From the day students start at Northeastern, they are exposed to what is possibly the most villainous of all forces: the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR).

OK, I’ve never actually dealt with OSCCR, but I know plenty of people who have. Plus, I saw the orientation video about how it works. In my case, it was a Scooby Doo-themed adventure where all the students wound up corralled in the corridors of Ell Hall, waiting to meet with OSCCR after a Hanna-Barbera costume party gone horribly wrong.

Every time OSCCR is mentioned in the Crime Log or in conversations with friends and classmates, I think about the opportunities editorial cartoonists and makers of all those clever Facebook groups have missed. I am startled by one thing: To my knowledge, no one has taken this office, one with an acronym that is an actual first name, and turned it into a character, cartoon or caricature.

I’ve always felt that the name was asking for it, but I’ve never encountered someone who shares my passion for this issue.

I picture a shadowy figure dressed in a dark red cape, nefariously staring at the students who dare to drink in their residence halls or play bagpipes in the West Village Quad, passing judgment and exacting punishment. I can see this black silhouette replete with dark red cape, which are, conveniently enough, our school colors. Again, has no one else thought of this characterization before?

OSCCR The Character could have an almost Big Brother quality to him. He could stand above the masses climbing to the top of Mission Hill at the start of the semester. He could lurk in residence hall corners as students got high. He’d be ever-present both on campus and off, because he has an army of fun-busting cronies at his disposal: Resident Assistants and security guards just waiting to make a bust.

Most people already know how much of an effect OSCCR The Office has on the Northeastern community. But if we personify him, we’ll be able to see that effect visually as well.

We refer to OSCCR as just OSCCR, not The OSCCR. So, in reality, we’re saying that a student is being reported to Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution, and that’s just bad English. But here at Northeastern, someone is reported to OSCCR, which is how you’d mention a person. We could even call him Oscar, though that might be too far from where we’ve started and instead become a bit too similar to everyone’s favorite trash-dwelling Grouch.

I think we’ve missed something here, and I’m calling upon anyone in a position to make my dream come true to act. We, at Northeastern, are already huge fans of the Crime Log and the foolish antics of our former classmates, like pulley systems, so turning OSCCR into a character would fit pretty well into our campus zeitgeist.

I don’t really have anything against OSCCR. Everything I’ve heard about OSCCR makes it sound fair and balanced (in the real way, not the O’Reilly way). I thought it was mean when someone set fire to its office. All I’m saying is that at the end of the day, we as a community are really missing out by not having a version of OSCCR that we can see on the Internet or in The News. And one that could, potentially, see us too.

– Matt Collette is a middler journalism major.