Miles Per Featuring All Along the Stage Tower...

EC like many schools has its many peer groups, the drama people hang out near the music and theater building, the jocks line the walkway between the deli and the P.E. Gym, but one of the most noticeable groups on EC's campus is the stage people. Across the library lawn, a top the stage on the Student Services building is an eclectic group of students, some might consider social outcasts, eccentric in demeanor and dress, each unique in their own way.

For a struggling student journalist like myself, having a group like the stage group is helpful because any of them seems to have a story to tell or a relation to a certain story at the time. On March 12 I found a stage member separated from the rest of his group across campus having a picnic with his girlfriend. I was stopped by my friend Flor, one of the stage students, who I had gotten to know over a couple of classes, Flor along with Sean Fine and his girlfriend invited me to enjoy their picnic with them, I accepted because I thought it would be interesting material for my blog, since I am features editor I should feature people and things going on around EC.

I inquired to Sean as to why he was not at the stage which had gained some new blood, mostly people I have never seen, considering I have been to the stage many times and met many of the people from the stage.

"We have started our own refugee camp," Fine said in a jokingly way.

Fine began explaining to me that his girlfriend and he had decided to take a self imposed exile from the stage because basically as he put it: idiots and dumb asses had taken over the stage. Some of the people are cool he pointed out but a lot of them are just there, they just hang around. Sean pointed out a couple people such as a plump gentlemen who he calls a "moocher" because he always ask for something from money to a ride, to even mooching off your sandwhich. Some of them have done things that have gotten them removed from the stage before.

Fine attributed a lot of what happens on the stage to the fact that a few of the people on the stage may not even go to school there or that many of the people I saw on the stage that day are new kids, old friends from high school looking for a safe haven, a place to be accepted and like high school its the stage they gravitate to.

"The elder stage people can remove them and we have," Fine said.

This is an interesting concept that the stage is so structured that there are "elder stagemen" who can remove people from the stage. It's happened before and it can happen again. Even more interesting is that apparently my friend and photo editor Tony is one of these sort of elders who can do so. Fine insists its not cause Tony is a elder it is that he is so big and scary that he could.

I noticed Flor, Fine, and his girlfriend looking over to the stage and trying to see who would come over to them from the stage. Pickles, as the stage group call him isa a lenghty, almost sweet-natured African American keeps jumping between the stage and Fine's "refugee camp." At this point a non stage person has joined the group and I see Finn, another person from the stage walking over.

He sits and joins in on the picnic, the blanket covered with snacks of cheez-its, cotton candy, and Hawaiian chocolates. We discuss the so called idiots on the stage. The non-stage person inquires that he wish he was part of that stage group.

"Yes all the non ass we are getting is great," Finn said.

(More Coming Soon including the difference between the stage people and the "vampires" or people of the inside of the stage.)