Newpaper to Seek Unity Among the Ivy Schools

An all-Ivy League newspaper debuted this week at Ivy campuses across the Northeast, proving that for some students, the age-old athletic conference is also an intercollegiate community for the exchange of ideas and opinions, and potential profit.

The soon-to-be monthly newspaper met with mixed reactions across the Ivy League after its distribution Tuesday.

Conceived and published by University of Pennsylvania junior William A. Frankel, the inaugural issue of the Ivy Sound contains articles, opinion pieces and features on subjects ranging from tenure processes at the Ivies, to the current Iran crisis, to the best places to "drink, dance, and hang out" at the different schools.

Written by students at all eight Ivies and loosely coordinated through "bureau chiefs," the Sound introduces itself in an editorial as "a forum for intellectual thought, discussion, and debate."

Frankel said the idea for the Sound came to him last winter, when apartheid protests abounded at the Ancient Eight. "I was thinking that the protest would become stronger if schools could combine forces, maybe through a publication," he said. "The Ivy League needs a forum itself to become stronger."

According to Harvard bureau chief Peter A. Robertson '88, Frankel also needed a plan to create a profitable business for one of his classes at Penn's Wharton School of Business. So after doing research into the logistics of such an inter-Ivy publication, he began to create a "network through friends and contacts" of students at the different campuses to write and distribute his brainchild, Frankel said.

Frankel said the Sound's first issue did not clear a profit, and said that making money off the venture was not a consideration. Other principal staff members echoed those sentiments, but, according to Princeton bureau chief David Frank, the Ivy tabloid was "not founded as a non-profit corporation." Frank added that the only people who stand to make a profit are the staff at Penn.

Frankel said funding for the paper, which is completely independent of any school, came from "private investment," though he would not elaborate on his sources.

Despite its far-reaching staff, the roots of the Ivy Sound are at Penn--the source of all its editors and production staff. Frankel's own roommates Devin A. Schain, Steve B. Alloy, and Steven B. Gould hold the posts of general manager, operations manager, and business manager, respectively.

The first issue contains three articles attributed to Harvard students, as well as an article on student bars in Cambridge which describes the Hong Kong on Mass. Ave. as "the first bar visited by incoming students."

Robertson, who is president of the Perspective, Harvard's liberal monthly, wrote an op-ed piece defending the college generation's conservative image. He also submitted an article about Harvard's tenure process written by Daniel Kessler '88 and originally written for the Perspective.

Robertson said he supports the ideas behind the Ivy Sound, although his involvement will only be temporary. "There are a lot of rivalries and friendships at the Ivy League schools," he said. "People are always re-inventing the wheel because they don't know what's happening on other campuses."

Elitist Newspaper

Many students at the different Ivies were more critical of the Sound's purpose, and value, as an exclusively Ivy-League publication.

"The biggest concern at Brown is, isn't it a little pretentious to put out an Ivy-League newspaper?" said Brown bureau chief Andrew Skoler. "People are questioning if it's really necessary to have this dialogue between schools, and if Ivy is just a title."

"It seems pretty self-aggrandizing," said second-year Harvard Law student Lenny Gail, who co-wrote an article on underage drinking. "I'm not sure there's anything happening in the Ivy League exclusively that's not happening at other schools." Gail said the paper seemed elitist.

"You have to admit that the Ivy League does have a stigma, and people might said this is an elitist newspaper," said Frankel. "But it's not in order to make us a closed group. It's a college student forum. Hopefully, it will become an institution."