It is no secret that my favorite on-campus humor publication is the Student Insurgent. My heart palpitates whenever a new issue comes out because I know that I will soon be laughing hysterically at the paper’s unintentional brand of whimsy.
Every issue is a peek into the fevered minds of a group of incoherently angry anarchists, as they spout vitriol on purportedly “edgy” topics, like how capitalism sucks, or how Christians are bigots, or how J-school perpetuates the patriarchal paradigm. (Yes, they actually write like that.)
Well, mainly it’s about how Christians are bigots.
They often underscore their points by WRITING IN ALL CAPS, or purposefully misspelling common words like Amerikkka, or using approximately 8 million fonts per page. In any given issue, you can almost hear the writers struggling valiantly to piss off and alienate the squares, as it did last year with an infamous issue that featured a cartoon of Jesus on the cross with an erection – an issue that has resurfaced around campus, approximately a year after its initial publication.
For those who don’t know, the Insurgent receives nearly $20,000 a year in incidental fee money, making it the second costliest publication on campus, behind the Oregon Daily Emerald. Like the other ASUO-funded student publications, the Oregon Voice and the Oregon Commentator, a majority of the Insurgent’s budget goes to printing and duplication. The Insurgent also pays some of its staffers stipends, meaning that members of the “collective” actually get paid to write, layout and distribute their little Mickey Mouse newsletter of rambling, ungrammatical prose and prolix calls for activism, interspersed with unpunctuated, ranting screeds against capitalism, which have the overall tone and cohesion of a tinfoil-hat-wearing bagman screaming at the invisible elves that live in his bus station locker.
Nobody pays much attention to the publication, as most people are unaware that it exists. Last year that changed with the aroused-Jesus issue, which gained national attention. In what can only be described as a post-Easter miracle, aroused Jesus and his throbbing turgidity have returned.
Glorious word, he is arisen! The Insurgent is redistributing the issue, along with other back issues, in the EMU and elsewhere.
During the original controversy, certain people on campus, along with outside influences like Bill O’Reilly and Catholic League President Bill Donohue, attempted to get the Insurgent defunded. They couldn’t, of course, because under the law the funding of a student group cannot correlate to its viewpoints. This was delineated in the Supreme Court decision Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth. People tried nonetheless, even though a group’s funding is, for the most part, determined based on the prior years’ spending patterns. I know this because for several years I worked for another campus publication, and it was a constant struggle to produce 12 issues a year and spend all the money allocated to the group.
But with only four issues printed, and the wounds from last year’s controversy still fresh in the minds of a few perpetually offended campus Christians, the Insurgent is proving exactly what its detractors said about it last year: that the publication is irrelevant, fiscally irresponsible and inconsequential to the campus community. Its primary mission is to piss people off. And they are not even good at that, considering they don’t produce issues of a publication.
Nonetheless, the Insurgent claims to have a mailing list composed of approximately 700 names and addresses, but most of these people are prisoners. (Couldn’t Amnesty International put a stop to this, under grounds that it represents cruel and unusual punishment?) On-campus distribution, on the other hand, is limited to a smattering of racks in campus buildings and in the EMU-housed distribution areas. Unlike every other campus publication, the Insurgent doesn’t even operate its own Web site, making it nearly impossible to find back issues.
Thus an important question arises: Does a student publication with an astronomical printing budget, considering that it prints on flimsy newsprint with limited color, deserve to remain on campus when it doesn’t spend its money properly? I mean, what exactly are they spending their money on? Definitely not the layout.
In fact, it appears as if they are not spending their money. This is no longer an issue about one magazine’s content, it’s about failing to operate as a legitimate student group. Is it too much to ask for a student publication to, you know, produce a damn publication? Korean Ducks does an admirable job, without funding from the ASUO.
The timing of the redistribution of the Jesus issue could not have been worse, as it will only rally the anti-Insurgent elements around the codified goal of getting the Insurgent’s budget slashed drastically next year. And this time, if they stop acting like oppressed victims, they could make the very valid argument that the Insurgent doesn’t supply students with $20,000-worth of services.
Personally, I don’t want to see this journalistic equivalent to self-immolation disappear from campus. But after the hullabaloo last year, and with this year’s near-non-existent publishing schedule, I’m afraid that the end may be nigh. And that’s a shame. The Insurgent is a very funny publication, just not intentionally.
[email protected]