The road to independence is never an easy ride, as Eleven Magazine found out earlier this semester.

Student Union (SU) recently dropped Eleven Magazine, the student-run Washington University publication for indie music reviews, from its rolls.

In addition to its new autonomy, the organization has gained its own bank account and expanded readership.

“We would love for it to stay a part of SU,” said senior Vidhyarth Hariharan, co-president of Eleven Magazine. “We don’t see any type of fundamental misalignment in terms of that Eleven is not changing the work it does, the content, the way we operate.”

Eleven has operated as a registered student group on campus for the past three years, providing readers with reviews of the latest alternative music and allowing its writers the opportunity to get in touch with big-name artists and labels.

Last year, Jon Fritz, former president of Eleven and a 2009 graduate, approached David Cohen, SU vice president of finance, to request the magazine’s deregistration as a student group so that it could become independent. In the process, Fritz started Eleven Media Group LTC.

Fritz expressed interest in expanding the magazine’s circulation to the greater St. Louis area. He even set up a separate bank account for the group.

Cohen said the issue would be brought up first thing in the fall with the Student Group Activities Committee (SGAC).

Months later in August, however, Eleven’s current members approached SU to inquire about their frozen account. According to Cohen, group membersseemed to be unaware that SU had dropped the group’s official SU status.

Junior Dayo Adesokan, Eleven’s current co-president, quickly appealed to reverse the de-affiliation for this fall.

According to Cohen, the entire process was “a little all over the place.”

“There was a very bad transition that occurred…The old execs did not communicate with the new ones,” said junior Jasmine Berg, co-chair of the Student Group Activities Committee. “It’s really unfortunate that students still on campus now want their group to continue the way it used to.”

By then, however, SU had come to the realization that Eleven would be violating four SU regulations—the barrier keeping the group from re-registration—namely its for-profit status, ownership of a separate bank account, distribution to non-University readers and profiting from uncompensated student writers.

SU had allocated $7,737.60 to the group last spring for fall 2009.

Along with the monetary support, Eleven will also lose other advantages SU had to offer, including the ability to easily reserve space, access to the print media room in the Danforth University Center and quick access to distribution spaces.

Despite the initial miscommunication and loss of resources on Eleven’s part, there is no ill will on either side.

“All we’re doing is having the people who graduated help us get connections to labels and increase our distribution scope,” Hariharan said. “There is no resentment on Eleven’s behalf [toward] SU. We understand their decision, although we do wish they had seen this as an opportunity unprecedented in Wash. U.’s history to support a student group that’s growing and trying to become better.”
SU, for its part, said it would be happy to help Eleven become a sanctioned group again should it ever decide its independence is not the best option.

“If they want to be a profit-earning business, there are some give-and-takes that have to be made,” Berg said. “There are some policies that we want to abide by, and if they want to return as an SU group and want to abide by its policies, then we can work with them to be recognized again.”

Sophomore Ehi Okoruwa, another co-chair of SGAC, echoed Berg’s sentiment.

“It’s just following policies; it’s not like we have a vendetta against the execs or anything,” Okoruwa said. “We think they’re a good group.”

Despite losing its privileges as an SU group, Hariharan said the pros of going independent far outweigh the cons.

“The increased advantages of the outside group are instrumental—their job is to get Wash. U. students in touch with people who can make stories possible,” Hariharan said.
Eleven’s Web site now lists the magazine as “St. Louis’ Intercollegiate Music Magazine,” a name fitting for the group’s efforts to create a wider constituency.

The group said it is not worried about another music review publication dominating the University scene.

“Eleven almost has a monopoly on media and music coverage in St. Louis for Wash. U. students,” Hariharan said. “This is still Wash. U.-oriented.”

As for now, the magazine has upcoming interviews with Weezer, among other big-name artists.

Cohen along with other SU members expressed their hopes for the organization.

“I really do want them to succeed,” he said. “But I think inevitably when you start a new entity, there will always be some bumps in the road that you have to work out.”

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Tags: Eleven Magazine, SGAC, Student Union, Weezer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 2:11 am and is filed under Campus Events, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through this feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.