“Elijah Wood peed in that fountain. It was covered in our student magazine.”
This was one of the many things I learned during my first few days in Wellington, as I walked down Cuba Street with several veteran Vic students imparting their knowledge to a group of still-jetlagged Americans. I rarely admit that I have never seen the Lord of the Rings series (just in case someone catches me with 25 spare hours and forces me to watch the entire thing) and thus am not especially interested in the actors’ shenanigans during the filming of the movies here in New Zealand. I am, however, interested in student publications, and my interest in Salient, Victoria University’s student magazine, was piqued further when I read this description in the student diary:
“In 2005 the Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University obtained a court injunction to prevent an issue of Salient from being distributed; in 2006 Salient described the Chinese as a species we should be wary of, and in 2007 Salient made national headlines with the feature “How to rip off Winz” which listed the legal ways to maximize the dole.”
Ever since then, I’ve picked up the new issue each Monday. I’m sure that my newcomer status to Vic means that I don’t get much of the insider humor, but I still can’t quite decide what to think. It’s a satirical magazine, yes, but it’s also a student advocate, a community news source and a compendium of filthy jokes. Sarcastic headlines are followed by hard news pieces, usually all written by the same reporter. Dozens of impassioned and incoherent letters to the editor are published each week in all their unedited glory. National, local and university politics (dealing, interestingly, with many of the same issues that GW faces: Islamofascism, anyone?), entertainment reviews and the dragon drawing of the week all exist side by side. Part of me wants to take a pen to it and do some serious copy editing, and part of me enjoys that it’s so jumbled and unpolished. Yet since I’m not really sure what it is they’re aiming to do, it’s hard to say they’re doing it wrong.
