The Aquinian: was's and wasn'ts

In the Fall of 2005 the Fredericton student media received an unexpected jolt.

The St. Thomas Aquinian, coming off a banner year (2004-05) under Editor Miriam Christensen, had undergone pivotal changes in format and direction, faced threats and made national headlines.

It had taken off under past sub-editor Justin Sadler in what was very likely its best year of production, ever. The Aquinian was sound but provocative, stern yet comic. It seemed to believe in journalistic standards and the agenda particular to student newspapers. It came under fire and made questionable decisions, but people read it.

It was in under these circumstances that a weblog, written anonymously,began to cause a stir. The Aquinian: is's and isn'ts, hosted byblogger and penned by STUdissiDENT, attacked the Aquinian, its staff and writers in a pejorative, vulgar, weekly salvo throughout the eight-month school year. The blog was discussed between students, in classes and in the Aquinian, but mostly in the blog's comments section, a forum visited upon by a diverse sample of the student body. The Aquinian rounded out the year having received more attention from the student body on a consistent basis than it ever had. The blog had something to do with it; "It's dialogue, and that's awesome," Sadler once said. But he knew that the interest in the blog, and the reasons why the blog existed, had more to do with the quality of the newspaper and the attention it was getting. It was doing what a student newspaper was supposed to do.

The irony of the blog and its timing wasn't lost on those who remembered it the following year. Under editor Kate Wright, the paper aspired to take what one editor called "a more serious approach," an attempt to be "more like a real newspaper."
Rather than staking out the fox hole from which the agenda of a progressive and daring publication had been pushed, the Aquinian of 2006-07 retreated into reliable and safe formulas. In the following two years the paper was reverted from a highly stylized tabloid to a poorly considered broadsheet with a quiet logo and photo covers that gave scant indication of contents. The editorial board swelled from 5 editors in 2005 to 9 in 2009 (including, inexplicably, an "International Editor"), but the paper remains stuck between the conflicting agendas of its predecessors. And, as one St. Thomas student recently observed, "No one reads it."


Newspaper is a verb, a mutable construction whose face changes with the faces that occupy it. The direction of ownership and editors inflect the direction of a newspaper and what it thinks and speaks. But a rotation of values is not a change of
purpose; the pivotal, definitive character of a newspaper that draws the like-minded to it. And for this reason, the failure of the Aquinian in recent years to uphold a previously achieved standard has little to do with its recent editors. A student paper is, after all, a playground for budding journalists, a place for
them to explore within the fenceposts of niche media. But if, in the process, they abandon what made the paper great, albeit controversial, the question becomes 'why'? Why change what works for the sake of change alone?

For whatever reason successful editors have been unable to hand-down a legacy. In every category, the only consistent thing about the paper is that it will be revamped every September. And the best explanation for this is that editors are inevitably hiring editors that resent the direction their forebearers steered their inheritance. If Kate Wright is to Justin Sadler as Rex Murphy is to Naomi Klein, why did he offer her his post and subsequently betray his vision? Rather than seeking successors who were drawn to the Aquinian because they liked it, the editors offered it up to qualified candidates who objected to the way it had been managed before. The proceeding generations, swept up in the tension of competing visions, knew that the paper would be ripe for plucking in the approaching term. Now new editors don't aspire to match a standard of quality; they desire to implement their vision.

I'm told the Aquinian sits untouched and swept around on the tables of James Dunn Hall and the George Martin Cafeteria at St. Thomas, as visually as it is spiritually amorphous. Students glance it over and dismiss it. They complain about advertising, but they don't think far past them. Dark ages precede renaissances, and romantic nostalgia follows salad days. Without doubt, one roll of the dice some September will cast the protean St. Thomas paper into form. And perhaps, if editors keep the student body in heart and mind, they'll know enough to ensure it stays the way they fought to make it.