For clarification, we do not think that this will be Basement Medicine’s last issue. Key word: think.
As mentioned in an article published in our last issue, the future of our beloved paper has been up in the air. Because it is operated on the Johnson campus as a class, being told that it was NOT going to be accepted as a course for the Fall 2024 semester forced the Basement Med staff to re-evaluate how the paper is published.
The Critic, published online at VTSU – Lyndon (our sister campus) is operated as a club, which it has been, in our eyes, successfully, for years. Running Basement Medicine as a club is not something our current team has explored before, but the reality was that if we wanted this thing to keep printing, we would likely have to go that route. We brought the issue up with the Johnson student government, which has supported our paper for years (and continues to do so), and started working out how we would raise funding. We spoke about how to recruit students, who our adviser and titled members would be, and even began looking into more cost efficient ways of printing and operation.
And then we got new information. Just recently, thanks to our wonderful professor, we were told that Basement Medicine would be allowed to run as a class again. Wahoo!
Of course there was a catch.
Basement Medicine would have to have ten students enroll in the course in order for it to run as a class rather than as a tutorial (which would mean the class runs mostly the same – except with a substantial pay-cut for our professor). This information was given to us in the first week of this month … about six weeks AFTER class registration began for the VTSU community.
The Basement Medicine student team hasn’t been more than six students in the past decade, and assuming everyone of our current staff returns, we would still need to draw in an additional five students. And so, we are at the crossroads. Do we cross our fingers? Harass our friends and pray to the gods that we meet our mark? Or, do we say goodbye to our professor, using the final week of class to learn how to operate alone?
Johnson students: this is your opportunity to join us! Even if you’ve never written a piece like these in your life, the Basement Medicine team will help you figure it out.
Register for ENG-2500, Explorations in Publishing, even if you’ve already got your schedule figured out.
