Fund the Arts

To the Editors of the Crimson:

As editor-in-chief of Padan Aram, I would like to congratulate you on your news feature article, "It's Publish or Perish for Student Magazines," for bringing up an important issue. However the article largely missed the point. Why do Harvard publications, especially literary magazines, have such a short life? Funding for such student projects can come principally from two sources: the Undergraduate Council or the Office for the Arts. The Office for the Arts, although generally kind and generous, is mostly interested in funding flashy, one-time-event, art projects. Nothing so regular and ordinary, with certifiable artistic merit and benefit to the community as a literary magazine deserves consideration. That is unless you are just starting up, rather than, as in the case of Padan Aram, you have a history of putting out one damn good magazine.

The Undergraduate Council also has a stipulation that funding for student organizations should just be start-up funding, and that with each grant application a publication must prove that it is on its way to being financially self-sufficient. Padan Aram was denied any funds for publication by the Undergraduate Council, despite Treasurer Michael Kelsen's delusion to the contrary. Furthermore, the council rarely grants the full amount requested.

Were a magazine to dissolve and reform each semester under a new name it would be a very lucrative, if somewhat schizophrenic magazine. I do not know how to begin to explain the absurdity of this situation. Projects in the arts should not be forced into becoming capitalistic, commercial ventures. A literary magazine should not have to look like the Square Deal.

Part of the job of any government, student government or Harvard administration, should be regular and unconditional funding of the arts. I understand that the idea of only providing start-up funding is to make organizations prove their worth, and prevent them from existing just because they can get money. But proving the worth of a literary magazine does not mean being financially independent.

Perhaps the Undergraduate Council and the Office for the Arts should agree that after the first year they would fund only a certain percentage of a publication's operating costs, or that grants would work on a matching system--one dollar for every dollar raised by the organization itself. It's ironic at this institution where establishment and age are the rule that student publications are the exception to it. Jack Robbins '90