Uncommon Threads, a gender issues publication that will come out each term, released its first issue last week.
The publication follows in the footsteps of the defunct gender issues publication Spare Rib, which ceased publication one year ago, according to Leanne Armano '96, the former managing editor of Spare Rib and a contributor to the new publication.
Whereas Spare Rib was founded to promote gender issues discussion, the new publication hopes to better represent all women's views on campus, contributor Kytja Weir '98 said.
"Spare Rib, in my opinion, was a very effective voice on campus for a very long time," Weir said. But "Spare Rib's goals did not match those of the people who were able to take it over."
Weir said another campus publication was needed to insure that the voices of marginalized students would be heard.
Weir said some members of the group who founded Uncommon Threads were also contributors to Spare Rib.
"We chose to start anew in order to get a fresh start. We wanted people to start off on the same foot," she said.
The new publication does not have a traditional managing structure, Weir said. It has no editor-in-chief.
"We were looking at the paper being more broad based than a formal hierarchy where one person pulls the strings," Weir said. "We wanted to avoid a traditional hierarchy. This gives everyone a chance to make a bigger contribution."
The idea for Uncommon Threads has been brewing since last spring, Weir said, when women from different campus organizations talked and tried to agree on a mission statement during an informal discussion.
A group of 25 women, who attended the first meeting, were unsatisfied with current student publications.
"Marginalized voices were not being heard," Weir said. "They decided a paper would be a good forum to expose the community to these hidden voices."
The group spent the majority of Fall term discussing what it really wanted from the paper, Weir said.
"With the wide variety of women and people on campus there were obviously discrepancies about what people wanted. We tried to synthesize those ideas," Weir said.
The group came up with a pamphlet containing a statement of their objectives. The pamphlet was supposed to be distributed to the College community in order to generate more interest in the publication.
"The end of the term crept up on us and we were unable to get the pamphlet distributed," Weir said.
Uncommon Threads was formally organized and written during Winter term, according to Weir.
In addition, the name Uncommon Threads was chosen during Winter term.
The name "is a way of recognizing everyone's different things they have to offer and at the same time bring it all together," Weir said.
Due to "unforeseen personal circumstances," the group was unable to publish the paper during Winter term.
"Our goals were to get [Council on Student Organization] recognition in the first two weeks of this term and get the paper out as soon as possible," Weir said. After "weeks of bureaucratic red tape," the first issue was printed.
The women working on the publication hope the issue will spark conversation in the College community.
"Hopefully this issue will stimulate some interest for the Summer and Fall terms and get people talking," Weir said. "We can take the first issue to the stores in the area to generate advertising."
