Opinion
Letter to the Editor The Spires Debate
Too much staff art
Spires is MCLA’s annual literary magazine. A staff of students collects, reads, and votes on the pieces, creating a list of accepted work from a variety of mediums. This is done anonymously as the names have been stricken from the art. This process is efficient, fair, and professional until you start comparing names.
I picked up a copy of Spires and flicked to the table of contents to see if anyone I knew got accepted. Soon I was counting on two hands the number of names I recognized from the table of contents ... but something was wrong. I knew I had seen these names from somewhere else, flipping back a page I found my answer. In the section labeled: Spires Staff. Perturbed, I sent a message to the Spires staff, asking why 41 percent of the issue was submissions from their own staff. Three members responded. The first two explained that everything was anonymous. The third surprised me. I have promised to keep this person’s identity anonymous but following is Third’s message (edited for anonymity’s sake):
“I’m going to be honest with you. I was there when we voted for pieces in this issue. I saw people strong arm works in insisting that it was good, when it was clear to me they either were or knew the author. I am disgusted with what I know happened this semester. I believe that many Spires members take advantage of our anonymous practice to sing the praises of themselves. I also saw good works thrown out because of people’s opinions about genres. Putting people’s names on their works would NOT make things unfair. It would avoid the silent strong-arming people are doing now.”At the least Spires should reconsider its voting process, at the most they should either explain themselves or come clean.
Thank you for your time
Andrew Warner
MCLA Class of 2012
Spires editor’s rebuttal
Upon Spires’ release, its staff received emails from a student, who accused us of favoritism and of not conducting our submission and voting process anonymously.
Yet, as the Beacon published this semester, “All nine members vote during the anonymous process, with the exception of [the] Submissions Editor, who has access to the author names.”The student justifies his accusations with a source from the Spires staff, which he has yet to identify. He suggests that if we’re “truly judging for literary achievement,” then an anonymous process shouldn’t be necessary.
I think it would be unfair to not have an anonymous process, even if members voted for the work and not for the author.Why? Because no matter how much Spires tried to assure students that it was a fair process, there would still be accusations of unfairness and favoritism, which I think would then be called for. But that’s not the case because Spires is about accurately and fairly representing the student work that spoke to the Spires staff. Ideally, I’d love for each published piece to be by a different student, but we can’t guarantee what we don’t know, and the members of Spires did not know whose pieces they were voting for.
Every year, the Spires staff has personal preferences in art and literary work. None of this can be controlled, nor would it be fair to control it. Members are entitled to their tastes, and in fact, it’s their tastes in work that make Spires what it is. As the members of Spires change, so do the tastes within the publication.The aforementioned student thinks that it’s unfair to permit the Spires staff to submit. I think it’s unfair to ask this.
We too are members of the student body, and this is a student art and literary magazine. All students can submit, and those who choose to commit to Spires are always welcome to be a part of the process.The Spires staff takes its responsibilities to the magazine and to the College very seriously. To be privately and publically accused otherwise — through mere supposition, at that — and to question our integrity is insulting.
Kimberly Capriola
Spires 2010 Editor-in-Chief
