A new progressive magazine on AU's campus, American Way of Life, released its first issue earlier this month and is hoping to receive funding from AU's Media Board, according to Brittany Aubin, the magazine's managing editor and The Eagle's former assistant editorial page editor.
The Media Board - which is responsible for financing all campus-affiliated media, including AmWord, the Talon, ATV and WVAU - rejected AWOL's original budget earlier this semester, said Bobby Allyn, the magazine's editor in chief and an Eagle staff writer.
The board rejected AWOL because it did not see an accurate representation of where funds would go and because it felt the magazine's content would potentially conflict with AmWord, he said.
"They didn't seem to know if we really had our act together, or if people would be interested," Allyn said.
The Media Board also said no publication has ever gotten funding at its first publication, he said.
Because AWOL could not get funding from the Media Board, the editors went to Campus Progress, where Allyn interns, according to Jeff Lambert, a member of the magazine's staff and a former managing editor for The Eagle. Distribution problems, rather than not having official recognition from the Media Board, has been the magazine's main problem, he said.
AWOL is not an official campus publication, so staff members must distribute it by hand, Aubin said.
"It's been a guerilla effort," she said.
Katie Caruso, a freshman in the Kogod School of Business, said she had never heard of AWOL.
"I'm sure I'd come by it if it were more available around campus," she said.
Tessa Raden, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she saw copies around but had not read it.
"I'm sure it's interesting, but it's not really my bag," she said.
The magazine takes on a different theme with each issue, according to Allyn. The first issue's theme was "trapped," which entailed looking at being trapped behind prison walls, within social constructs and in AU's Judicial Affairs and Mediation Services system.
The next issue will deal with the theme of "sold," which will explore gentrification, mass marketing to college students and how movements are turned into marketable trends, Allyn said.
There are three sections in every issue - "Obituaries," "Classifieds" and "Casual Encounters" - which spoof the traditional purposes of those sections. "Obituaries" items are unrelated to the issues' themes and are shorter and more like editorials. "Classifieds" items are the lengthier feature stories. "Casual Encounters" items are typically theme-related and include satire, comics and any other forms of creativity. The magazine chose the names because they humorously lampooned newspaper sections, Allyn said.
Allyn said before beginning his work on AWOL, he spoke to other publications on campus to see whether there was a place for his progressive mission in a publication that already existed. Once they determined the missions of other campus publications were too conflicting, Allyn decided to set AWOL in motion during the fall 2007 semester.
The publication grew this semester to about eight people on the editorial board and about 12 people writing stories. There are about 80 people on AWOL's listserv, Allyn said.
