So far the Student Media Spotlight has travelled through Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and ACT. So, it was only fitting that we venture north to our friends in the Sunshine State.
Glass student magazine hails from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and has lived many lives, succeeding decades of union funded student publications on campus.
When I was doing background research for this interview, I noticed it became increasingly difficult to trace Glass’ history. I wanted to understand the mystery and history of our formless friend that I couldn’t find in the archives. Naturally, I dialled into Queensland to talk with some of the editors of the paper.
Jumping first into introductions, Glass was represented by their editor-in-chief Celeste, alongside their zine connoisseur and creative writing editor, Jacinta and Tione, and their battle-of-the-band and self-professed fan of Facebook Love Letters content editor.
Glass was born in 2019 and before Glass came, Universe. All publications are funded by the QUT Guild’s SSAF resources and have historically changed shape and theme approximately every 5 years.
Glass functions with four editors and one editor-in-chief (EIC). Glass also pointed out that the Guild’s publications have historically been mostly edited by women and are proud to carry on that legacy in four of their members. Like Honi, no one is responsible for a particular section of the publication but tasks are divided based on preference, affinity and weekly expectation of hours. Unlike Honi, Glass has an EIC who is responsible for the administrative, media and budgeting mechanics of the publication. They describe their team as having a “pretty flat hierarchy and function is achieved through collaborating.”
Each year they produce three main editions; ‘Summer’, ‘Winter’ and ‘Annual’ alongside three special editions; ‘Election’, ‘Glassies Guide’ and ‘unSEXpected’. The Glassies guide is composed of explainers and campus pieces on the cultural functions of campus. unSEXpected is a collection of sex and relationship columns ranging from topics intimate safety online to understanding kinks and fetishes. For regular contributions, Glass has a strong creative writing fanbase, publishing fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, opinion, memoir, reviews with editors mainly managing the hard news. The publication is constantly working on producing new content for their audiences with their recent podcast, Just to Be Clear, which is coordinated, recorded, edited and promoted by another editor on the team, Ben.
After learning how Glass operates, I asked Celeste about the history of the publication. “There’s always been mystery around this. Student media on campus has existed since the Union existed from the late 1960s. The paper has changed names and structure at least 8 times”, Celeste revealed.
When asked about the character of iterations that came before Glass, Celeste chuckled, “We don’t quite know”. Celeste did tell us about Unit, the first publication aligned with their Guild’s 1966 inception. Like many, Unit covered salient issues of the 1970s including the Vietnam War, freedom of expression, drug rights and counter-culture stances.
It was here that we learnt that QUT was formerly separated into two campuses and subsequently two guilds. In the 1980s, the north campus had DeCAE and the general campus had PLANET which was a product of institutional collaboration. It wasn’t until the official formation of QUT that a more streamlined timeline of publications emerged, seen in the 2006 CirQUTry which Celeste described as “moving away from political articles and student journalism, and towards Guild promotion and entertainment”. In the years that followed at least three more publications took tenure as QUT’s publication until you get to Glass.
Last year, Honi Soit covered the funding cuts that hit Glass, citing a $20,000 budget cut. This barrier has unfortunately impacted editor funding amongst other internal governance structures.
Regardless, Honi has yet to interview a student publication with a history that is as non-linear as Glass. According to the editors, archive management has been sparse and disorganised over the years but Celeste compiled all Glass knows into an impressive guide that we recommend you read, ‘A Fairly Comprehensive History of QUT Student Union Publications’.
Celeste noted “the vibe of the campus is politically neutral”. She went on to explain that QUT student activists would join the UQ encampment and SGM due to a lack of mobilising efforts. This would naturally bleed into QUT’s activist coverage who joked that “we covered UQ happenings more than their own student publication” which is Semper Floreat.
Earlier this year one of the editors, Jacinta, covered QUT Disability Collective’s ongoing fight for a disability room and increased accessibility on campus. Jacinta told Honi, “the collective had been fighting for it for 5 years and because the article got reasonable attention, their room is now in development”. While demoralising that it took so long, the power of student media in amplifying underrepresented or discounted voices remains an indispensable aspect of tertiary institutions.
Despite the self proclaimed ‘apolitical campus’, Glass has taken on coverage of pressing political issues. Tione has led the newly launched ‘Human Rights and Wrongs’ series where long-form opinion pieces tackle issues pertaining to national and global crises such the Palestine and West Papua pieces. Tione told Honi she “worked on the [Palestine] article for months’, collating different representations, statistics and organising efforts students need to understand the crisis.
Glass has also leaned into popular and campus culture through Tione’s fascinating experience with Facebook page QUT Love Letters. Tione wrote a satirical article detailing how the date of her love letter was incorrect because the account posted her letter late and did not account for this. After narrowly missing out on finding the pink mullet person of her dreams, the account was prompted to now include the time and date.
All too familiar to student publications and this spotlight is the barrier of funding. Part of the reason there is little or no record of previous editions is due to receiving budget cuts in recent years. “It doesn’t help that every other year the publication changes because you lose the audience and narrative you’re built”, Celeste noted.
Fast forward to their fifth year in existence, the team unanimously dream to “keep Glass alive and well for at least ten years”, with Tione stressing the importance of building campus culture around student media. The editors’ passion and admiration for their publication is striking with a fight to preserve their legacy. Perhaps the cracks in Glass have been mended into a kaleidoscope — one through which students may one day trace the history of this institution.
