The Mass Media

A ugust 28, 1984

COMMENTARY
POINT OF VIEW
Wavelength's crime
and punishment
Its office supplies now redistributed, the space it
occupied now r e a s s i g n e d ,
Wavelength,
UMass/Boston's student-run arts and literary
magazine, has finally been guillotined by the Student
Activities Committee (SAC). The stay of execution
was lifted last May at a SAC budget hearing when
not one member of the magazine's most recent staff
(a.k.a. The Gary Gilmore Fan Club) showed up to
defend its refunding. Officials of the SAC Penitentiary, who have never considered Wavelength a
model prisoner, wasted little time in leading the incorrigible convict up onto the budgetary scaffold of
blind bureaucratic justice.
Wavelength had been on Death Row for the last
2!/2 years, after being twice convicted of the capital
offense of Embarassing the University. The first embarassment occured in the spring of 1982 when the
magazine published an autobiographical article, written by one Father Penn, that crucified the Roman
Catholic Church for its corruption and moral
atrocities. The problem was-that the Father turned
out to be one of the editors of the magazine exercising his Marxist irreverence. Within hours of the
magazine's distribution an
inquisitor from the
Campus Ministry was in the Wavelength office, fists
clenched in apocalyptic fury, snorting fire and
brimstone, and demanding the head of the dread
blasphemer. Dozens of letters and phone calls were
received by the chancellor's office from church
groups, offended individuals, and even the
governor's office. There were demands for a retraction, demands for future censorship, and demands
for shutting the magazine down.
The chancellor was embarassed, as were the administrators of SAC who, though they draw their
wages from student funds, are only accountable to
the University administration that appointed them.
Wavelength had committed the worst possible crime:
it had drawn attention to the bureaucratic status quo,
partially unmasking the University's public image
and giving outsiders a glimpse at the horrqr beneath.
Though both the chancellor and SAC passed out
memos defending Wavelength's first amendment
rights, privately the magazine was being indicted,
convicted, and sentenced to death.
A bureaucratic maintenance crew had no sooner
finished scraping the feces off the fan when
Wavelength staffers embarassed the University administration again during the production of the very
next issue: they caught Assistant D.A. for Student
Affairs Charlie Desmond surreptitiously previewing
a yet-to-be-published article. Desmond was sneaking
a peek at the request of Paul Trummel, the former

University-appointed typesetter for student publications. The Mass Media, not always known for its
dogged pursuit of important stories, jumped all over
this one. Censorship questions were raised, the
previous administrative memos defending
Wavelength's first amendment rights were
discredited, students grew restless and reactive, the
University's public image was growing uglier,
UMass/Boston was fast becoming an uncomfortable
place to shoot a quiet game of political pocket-pool.
Wavelength had effectively, if somewhat unintentionally, roused the rabble, which is something the
administration had successfully subverted when it did
away with the free period at the time of the infamous
merger. The administration, unwilling to step further
into the embarassing limelight, and realizing that the
imminent summer intermission would douse the licking flames of the fired-up student voice, reacted by
not reacting at all. But the elected members of SAC
could feel the heat from students; they could also feel
the administrative iciness. SAC members were,being
forced to choose between their obligation to protect
student interests from administrative harassments
and their desire to maintain their self-important positions of power. Most SAC members would choose
the latter. While publicly defending Wavelength
from its critics, privately SAC was subjecting the
Wavelength staff to verbal macings and budgetary
hog-tyings.
SAC was aided in its efforts by the fact that the
Wavelength staff was beginning to buckle under the
enormous pressure. By the next fall, after a couple of
key Seniors from the magazine staff had been paroled in the spring, there was a complete turnover in
Wavelength's staff membership. To the delight of
SAC and the University administration, the new staff
turned its back on all things controversial--they dropped all political commentary, and instituted an exclusively arts and literary format. Under Jeffrey
Brunner, the new editor, Wavelength became a
model prisoner, publishing several superb literary
issues. But the SAC screws were not long impressed:
just as they were previously upset by the controversy
the magazine was stirring up, they now disdained
Wavelength's new "elitist" format. It was clearly an
;ffort on SAC's part to break Wavelength's spirit.
\nd SAC would succeed.
Over the next two years, Wavelength would go
before the SAC disciplinary board on a variety of
trumped-up charges designed to make the magazine
look like a career criminal: lack of submissions, lack
of advertising revenue, lack of continuity, lack of ac-

cessibility, and lack of purpose. But the fact of the

matter is that, despite these charges, the various
Wavelength staffs had managed to get an issue out
every semester. And yet, instead of being praised for
this steadfast accomplishment, SAC complained that
the magazine sometimes came out at the end of the
semester, during finals when few students had the
time to read it. Good lord! So, you put the magazine
aside until finals are over, as you would any other
literary magazine.
SAC, with its TV Guide mentality, had no idea
what Wavelength was all about. Otherwise, they
would never have come down harder and harder on
the magazine for failing to generate advertising
revenue. Few literary magazines have ads at all, but
some SAC members wouldn't know this because
their idea of a literary magazine is People. Money is
.everything to SAC because playing with its distribution: is fun, as well as the source of their power and
self-importance.
Earlier this summer, former SAC Chairperson
Tony Caner, who chaired the budget hearing at
which Wavelength was guillotined, had this to say
about the magazine: "Their budget was $21,800 and
I couldn't see spending more student money for a
publication that has not been student accessible."
Regardless of what the majority of. students might
feel, Tony Caner couldn't see spending more student
money on the magazine. Tony Caner and SAC would
rather spend up to $20,000 to fund what they claim
will be a "major" rock concert this fall and then
charge an additional fee for admission, just so SAC
won't lose any money in the deal. Business is
business, as Caner would say.
Such pomposity is typical of SAC's decisionmaking attitude. When they aren't giving themselves
standing ovations for simply doing the job they were
elected to do, they're busy planning more concerts,
beer parties, and Hawaiian luaus. And they've just
"proudly" announced plans to "replace"
Wavelength with a business magazine that will be
50% advertisements. Given this mentality, it is not
surprising that Wavelenght spent its last few months
on Death Row begging SAC to get it over with. Unfortunately for the last Wavelength staff, it learned a
little too late that if you take,a shower with SAC
you'd better not drop the soap.
John Hawkins
John Hawkins is a former editor for Wavelength
Magazine

LETTER
Nantucket Houses
To the Editor:
Congratulations for a very fine article on Nantucket and on the Field Station (August 7, 1984).
One or two points of possible interest: The "gull's
nests" on rooftrops are usually called roof walks
(never widow's walks) here. Access is by a hatch in
the roof, and going up to .the walk is called "going
up-scuttle". They were built so people could take the
air, look around, and maintain and clean their
chimneys. I fear the quaint names on houses are a recent innovation the original Quakers would not have
approved of. Perhaps the custom had its origin in the
habit of hanging quarterboards (name boards) from
ships, many of them wrecked here, on houses and

fishing shanties. The woman who told you to lock

your bike and gear at the beach was giving good advisemany thefts take place there, sad to tell.
Thanks for the note on the summer field biology
program-much appreciated by everyone here. The
Theatre Arts Department of UMB also has a summer
program and American Civilization runs a very fine
full-semester program in Humanities here each fall.
I very much enjoyed your article.
Sincerely,
W.N. Tiffney
Director, Nantucket Field Station

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