The Columbia publications scene can seem oversaturated—there’s always something new on newsstands and strewn across dorm hallways. But Barnard has historically been a one-publication campus, with the Bulletin absorbing the journalistic energies of those who don’t take their writing talents across the street, or down Broadway to the Spectator.

Until last fall, that is. Keondra Prier, BC ’08, had been developing the idea for a magazine centered around the African Diaspora since her sophomore year—and at the end of first semester, it was born in hard copy with the proxy (decapitalization intended), a glossy, full-color, 44-page compendium of reflections on the African experience, from spoken word to personal essays and graphic pastiches. The magazine’s inaugural issue has no standardized font or color scheme, creating an almost zine-like collage of words and pictures. One of the most valuable inclusions is a reprint of the infamous Blacky Fun Whitey cartoon published in the Fed in spring 2004 2005, which helped set off a wave of protests and which many students are too young to have actually seen (if you haven’t, it’s a bit of a punch in the gut.)

 

The proxy will come out again this semester, with the theme of “commodified activism.” Meanwhile, the small proxy staff has followed AAA’s Blaaag into the world of loosely ethnicity-oriented blogging with thep(rob)e, a fashionably spare site with posts that comment on campus controversies and celeb faux pas, among other topics. Webmaster Muya Souaiaia, BC ’08, and web director Daphne Larose, BC ’10, say that one of the reasons they started the blog was a feeling of bad communication, both from the top (Souaiaia was particularly disturbed that she didn’t know about the rape of a journalism school student last spring until a professor told her) and among groups.

Next up is a WBAR radio show, and expanded p(rob)e coverage—but only if they’ve got the staffing for it. If you’ve got the itch to blog, e-mail theprobe@theproxyproject.org.

– LBD