K-School Students Start Hispanic Political Journal

A Hispanic student organization at the Kennedy School of Government has recently published the first issue of its public policy journal focusing on Hispanic-American concerns, the only magazine of its kind in the nation.

The Journal of Hispanic Politics was first published last December by the 20-member Hispanic Student Caucus. The non-partisan journal publishes articles by both students and academics, said Henry A.J. Ramos, a K-School graduate and the Coordinating Editor of the journal's first yearly issue.

The peridocial is intended to serve as "an authoritative, scholarly information source on the U.S. Hispanic community's political, social, and economic development," Ramos said.

When the Journal applied to various corporations for monetary support, they were frequently turned down because the sponsors feared that the publication might be biased, said second-year K-school student Marlene M. Morales, the editor of the Journal's 1986 issue.

But a $6,677 gift from the Ford Foundation covered the printing costs for the first issue and was the periodical's largest grant, she said. The Journal, which has an operating budget of $5000, published 1000 copies of its first issue.

The magazine currently has no office at the K-School and was forced to operate out of space lent to them by Winthrop Knowlton, the director of the Center for Business and Government.

The Journal's editors said they hoped to be granted office space in the K-School. "If the Kennedy School doesn't at least house us it would be a tremendous loss for the school," Morales said.

Though the K-School's other student publication, Governance, leases office space from the graduate school, Carol Finney, an assistant to the Dean of the K-School said that the school's limited office space made it impossible to provide space for student groups as a general rule.