RETROSPECTIVE
How a yearbook became a subversive tool of student expression
Written by Emma Jo Calvert
Reporting by Alisha Dixon
Nestled beside various publications across Western’s campus you’ll find Klipsun Magazine, a quarterly magazine. Since 1969, the publication has been confronting social issues and telling powerful stories.
Since 1913, Klipsun had served as a traditional yearbook for the campus community before it became a hybrid of a magazine and a collection of photos and memories, known as the Klipsun Quarterly, in the late 1960s.
“To some students the Klipsun [yearbook] is a book of fond memories, to be looked at twice then set aside for the years to pass. To others the Klipsun is a ghastly waste of ASB funds,” wrote 1968 spring editor Anne Mortensen. She said that these sentiments were the reasons why the yearbook was undergoing gradual change.
“My experience in journalism is that you don’t really resolve problems so much as you manage them, so you come back to them again and again,” 1972 spring Klipsun editor Bill Dietrich said.
Dietrich was editor-in-chief of the sixth issue of Klipsun, which discussed sex, accessibility and big business. While recognizing that topics tend to be revisited throughout Klipsun, Dietrich noted that the biggest change has been technology.
“We had to take pictures and develop them, paste up the magazine using paste and X-Acto knives,” Dietrich said. “We used manual typewriters. It’s been fun to see that the technological changes and the professional industry have also come to the Western journalism program. Students now come out far more technologically sophisticated than I ever was.”
Design software replaced X-Acto knives, digital cameras replaced darkrooms and developer fluid. Rather than typing out a story on a heavy typewriter, stories are typed on phones and laptops. What is typed is instantly shared with an editor at a moment’s notice. While the technology has changed, Klipsun’s dedication to storytelling has stayed the same.
Another change from the early editions of Klipsun magazine was that there weren’t set themes for the issues, Dietrich noted. The themed issues made their appearance in 1995 for the 25th anniversary edition. In June of 1995, the magazine took a “feminist slant” for its 25th anniversary after the editors realized that many of the articles submitted followed a similar theme, according to the editor’s note of Mara Applebaum, then editor-in-chief. The editors decided that a themed issue wouldn’t hurt, and the concept continued in following years.
Klipsun wasn’t always secure in its existence. Western’s journalism program was a minor in the English department, until Gerson Miller arrived in 1967 to help develop the program into its own department founded in 1976. It’s with the journalism program’s creation that Klipsun gained a new air of quality and professionalism, former Klipsun advisor, R.E. “Ted” Stannard Jr. said. Hired in 1969 as the second journalism faculty member, Stannard took on the duty of changing public opinion of Klipsun.
The year before Stannard stepped up to be Klipsun advisor, a thousand issues of the publication were leftover due to poor editing and organization. Klipsun as a yearbook collapsed and became a student periodical.
Stannard said a new editor for each quarter allowed more turnover and less burnout, rather than a yearbook. With a small staff and paid editors, Klipsun made a brief foray as a photobook before becoming a magazine in 1970.
The publication soon produced backlash. In 1971, a photo spread depicting nude art as well as a woman in tight jeans riding a bicycle across the whole page– a “derrière view of a college coed,” according to Stannard–led a retired fireman to write letters to the president of the university, the governor of Washington and members of the state legislature saying that Klipsun was putting pornography out on campus.
“As you can imagine, publically and socially acceptable tastes were different [at the time] and the conservative side of the public was offended,” Stannard said. According to the charter for student publications, it said that the complaint was not to be taken to Western’s then-President, Dr. Charles J. “Jerry” Flora. Rather, the student publication council was to determine whether or not the image of tight jeans was inflammatory.
This letter of concern was deemed to be a moot point for Western’s student publication council. Klipsun was meant for the college campus community, and therefore the content was tolerable for the reader base. Flora agreed, and student publications and administration lived in peace.
A later issue of the magazine was brought to Flora’s attention, warning him about sexual content and its potential backlash, Stannard said. After reading the article, Flora tried to bar the magazine issue from being printed on campus. Once again, the student publication council disagreed, yet the magazine was still barred from printing on campus. Rather than complying with Western’s administration, Klipsun editors took the magazine to be printed in Seattle, additionally printing double the copies to be distributed across campus.
While Klipsun and The Western Front are both published independently, Klipsun was always meant to be more beautiful than The Front, Stannard said proudly. As an amalgam of long form essays, personal narratives and photography among other things, Klipsun has met Stannard’s expectations from its early years of creation.
Student publications are the heart of Western’s journalism department and have existed far beyond the department’s creation. Stannard considered the relationship as an “unmarried marriage,” in which publications and the department are partners, but not tied fully together. Klipsun continues to be a student-led publication.
The small yearbook under the arm of Western’s English Department developed into an independent magazine free from university control, highlighting a new direction every quarter. Since the magazine’s launch in 1970, Klipsun has been and will always be a publication dedicated to powerful storytelling.