the weekly assignment of developing the upcoming issue. It was a refuge, “an all-hours hangout-spot.”
“I looked forward to it all week, and I loved hearing the ideas, reactions, and discoveries of my brilliant classmates, which I found, and still find, dazzling.” Parker noted how even today those uninhibited Terrace library sessions stuck with him: “That milieu has always remained a sort of social and cultural ideal for me.”
“As a writer, and unfortunately as an editor as well, I was a chronic blower-through of deadlines,” he admitted. But in those straining hours before an issue was to be printed, he and the other members, “powered by some disgusting food from the U-Store,” worked through the night to organize the upcoming issue. “I feel like 5:30 AM on Wednesday morning was a typical submission time.”
Beyond the late nights, Parker remembers that “physically getting the printed issue was always an arduous task.” Despite being barely able to drive, [he] once had to rent a Zipcar to pick up the printed issues. Funding was another struggle as staffers “scraped together enough ad money each week to actually pay the Packet” (the Princeton Packet was the previous printer of all Nass issues until 2015).
But between the struggle of completing issues and finding funds, the Nass still maintained its free spirit. Parker recounts that “once putting together an issue in the middle of the night with [his] co-editor, a Senior Writer showed up at the office door with a bottle of vodka.” Parker went on to say “[the Senior Writer] had just finished his thesis, and was looking for friendly faces to celebrate with. We were happy to oblige.” It was in moments like these, amidst “various running jokes and riffs,” that the Nass cemented its bizarre memory in Parker’s undergrad years and beyond.