Using Some Poetic Licence

Some people are media addicts. Every magazine, every newsletter, every advertisement that gets slipped under their doors--they read them like the back of the Cheerios box at breakfast. If they happen to be Harvard students, they are lucky. This year, the College's regular bumper crop of student publications--from century old stand-bys to newly founded newsletters--kept readers busy.

As in most years, the stalwart, established magazines--the Lampoon and the Advocate--published their products throughout the year. With the appearance of the "French" issue this week, the Lampoon has published four times this year--five, including last fall's nationally distributed Newsweek parody, which featured a cover story entitled: "Nuclear Arms and Terrific Legs: How the Atomic Threat is Affecting America's Cover Girls."

The Advocate published four times in a year plagued by financial problems and a flood in its South Street Building. Former Advocate member Norman Mailer '43 read from his latest novel, "Ancient Evenings," in March at a Sanders Theater event held to raise money for the financially troubled publication.

But the Advocate had an unusually large number of competitors this year, including an "experimental" literary magazine called Padan Aram and several recently founded House publications.

This spring a transfer student resurrected Padan Aram, changing it from its previous tabloid format to that of a small, bound magazine. Eric-Steven Guttierez '84 hopes to make Padan Aram a more vibrant presence in the Harvard Community.

"Things just weren't moving at Padan Aram, and I came along and had some good ideas," he says. The magazine's publication last month marked its first appearance in more than a year.

Undergraduate writers also found outlets in new house-based magazines. The Winthrop House Blue Book, the Mather House etc., and the Carrier House Facets--founded within the past two years--gave house members opportunities to publish their poems and prose.

"The idea is to have an unintimidating format, and to encourage people to be creative," says Naomi L. Pierce '85, editor of the Blue Book. Other editors of house journals wanted to help writers get published in a less competitive format. "Ours is really an anti-literary magazine," says Antoinette Reed '83, who edited etc.

Some new publications were directed at more specific areas of interest. Margu, a magazine published for the first time this year by Harvard-Radcliffe Society for Comparative Religion, was founded as a scholarly journal to bring religion concentrators together. Its publishers also hope to make the study of Religion more accessible to the rest of the community.

"Margad means road or path in Sanskrit," explains Andrew S. Gilmour '83, one of the magazine's founders. "We thought it was a broad term for the comparative study of religion, allowing for different paths of salvation," he adds.

Concerto, which came out in May, also bore a new concept. Calling itself an "inter-disciplinary magazine-to bridge the threatening gulf between the sciences and humanities," Concerto was conceived by Brian A. Lynn '85, a Currier House physics concentrator.

"There's a lot of beauty and art in science, and a lot of science in art," says Dudley Herschbech-Carrier House Master and one of the magazine's faculty advisors. About a dozen students contributed to the 12-page tabloid magazine.

Campus political voices, too, proliferated in print this year. The Economic Review published once, the Political Review published four times, and the International Review put out seven issues, including in its last magazine an article by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and an interview with science fiction author Isaac Asimov.

The Democratic Club published its newsletter. Perspective, once this year, with articles focusing on the Chicago mayoral victory of Harold Washington, the ruckus at the Environmental Protection Agency, and the deteriorating right to abortion.

"It's purpose is to take a look at current issues from a progressive point of view," says Jess A. Velona '83, former Democratic Club president and Perspective editor.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Salient, a conservative journal in its second year of publication, published eight times this year. The Salient receives funding from the Washington-based Institute for Educational Assistance, a conservative organization founded by William Simon, former Secretary-of the Treasury under Nixon.

"We like to see ourselves as the Commentary of the Harvard Community. We are not knee-jerk conservatives," says Lars T. Waldorf '85, the newspaper's managing editor, adding that attacking The Crimson's editorial policy was not the Salient's raison d'etre.

While upperclassmen sat at the helm of almost all undergraduate publications, this year saw the birth and demise of another newspaper by and for freshmen.

The Weather published twice last fall before it ran out of steam--and funds. "We had good writers, but it was a problem getting advertising money," says editor Peter J. Howe '86. The paper's features included articles on freshmen who commute to Harvard, a freshman Spactacus Youth League leader, and a poll.

"We wanted to do it for the hell of it," Howe said.