Ultra Vires

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Is UV too Cliquey?

Yes, obviously. Well that was a short column.

This is a complaint that we hear often. And if we can hear complaints over the nonstop dubstep playing in the UV office (sorry Cheryl Fung!), then it must be pretty serious.

We’re aware that UV can come across as a small group of friends who have hijacked the school paper to make self-referential in-jokes. The Editorial Board consists mainly of people from the pub night crowd, and perspectives presented in UV tend to reflect this bias.

But as badly as we may come across, we’re actually a pretty open group. The problem is that when you’re running a school paper, you quickly realize that no one is banging on your door offering to submit content. This is especially true over the summer months as you prepare for the September issue.

So what’s the answer? You bug your friends to do it. This works well, but quickly becomes self-perpetuating. You end up relying on a handful of contributors and the paper comes across as cliquey, which discourages others from getting involved.

But Ultra Vires is your school newspaper too.  It’s meant to reflect the viewpoints of the law school at large. We publish a lot of Diversions articles, not because we want the paper to be light-hearted, but because joke articles are the easiest content to solicit. We’d love for UV
to be a forum for discussing more serious issues and questions.

To make this possible, we need your feedback.

Is there anything about UV that you would like to see more or less of? Is there something about the paper that deters you from contributing?  There are many ways to get in touch with us. You can email us at ultra.vires@utoronto.ca, you can submit feedback through our website at ultravires.ca, or you can talk to us about it at school.

You don’t have to get involved directly, but we’d love to hear your thoughts.

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