The Story of a Stony Brook Presser

I posed this question to the class: "Is the Saint Cloud State University student newspaper The Chronicle an example of mainstream press or alternative press?"

When I was in college, I loved to read, write, and draw.  While I was pretty focused on my studies, I still found time to wander around campus and find some trouble or make some.  I belonged to an organization called the Science Fiction Forum; we would hang around in the basement of one of the campus buildings, watch movies, talk about various subjects, and manage the massive science fiction and fantasy lending library that the group had developed over the years.  We basement-dwelling Forumites shared a hallway with some pretty dubious company--Nat the Can Man, who claimed to be homeless by choice; gigantic cockroaches that you could saddle and ride (we called them "fluffies"), and the Stony Brook Press.

The Stony Brook Press threw regular parties, complete with alcohol and various types of cigarettes.  Now and then they would invite a band to perform, or some naked performance artists.  The parties attracted people from all of the groups on campus.  Some people showed up just to witness these legendary gatherings with their own eyes.  Some people showed up for the free booze and funny cigarettes.  But certain people showed up because they had actually read The Press, and said FUCK YEAH--they really cover "the real issues" in their paper, they thumb their nose at the university administration and student government, they publish viewpoints that other newspapers do not, and they make demands.  These folks were funny as hell, but dead serious about political, environmental, and social issues.  Certain people wanted a piece of that action.  I was one of them.

When I joined the staff in 1992, the editor-in-chief gave me a little white book called The History of the Stony Brook Press.  This book made it absolutely clear that anyone who joined The Press had a legacy, and a responsibility.  It was our job to wake people out of their slumber using any journalistic or artistic means possible.  We would publish two print issues a month during the academic year, and one a month during the summer.  We had to fill a certain number of pages with articles, photos, artwork, and advertising and meet deadlines, even if it meant staying up for three days straight to do it.  Part of the work involved creating a dummy layout on paper, then using Quark Express to format the paper using the measurements on the dummy layout, copying and pasting from Quark to the paper layout, sending both to the printer, then getting the actual copies and distributing them around campus.  We had a room called "The Morgue" where we kept back issues; this was our archive.  If we did not make a point to save a few issues for The Morgue, there often would be no issues left for us to collect later.  This is a testament to the popularity of The Press, as opposed to the official campus paper The Statesman.  It did not matter that The Statesman had paid staff from Newsday working on the paper alongside students.  It did not matter that The Statesman covered all of the campus sports.  It did not matter that The Statesman reported about the activities of student government.  If you read The Statesman and believed it, you were a tool. 

To take a look at those old Stony Brook Press newspapers now, you can go to the digital collections of my alma mater and take a look at our primitive efforts.  I will tell you, though, that our paper won awards and also got the campus sued on numerous occasions.  We received hate mail and disturbed people.  Not because we said anything wrong...but because we reported things that some people did not want others to know.   

I Googled "Stony Brook Press" and discovered that their paper is now an online publication.  It no longer has the same flavor as the publication that I used to know, but if you compare it to the online version of The Statesman, you will notice some differences in reporting and style.  Do not read the Wikipedia article about The Stony Brook Press; it is all wrong, and does not cite the official History of the Stony Brook Press booklet...which you could only get if you were a sworn Presser.  I will have to contact the digital archivist and find out if that booklet had been digitized and added to the collection as well. 

[This entry is dedicated to Shari Nezami, Managing Editor of The Press, who was killed in 1994.  While The Press published a memorial issue for Shari, I have to confess that the Statesman did the honor of documenting the car crash.]

Call the Encyclopedia Police

Last week I wrote three encyclopedia entries for the upcoming SAGE Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World.  The mission of this encyclopedia is to "cover the spectrum of defining women in the contemporary world".  Sounds great so far, right?  Not when it comes to non-heterosexual women, or transwomen...or feminism...

One of the articles that I wrote was about the professional association Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (WCR).  Last summer I had written the entry for this publication on the pioneer culinary association for women, Roundtable of Women in Foodservice (RWF).  The upcoming encyclopedia will have many entries on women in the culinary and hospitality industries, and so it is relatively painless to cross reference one of those entries to "Chefs, Female" or "Women in Hospitality" or some other related entry in the same encyclopedia.  No problem with those.

The problem came when I wrote an entry for this encyclopedia about "Lipstick Lesbians".  (A lipstick lesbian is a feminine lesbian who is attracted to other feminine lesbians; quite often she is also a "power lesbian" in a white collar profession as well.)  Anyway, it is impossible to talk about lipstick lesbians without talking about butch and femme lesbians, as well as lesbian feminism and mainstream feminism.  The encyclopedia editors had no entries on those topics.  Instead, they had one entry on "lesbian experimentation".  I had a serious problem cross-referencing "lipstick lesbians" with "lesbian experimentation" because it implies that lipstick lesbians are not real lesbians, which many people in the straight and gay community believe.  I did not want to perpetuate a negative bias.  And so I could not cross-reference my entry with any other in the encyclopedia.

The other problematic encyclopedia entry that I had written was on "Transgenders and Suicide".  First of all, transgender is an adjective.  Transgender people call themselves "transmen", "transwomen", or "transpeople".  Second, there were no other entries in this encyclopedia about transpeople.  While it is true that transpeople are at high risk for contemplating and attempting suicide, this is not what should define them, and definitely not what should define transpeople in the 21st century.  They did not include any biographies of the recently elected trans-government officials in New Zealand, Australia, Poland, and other countries...all transwomen.  They did not include Dana International, who is a well-loved Israeli transwoman pop superstar in a nation of macho men.  They had no entries on transwomen prostitutes, or the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (which was up for discussion last year because a decorated military hero who applied for a high level job at the Library of Congress was denied the position simply because he transitioned and became Diane Schroer).  So I could not cross-reference this entry to any other in the encyclopedia.

Shame, shame, shame on SAGE Publications.  I emailed my entries to the encyclopedia editors over the weekend and voiced my concerns.  Hopefully someone will listen.  For $650.00, a traditionally published encyclopedia should be comprehensive.   

Catching Up With Prisoners in Wikipedia

I made a tiny edit to the "Prisoners" entry in Wikipedia on Tuesday evening.  The edit that I made is gone, but someone added some more information to the article since then, about types of prisoners:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner

While this article is still far from comprehensive, the edit got someone's attention.  Maybe we should all add "stupid blue Smurf" in any Wikipedia article that we find inaccurate or incomplete, to keep them honest.  :)

Assumptions Shaken

A few days ago, I began reading a novel called The Inverted Forest by John Dalton.  It is about a summer camp in the Missouri Ozarks and its counselors.  The focus of the story is one young man named Wyatt Huddy, disfigured by a genetic disorder called Apert's Syndrome which makes people think that he is mentally disabled.  Of all the characters in the novel, however, Wyatt probably has the most common sense and objective outlook toward people. 

Most of the camp counselors were hired two days before the beginning of camp season, because the original counselors had been fired for having an overnight pool party involving nudity and behavior that should not take place on a children's campground.  No one told the new counselors, who were hired with no experience, that their charges for the first two weeks would be wards from the state mental hospital.  These young counselors would be looking after adults with mental retardation, autism, and other psychological disorders.  These kids had no preparation at all for the type of behavior that they would witness from their first campers, let alone any experience as to how to deal with the behavior.  The camp administrators had no training in psychology or counseling for these populations, either, and thought that taking care of these campers would be the same as looking after young children.

Imagine everyone's shock when, during the first night, Wyatt and his fellow counselor Chris Waterhouse find their male campers having sex with each other behind the cabin. 

I was shocked, too!  Because there was absolutely no mention of such activity anywhere on the book jacket.  I was also shocked because this event in the book coincides with my own research about whether or not people with Down's Syndrome could be gay or lesbian. I realize that this is a novel, and anything can happen in fiction, but apparently the author has had personal experience working in summer camps for the developmentally disabled.  John Dalton has witnessed this type of sexual activity among the developmentally disabled, as well as the illicit sexual activity of camp counselors away from home in the woods. 

I am less than halfway through the novel; right now the camp administration and counselors are trying to figure out how to deal with the "problem".   

Electronic Reading Strategies

The vast majority of my Research Strategies class did not find the EBook reading experience pleasurable.  Reasons for the lack EBook reading enjoyment included:

-- eyestrain and headaches
-- frustration reading on a small screen (if reading from a mobile phone)
-- frustration reading on a computer screen, period
-- lack of relevant EBooks in the collection
-- basic preference for reading print
-- fear of EReader falling into the toilet (oh, sorry, that's mine)

The Academic Learning Center gave a presentation to the librarians last week on Electronic Reading Strategies.  Their PowerPoint on "Electronic Reading Challenges and Strategies" is available here.  

Take a look at their strategies and give them a shot.  How does it affect your EBook reading experience?  

Critical Thinking Steps for Nurses

I thought that this post from Pearson's Critical Thinking blog would interest a lot of people in class...it is a model of critical thinking for Nursing.  Check out their "infographic"!

Do Encyclopedias Still Have Value in the Age of Wikipedia?

In ancient times, most people did not have written languages in order to record and distribute their knowledge.  As these same people were often limited in their capability to travel, most of the time their knowledge base consisted of information that pertained solely to their territory and clan.  They passed down information primarily through word of mouth, in the form of instruction, song, and rhyme.  If these ancient peoples could invent a written language and record their knowledge, and if they remained isolated from each other for centuries, each group could successfully produce an encyclopedia about their world that would have lasting value. 

As human societies developed agriculture and commerce, establishing trade routes and armies, information had to travel over longer distances and records had to be kept.  Written languages were established in order to record knowledge.  As not everyone knew how to read and write, and not everyone had the same educational opportunities or freedoms to travel, not everyone had access to the same amount of knowledge.  Those in the position to record the knowledge of an empire often received money or protection from a ruler in order to complete the task.  Rulers often had great influence over what information would exist in print, and what would be left out.  Quite often, early encyclopedias contained cultural and political bias that would teach future generations about one people's greatness over another.  

Today people have much more information at their finger tips due to media and Internet access.  They have achieved many things, and continue to build and discover.  For these reasons, it is impossible today for one person to write an encyclopedia which would encompass the world's knowledge.  One would have to ask "Whose world?", if they insisted that it could be done. Even a subject-specific encyclopedia often leaves out a great deal of information, or misinterprets it.  As people do more advanced research in science, psychology, education, and other disciplines, any information bound between two covers quickly becomes history.  A print encyclopedia provides a snapshot in time, a record of what was once considered knowledge, and may still be considered relevant knowledge, if those capable of evaluating the content determines it to be so.