Inside the Current Issue

From the Editor

It's a new academic year, and a new incarnation of The Advocate.

Readers who have in the past thought that there were too many snarky photo captions can rest at ease: there will, in all likelihood, be less snarky photo captions in the upcoming year of The Advocate. However (and unfortunately for the complaintees regarding said captions) there will undoubtedly be an increase in snarky headlines. This is because writing photo captions is the province of the Layout Editor, and after two years in that position, I am now the new Editor-In-Chief. (I should warn readers that as we are still looking to hire a Layout Editor, a snarky photo caption or two may sneak in this issue).

I wish to bid a fond adieu to former Editor James Trimarco, whose shoes I am filling. James worked on The Advocate for three years and had also migrated from the Layout position. The Editor's job is a time-intensive task (one of the most lethal kinds for a grad student) and the hard work that he committed to the project, in particular in encouraging new writers, was underappreciated by many. I hope that he is able to stay around as a contributor and technical assistant.

Dan Skinner, Managing Editor, is around for another year, his fourth. Due to a sudden calamity, however, the Layout Editor position remains unfilled. If you have some experience in design and would like to apply, please do so ASAP. This is a paid position, and not only do we offer flexible hours, but our computer's I-tunes features many rare ambient, punk and jazz CDs that we have uploaded. The Advocate appears three times a semester (usually September-October-November, and February-March-April) and the pay is $700/ issue. Resumes can be sent to our new email address: gcadvocate@gmail.com.

This brings to me our first issue: IR. Not just The Advocate, but also the Doctoral Students Council has apparently decided that the GC's Information Resources is an outfit that is too unreliable to count on for communication, and have migrated to Gmail. Enough said.

My position as Editor-in-Chief of my grad school's newspaper is something of just desserts for me, since I was asked to leave high school at 17 in Georgia because of my participation in an underground newspaper, which featured encouragements to oppose the (first) Iraq war and burn the US flag. We were branded troublemakers (quite accurately) and the school bureaucracy focused its resources on removing us. They were successful, and so I went to college a year early, finishing with a BA in Journalism. Later I worked in a variety of broadcast and print media, from corporate (an ABC-affiliate TV station) to radical (such as early incarnation of the NYC Independent Media Center's Indypendent newspaper). I came to the GC four years ago to do in-depth study of social and political theory, and am ostensibly enrolled in the Sociology department here.

I would like to shift The Advocate's focus in some new directions. First, I want to increase the focus on the everyday lives of students at the GC (yes! that means you). What are the real day-to-day issues that concern you? What is it like to adjunct, to be pressured into adjuncting, or to refuse to adjunct? What is being a grad student parent like, or not having the time (or money) to have children, or not wanting to have children even while all your old friends are raising families? For that matter, does anyone ever get laid at the GC? Where's the best place to fuck here? Ever had sex with a professor, or had problems with professors who have had sex with other students (we get some interesting letters at the paper sometimes...), or have interesting sex work stories? Food, transportation, money, family, stress... all is game. Anonymity can be guaranteed.

I also want to remain focused on the rising censorship and neo-McCarthyism in the academy (and CUNY in particular) directed at silencing radical and progressive voices, be they Communist students at City College, anarchist professors at Yale, or indigenous radicals at Colorado University. There's so much of this going on that we may institute a regular column.

And I want to have a larger "cultural" emphasis, including enhanced coverage of theatre, music, film and art. I want students to feel free to use The Advocate to get free passes to concerts and museums, and share their thoughts with the rest of us. And I also want to promote coverage of the cultural production of those who attend the GC itself.

Lastly, please consider contributing to The Advocate. Our next deadline is The beginning of October, and hopefully we'll be on the stands in mid-month.

-- Spencer Sunshine