Last semester I was walking back to my dorm in Jonas. I had just become Editor-in-Chief, and was walking back from Howe reading the new issue, mostly checking for any potential errors. As I neared Jonas, a student pulled up beside me in his car and said, “You’re actually reading The Stute?”, and pulled away. This person’s identity is irrelevant, but he was an attendee of The Stute Freshman Weekend in 2013, ironically enough. As much as this may seem like an exaggeration or hyperbolic illustration of what I’m about to delve into, it happened as you read it above, and both jarred and angered me immensely.
The Stute has been a subject of student ridicule since my freshman year. The classic phrase uttered is, as this editorial’s title indicates, “Nobody reads The Stute.” In my sophomore and junior years to follow, not much changed in the way of students’ perception of The Stute, as a publication. Why?
From a non-member’s perspective, The Stute is a kind of a “straw man,” in the sense that the publication—Stevens’ own newspaper—was cast aside and deemed unworthy of reading for the sake of mockery. In plain English, The Stute was a black sheep, ugly duckling, and punching bag all in one: an object of ridicule almost entirely regarded by the student body as the joke club with a red and grey bullseye on its back. As a new member of The Stute toward the end of my freshman year, I got upset by people saying, “The Stute? Dude, no one reads that.” Unfortunately, the anti-Stute sentiment is not entirely unfounded.
As many within The Stute know, I am quite vocal about how I feel about past iterations of The Stute, both in principle and print, sometimes to a fault. I do not revere traditions because they simply existed once upon a time, and I am almost always a proponent of change when it makes sense. With this preface, as a former weekly reporter for The Stute from late 2012–2013, I know that The Stute was not always a welcoming and inviting place. In fact, it was often a toxic place to work and learn, unless you were an established member—The Stute was an insider-centric club, and if you were not in the inner circle, you weren’t necessarily welcomed with open arms. Plus, The Stute‘s content and design were, more or less, decades old and unchanged.
To avoid crossing the threshold of what could be a propaganda piece for The Stute, I’ll just say that none of the aforementioned is true: all are welcome, content is increasingly original, and the design is completely overhauled. However, with the Class of 2018 and below (sophomores to seniors) the Stute stigma remains. With the Class of 2019, The Stute‘s image has shifted, and based on the amount of newspapers that are being read, responses to “Where the Duck?” submitted, and post-Club Fair surge of new members, I know that shift is beginning to permeate older students.
As time wanes on, new students will enter and current students will become alumni. As a club leader, member, or lurker, if you are unhappy with the current state of your organization, understand that you can change your club’s course. If there are problem members, but you cannot call for impeachment without causing more trouble than is worth, do the best you can within your limitations and wait for that problem to disappear from Stevens. Ignore blind haters, but listen to critics.
If people are saying, “Nobody reads The Stute,” there’s a problem. Fix it.
