The new student-run magazine on campus first passed into readers’ hands in September. Its name? Simply, “The Magazine.”
Senior Aidan Cyrus and junior Noah Hoonhout said that, while campus publications like the Collegian, Tower Light, and The Hillsdale Forum provide campus with news, literature, and intellectual essays, they saw room for a culture magazine that applies high intellectual ideas to ordinary life. Inspired by issues like First Things and The Lamp, they decided to pursue the question of how to be good Christians in practice.
“It’s very difficult to get people to write and read publications in general, so the goal wasn’t necessarily to get everyone on board,” Cyrus said. “But if we can make a publication that would have focused discourse about these things that are really important for when we go outside of Hillsdale, that would be a win.”
The first edition informed readers that the goal is to “prepare ourselves for battle outside of the enclave of the College, first by ridding ourselves of complacency, and then arming ourselves with the ability to have meaningful, focused discourse … This publication will attempt to show how every aspect of our daily lives can be turned toward the divine.”
The editorial team includes graduate student Danny Rognlie, senior Steven Sullivan, and freshmen Jack Cote, and Maggie O’Connor. Associate professor of English Dwight Lindley acts as their adviser.
Their goal as editors, Cyrus said, is to aid writers in formulating their arguments and allowing them to have opinions in The Magazine that the editors may disagree with.
“Once you open this door to people, a lot of people have these little things in their lives that they find cool and interesting,” Hoonhout said. “And you can kind of abstract something beautiful out of it.”
While each editor has written for the publication, they’ve stepped back into editing rather than writing as submissions increase.
“The goal is if you read it and you disagree with something, you should write something in response to it instead of just going back to your dorm and being upset about it in your own mind,” Cyrus said. “Actually formulating a response to it is the goal and emblematic of the general mission of The Magazine.”
When Cyrus first approached Lindley about advising for the publication, Lindley found that he appreciated the type of material Cyrus hoped to write.
“It sounded like they wanted to write about topics that touch practical life more than the common types of humanities topics that come a little more naturally,” Lindley said. “I thought that was an interesting angle. Seeing intelligent, thoughtful things about matters that touch everyday life, but that are also timeless.”
Lindley’s piece, featured in the first issue, came from an interview Cyrus conducted on Lindley’s thoughts and philosophy on music.
One of Hoonhout’s published stories, titled “Butchers,” tied the occupation of a butcher to the larger abstraction of the Latin phrase “memento mori,” meaning, “remember you will die.”
The editors table in the Grewcock Student Union when each issue comes out, handing them personally to students. By tabling, people can put faces to the name of the publication and know it’s not students looking for their own edification, Hoonhout said.
“We don’t want to just lay it out for anyone to come pick up because it’s intentional. We are intentionally writing this for people, so we want to actually give it to people,” Hoonhout said. “We think you should actually read this and think about it, and disagree or agree or write.”
Once a month, the editors gather behind a projector to piece together their publication, while Cote and O’Connor design and format it. After completing the issue, the group sends the final draft to the copy center where it’s printed.
“We get really complacent just talking to the same people that agree with the same things that we do,” Cyrus said. “These questions need to be thought about more and more, like how do I love my neighbor actually, in a practical sense, not just in an abstract sense.”
The next issue of The Magazine is scheduled for release on Friday, November 19.
