By Golzar Meamar, Managing Editor
As students of Denison, midterms are all we can think about right now. Oral interviews for language classes, exams worth 30 percent of our grades, papers worth a great deal more. But at the same time, we reach an area of contestation in our extracurriculars.
There are students on this campus who take on everything they possibly can. There are only 24 hours in a day, and seven days in a week, but Denison students manage to fit many different activities and way more hours into that time period. No one can criticize us for having an apathetic student body or a student body that does not take advantage of the many ideas and communities offered us. But they could blame us of fragmentation and a lack of focus.
Students on campus are involved in many different clubs and organizations, which is not unheard of, since there are so many of them. Last year, the CLIC office tried to consolidate different organizations into umbrella categories, to streamline involvement and to create larger support groups for clubs with less of a following. The initiative was a fantastic idea, one designed, at least in my opinion, to bring the campus together more and to make sure that organizations were receiving the support they needed and were unified.
As an editor of a student publication, I see the need for unity in our different communities. The Denison Community Association is an umbrella organization for different service groups like Girl Scouts, Homelessness and Hunger, and Big Brothers Big Sisters all fall under this umbrella. Signing up for DCA events means signing up for notifications from different service organizations that may appeal to anything you might want to do. Because they are all service organizations, they are unified in support and funding from one umbrella organization titled for service, which helps gain support and following.
To speak specifically to the disbanded community of the many writers and editors across campus, there is a need for a unified front. While we all focus on different topics and focuses, there is still a need for all to come together to support each other, especially in times of publication and our futures as print publications. Exile, Articulate, the Bullsheet, and The Denisonian are all examples of different student publications that print, publish, and put forth work into the Denison community.
There has recently been a turn away from print, as some would say, in terms of publications around the globe, but on campus, there is still a need for print, especially since most of these publications do not have websites, and especially because not everyone will go out of their Buzzfeed quizzes and automated Facebook homepages to look at campus news, satire, or literary work.
An article The Denisonian published last week, “Juicebox gets the squeeze,” emphasized a new student publication being cut from DCGA funding for reasons untold. As a student publication on this campus, The Denisonian feels that Juicebox is a student publication worth funding and worth investing time in, so we have chosen to partner with their publication, in the attempt to create a unified publication community and add to the voices we see in print across campus.
While many of our members are involved in many different organizations on campus, I see myself as a member of The Denisonian and Kappa Kappa Gamma, two things that I have boiled myself down to and two things that I can fully invest my time into. I am a member of our publication community and Greek life and I can truly say that I believe that my involvement in the Denison community is working towards ending fragmentation of the communities presented to us.