The job of any student newspaper is to report the stories that matter to their campus community in a consistent, timely and professional manner. In order to maintain a high quality in our reporting, we at The Flor-Ala always try to get the most relevant professional sources to help us inform our readers about what’s going on. More often than not, this means working closely with University Police Chief Bob Pastula.

Any consistent reader of our paper knows that we consult the Chief for comments on our stories on a regular basis. In fact, he is often the best source for any stories that have to do with crime, safety, parking and transportation.

With all the questions we ask Chief every week, it has occurred to me: he never gets the chance to interview us. Well, that stops now.

We asked Chief to come up with questions that he has always wanted to ask us, and we promised to answer truthfully.

Chief: What is your main purpose with what you do here at The Flor-Ala?

Corinne: To inform the student body about campus events and do it in a timely manner and a fun way so that they can understand it.

Chief: Why do you interview me so much?

Pace: I think we want to interview you because your office doesn’t have a communications person that we can just go to normally. If there’s any type of (situation) on campus or any type of breaking thing, you’re typically the person we want to go to. You just seem to be the most reliable source.

Chief: Well, that’s a good thing, I guess. Oh, I got one…if you were me, how would you do my job better?

Corinne: I would let students ride the segways more.

Chief: Oh, you guys can ride them any time you want. We actually like to let students come ride them whenever they want.

Pace: That is literally the first time I have ever heard that.

Chief: Well you’ve lived a sheltered life at UNA (laughs)…So let’s change the question, what would you do if you could be Chief for a day?

Corinne: I’d wake up and have a jelly doughnut. And then I would ride the segway to work. And then I would talk to the lions. And then I’d come hangout at The Flor-Ala office. And then I’d ride the segway back and I’d take a nap.

Chief: So what are you doing when you’re not writing stories that will inevitably tick people off? (laughs)

Corinne: I’m looking up One Direction videos.

Chief: …What?

Pace: It’s a boy band, kind of similar to the Backstreet Boys. You thought those died off in the 90s, but they didn’t.

Chief: Oh, yeah, I remember taking my daughters to see the Backstreet Boys.

Pace: Okay this is a serious question, how long have you had a moustache?

Chief: All of my life.

Pace: Were you born with a moustache?

Chief: I’ve had it since I was in the marines…So what would you guys do to control crime on campus?

Blythe: Tasers. (all laugh)

Chief: Do you guys think there’s a crime problem on this campus?

Blythe: I don’t think that there’s necessarily a problem in the sense that it’s out of hand. I do think that the way some information is presented might lead people to believe there is a problem. I don’t think that there’s been an overwhelming amount of crime this semester.

Chief: Is there anything here that you guys would do differently?

James: I know this is a thing we are working on, but I would like to see cameras on campus.

Blythe: I think that it would go a long way to ease student’s minds to know that those were in place.

Chief: Why don’t you guys ride around with our officers more?

All: We’re DOWN.

James: To answer your question, we don’t really have a reason for not doing that more.

Chief: Yeah that’s like the Breakfast with the Chief event, I’ve offered students to eat breakfast with me but we’ve only had like four students show up. Hopefully more will show up next semester, so what would you do to get rid of the parking problem?

Pace: Build a parking garage. I would fight tooth and nail for that.

(All agree)

Chief: But anyway, I’m out of questions for y’all, thanks for having me.

The Flor-Ala editors would like to thank Chief Pastula for meeting with us and for bringing Toby the bomb dog to visit our office.