If you're on campus, you really should check out this issue of The Grape. Aside from the cute, little dig at my expense (I'm the burnt-out fifth year in the caption), there's an excellent article by The Grape's own Emmett Booth. It's on the new Oberlin news site, Fearless and Loathing. A teaser:
The Review does more than provide a middle-of-the-road, rigid outline of campus, but its impact on campus is limited by that cultural profile. Similarly, when The Grape is perceived as nothing but the weed-and-porn rag, it struggles to accomplish anything outside that domain. Fearless and Loathing is already airing out the conversation and the culture, and its particular methods and goals mean that everyone can benefit.
As I said, it's a good article.
To add my two cents: one advantage of the rapid turnover of college life is that in a year or two, the ghettoized landscape of the various publications can shift dramatically. In my five years, I've seen The Grape become more serious and The Review become a little looser.
Of course the downside to this is that it's very, very difficult to establish any sort of institutional memory. This is why, in my time, Oberlin has been littered by any number of publications that just didn't make it.
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