By By The FONT Staff
We are writing this article in response to an op-ed piece that appeared in the February 17th issue of The Chronicle. In the article, Aaron Calvin raises his concerns regarding Font, and in order to offer the Hofstra student body an alternate opinion, we would like to address each of Mr. Calvin's criticisms in turn.
To begin with, we have been using the same logo and typography for several years, without receiving any complaint until now. Regarding the cover of our last issue, we recognized the pixilation problem while reviewing the proofs, corrected the image, and notified our printer, who informed us that he had received the revised cover; it wasn't until we unpacked the shipment of finished issues that we realized this was not the case.
As for the lack of color in the issue, unfortunately recent budget cuts have forced us to print in black and white. If Mr. Calvin has ever picked up a past issue, however, he has seen that we usually have a color insert. We are just as disappointed as he is that we weren't able to present the artwork submitted to us in its original color.
Concerning the layout of our magazine, if our poetry is "cramped" as Mr. Calvin suggests, it is only because we try to include as many highly-rated submissions in each issue as we can. As far as the actual content goes, we're not sure how Mr. Calvin would like this "problem" to be addressed. Hofstra students submit all of our content, so, in effect, Mr. Calvin is insulting those talented students who take the time to submit their work. As to the distribution of our magazine, we are admittedly a small club, but we always take the time to periodically hand out and dispense issues in the Student Center and around campus.
As far as our meetings go, we wonder how many of these Mr. Calvin has actually attended. We do set aside a small portion of our budget for arts and crafts. The idea to periodically include such activities during our meetings was suggested by a member, voted on, and approved; moreover, we only do this two or three times a semester, and certainly not at every meeting. Mr. Calvin's regards our "vague" rating system—It is hardly so, and if he had asked any one of our members about it, we would have been happy to explain it to him.
The greatest issue we take with Mr. Calvin's article is that he brought up all of these concerns and critiques a full semester after he attended our meetings, and not at the meetings themselves. We are a very open-minded club and consider any suggestions given to us.
Mr. Calvin asks for change, and says that he desires a magazine of higher quality, but he seems unwilling to personally do anything beyond attending a meeting or two and then writing an overly derisive report six months later. He offered none of his suggestions at our meetings, or at any time since. It is easy to attend a few meetings and then critique everything you would have done differently, but it is hardly conducive to the change Mr. Calvin calls for.