PaUmeyer: The man Aggies love to hate
By Suzie Brawley
Reporter
Karl Pallmeyer is the man
Aggies love to hate.
Infamous for his opinionated
columns published in The Bat
talion, he has created for him
self a reputation of hating ev
erything, and anyone Aggie.
But far from being distressed
by the animosity aimed at him,
Pallmeyer loves it. A senior
journalism major from Merid
ian, he thrives on the attention
he receives, hate mail and all.
“People know who I am, and
that’s nice,” Pallmeyer says.
If Pallmeyer’s overlong bowl-
cut hair and chubby body make
him look like an overgrown
Buster Brown, he acts more like
Dennis the Menace.
True to his image, he’s as
troublesome around the news
room as around campus. He’s
been known to string tele
phones and notebooks from the
ceiling, and recentlv, in re
sponse to the Libyan crisis, Pal
lmeyer constructed his own
“Line of Death” across the
newsroom in a search for pri
vacy.
Whatever his personal ideo-
syncrasies, Pallmeyer says he
likes to think his sometimes-
wacky wit and flippant col
umns make a difference. He
says he wants to do more than
cause controversies.
He agrees with the writings
of Henry David Thoreau who
said, “He serves the state best
who opposes it.” By calling at
tention to problems, he hopes
to inform students of things
that affect them so they can do
something about them.
This year Pallmeyer decided
to run for student body presi
dent because he says he wanted
to get student government
more involved in the real issues.
Pallmeyer, whose platform also
included opening a bar on cam
pus and divestment of Univer
sity assets in South Africa, was
turned down because his grade
point average was too low. Stu
dent government could be
great, he says, but so far it
hasn’t been.
Pallmeyer says he enjoys the
feedback he receives. About 70
percent is negative, he says, but
at least he knows people read
his column. If they don’t agree
with him, they can write and
say so, he says.
He receives some positive
feedback from students he sees
on campus, but says most peo
ple will complain because
“that’s just human nature.”
Pallmeyer began his writing
career in 1984, in the fall of his
junior year, with a column on
the Gay Student Services’s
continuing fight for recognition
on campus. His column crit
icized the recognition process
encountered by the GSS by com
paring it to the formation of the
Meridian Hometown Club. Pal
lmeyer had organized the MHC
the year before, with only four
of the 15 members being from
Meridian.
That was the beginning.
The second column was
more humorous than the first.
Pallmeyer proposed a bar be
opened in the Memorial Stu
dent Center after he visited the
Texas Student Union in Austin.
The editor’s note for that story
— written as a joke — acciden
tally ran, saying Pallmeyer was
a communist, atheist and alco
holic junior journalism major.
With that, the Pallmeyer per
sona was born.
Pallmeyer continued writing
as a guest columnist for The
Battalion, although at first he
was afraid of running out of
ideas. As it turned out, he
couldn’t get them down fast
enough. When ideas come to
him, Pallmeyer says, things just
happen.
Last summer, he was hired
by The Battalion and he says re
sponse to his column was supri-
singly heavy for that time of
year.
“It was very encouraging,” he
says.