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Campus colour, splashed

Tarangini Sriraman

Educationplus Wannabe journalists, creative writers, all find their corner in a college magazine

WE DID IT: The ear-to-ear grins say it all. Photo: M. Vedhan

Emulating the professional standards of journalism, yet breaking free from its constraints on creative expression, college magazines are the proud reflections of students.

Started originally to project the college and to showcase events conducted in an academic year, these magazines are also invitations to students to express themselves and escape from academic monotony.

They are at once an opportunity for students of the relatively lesser-recognised humanities to show the place of creative writing in a magazine, and an irresistible break for students of the sciences to get away from their labs.

Design too matters

There is no one thing that a college magazine does, as student editors of St. Francis Degree point out.

One student editor, Christina Francis says that apart from publishing poems, short stories and essays, they invite entries for the cover page design for our magazine, `The Quest'.

Editor-in-Chief of St. Francis Degree College, Sharmila Kunnu who teaches at the English Department here says, `There is usually a theme that runs through the magazine. Last year was declared the Year of Physics, so we had articles based on the subject.'

The editors have a very professional way of working, Christina explains.

"We have a board of editors, which handles copies, decides the format and visual effects, a marketing committee, which handles the ads, and an editorial committee. We campaign actively, putting up posters with slogans like `Be published. You have the talent', says Christina.

All are welcome

The remarkable thing about a college magazine like `The Quest' is that it gives a fair chance to students from all departments to contribute articles, says another B.Sc. student and one of the student editors, Sohini Chakraborty.

"And it is a welcome break for us Science students who can use the magazine to tell people we have a literary side as well."

Interviews with alumni and young achievers all form part of the magscape, Francis editors say.

By way of creating visual effects, we also publish pieces from students' blogs, providing a background of the computer screen in the magazine for these articles, says Christina.

The regular stuff

Magazines are not removed completely from conventional reporting either. One of the editors of the college magazine, `Ann and Ascension' at St. Ann's Degree College says that students are encouraged to do features on the Old City, and write reviews on popular films or novels. Varsha, a student says many reports are written about what the college used to be and what it is like now.

These magazines are not averse to vernacular talents either and most of these magazines welcome articles in Telugu, Hindi, Sanskrit and sometimes even in French.

And it is not simply the regular colleges that run magazines. Engineering colleges have managed to hold their own. One of the editors at Karshak Engineering College, Poonam Minocha says that the college has a quarterly newsletter that appears in August, December and March.

"Though most of our articles have a technical orientation, there is some creative writing too. We carried interviews with a leading entrepreneur and an IPS officer, on our cover page.

And these college magazines are not isolated and self-centred cocoons as college students check out other magazines, emulate here and be different there. An editor at St. Ann's College, Mehdipatnam says that apart from reading the other magazines, editors also read up `The Collegian' in Education Plus to keep up with student life!

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