Dear Arthur Levine (& Hoot Readers),
Yes, I know you are reading this, Mr. President, because you requested The Hoot be brought to your office (Hi Jazz). This may be my only opportunity to speak to you directly, so I have decided to take full advantage by co-opting this editorial.
First, I’d like to give a brief overview of what The Hoot has accomplished in the past semester. I, Jenna Lewis, took over The Hoot at the beginning of the Fall 2025 semester and immediately warned the editorial board that I would be making changes to the publication. These changes came about for two reasons: to increase our readership and to differentiate us from other publications on campus. Our philosophy as a magazine that is willing to publish anything and everything by our community has drawn a cohort of writers who love to be creative and share their opinions on topics from arts to politics. I felt that the best way to highlight the individuality of our staff was not to hide their unique point of view within a black and white old school newspaper, but rather with a colorful, fun and art-forward magazine format. Since changing the publication to a news magazine, we have not only doubled our readership, with a recent anonymous poll indicating that readers on campus choose The Hoot as their primary publication by 200% compared to the next leading publication, but we have received more photos, opinions and arts articles from writers outside the core of our organization than we have in the previous few years. This means we are gaining some traction, or at least enough to the point where you missed seeing us on your desk! That being said, there are many challenges restricting our growth.
Upon taking up the head position of this university, I see many of the same values exist in you that I have strived to create in this publication. From building new dormitories to reconfiguring a long-outdated system of organizing majors (even if we may have shared some of our concerns for the new system in our previous issues), you seem to understand the same reality that I do: if we do not change and evolve, even at the expense of changing long held paradigms, then we fail to serve the people we claim to care the most about—the students. As you may have encountered roadblocks administratively and financially, The Hoot has found itself shackled by the same constraints. However, unlike the university at large, there is a simple solution to our problems, and that starts with challenging the Student Union. We have published many critiques of the Student Union and how it chooses to operate; however, I would like to specifically address how they have impacted our club and what I hope to change going forward.
The primary goal of the Student Union is to support clubs, yet this year they have slashed our club’s funding by almost half its original amount—with no explanation. While I don’t know the practices of other club treasurers, our treasurer, James Carven, strives to use every dollar we have to make sure we can continue to publish our paper on campus, even chasing down advertisers so we can put money in our club funds that cannot be touched by the allocations board. We have just enough money to publish six editions this semester; however, we wish we could publish more. We used to publish every week and pay a student to distribute the paper throughout campus. Now, we publish less than bi-weekly, and our one student delivery person can only deliver to so many locations. Not only are they overwhelmed, but they will no longer be paid after this semester due to the rules of “chartered” clubs.
This brings me to my next point. The Hoot is not a secured club. If you do not know what this means, here are the implications for our small group: 1) we cannot have our own space in the SCC. This means that all our equipment, including desktops we have paid for with our club resources as well as camera equipment, old issues, and our delivery cart are all in the Club Resource Room—a room currently loaned to us by the Student Union. We have already had several items stolen, including the delivery cart used by our delivery person to bring these stacks of magazines around campus. 2) We must submit our funding requests with all the other clubs on campus during the marathon, meaning little time is spent catering to the needs of our club and discussing the importance of each section of our allocated funds. I would not be surprised if we once again see our funding reduced at the end of this semester, simply because they can and with little repercussions. 3) Most importantly, we are not recognized for the value we bring to the Brandeis community. To become a secured club, you must typically wait five years for your organization to qualify and then need to prove your impact on the community. The Hoot was established in 2005, meaning that this is our 20th year as a publication on this campus. When we tried to apply for secured status in the spring semester of 2025, we were more than halfway through the process when I was suddenly told we would no longer be able to apply because the Student Union is making changes to their constitution—including changes to the method for becoming secured by adding a ⅔ vote of the student body to the stipulations. The following message I received from the Student Union president suggested that we did not have much readership: “One of the questions asked as part of this process is: ‘Why does your organization believe it is ‘sufficiently important’ to the Brandeis community?’ Simply going off of numbers, as The Justice readership is higher than The Hoot’s, there is reason to doubt the necessary significance for The Hoot’s securement.” You can see why this may have upset me, Mr. Levine. Not only did they share this information with me midway through the process, but the individual who sent me this email was a member of The Justice, they had no statistics to back up their blatant claim about our readership. I have since conducted an actual poll, not to worry.
They also alluded to the second problem The Hoot has encountered with trying to become secured: the Duplicity of Purpose Clause. Essentially, the Student Union does not want to secure any clubs that they feel have the same goals. However, that is antithetical to the ethos of having student publications, or all publications for that matter—the importance of competing points of view. If there were only one news publication on campus, how could we establish multiple perspectives, how could we cover all the different events that unfold at this university, and how could we highlight the voices of all those that wish to be heard? There are many members of The Hoot who have left the Justice because they felt underserved or censored by their values. This is not to say that they do not have a right to their own editorial voice, but we should, too! I understand why you may not want 100 acapella groups (even though we basically have that) or a bunch of arts clubs (even though we have several theatre, dance and art groups on this campus), but we need multiple newspapers, magazines and creative publications. The purpose of the duality of purpose clause is to prevent clubs from competing with one another. But when it comes to publications, it is not a traditional competition—we may have competing ideas, but those differences make us better.
You may call this publication (and maybe this editorial) shameless, silly, sometimes even too forward, but that is the personality of this community—at least the members I have had the pleasure of working with. So, if we cannot even acknowledge and serve these few folks, are we not failing the community we so desperately aim to nurture? In this club, I have tried to create a space where everyone feels welcome, where we can come together on a Thursday night and rehash our week, complain about our schedules, and discover we may have more in common than that which separates us—and then we publish it. If you support this mission and, as a new avid reader of The Hoot, support this publication, please keep these issues in mind for where to set your sights on future changes. I will be attempting to take on the Student Union again this semester and urging them to reconsider this duplicity of purpose clause, and I hope you can support us in this endeavor.
Anyway, now that you are done with this sad sap of an article, check out the other fun stories in this issue. I’ll be back when there is another problem to share.
Best,
Jenna Lewis and The Hoot Editorial Board
