AmhPub’s intent is to become a new interactive publication at Amherst. How many times have you been struck by something at school, thought about it, shared it with a few friends, and then stopped there? With AmhPub, the hope is to create a dynamic space where those conversations can be hosted for the rest of the campus to join in with as well. Everyone here is pretty darn bright, and it’s a shame we often can’t tap into that because of busy schedules and sub-bubbles of the community. With luck maybe this site will enable us to begin.
A centerpiece of AmhPub is that there is no anonymity. The Jolt and Confessional have demonstrated that we degenerate down into sludge-slinging idiots when we don’t have our names attached to anything. True, anonymity is comforting and safe, but the resulting loss of all civility seems a terrible price to pay. Besides, if no one is anonymous, is it really that frightening to not be, either?
Another tenet of AmhPub is that anyone and everyone can become featured or be published in the print version. Write something that catches on, lucidly comment on some thread, whatever, and you could be selected to headline for the publication. We’ll of course contact you before we put your words in print, but we do hope this aspect is exciting and acts to stimulate some vigorous thought. The goal is to break down as many barriers as possible to rekindle an effective, campus-wide forum.
The Staff Writers and Organizations are strongly weighted on the site, but only in an attempt to give a general framework and act as a means to stimulate discussion. We hope they will recess back into the the general mass as more people use the site and start up their own blogs. If this really catches on, maybe even the faculty and administration will jump into the fray as well.
Perhaps this all sounds nice and rosy, but you’re cynical about the prospects. Blah blah blah, new-aged junk, blah blah blah. If so, you very well could be right and the site will fail. Maybe we are simply naive dreamers with all this Web 2.0 feel-good fuzziness, but hey, might as well give it a chance, right?