Courtesy of CORE Magazine
Amid other student organizations and publications on Tulane University’s campus, the arts and culture magazine CORE has carved out its own corner. The subsection of TU Fashion publishes in print on a semesterly basis before uploading it digitally. CORE’s next publication is due in March.
The organization has been trying to expand its public image, upping its social media presence and organizing release parties to drum up support.
“We had the best launch party,” said Grace Gilchrist, a writer for CORE and vice president of TU Fashion. “It was right before Halloween [and the attendees] were all fashion people. So, it was ‘dress up in your costume and come to the party.’”
TU Fashion’s focus on outreach speaks to a key issue for campus student organizations — engagement.
“We would have our articles and we would just put them out on McAllister and give them to people,” Gilchrist said. “But then we wanted to make it a bigger thing.”
The group receives discretionary funds through TU Fashion and works with sponsors to maintain the publication, giving them some liberty to write about what they want.
“I think we do a good job of criticizing Tulane,” Gilchrist said. “I wrote an article last year about how much I hate the Goyard bag … they didn’t want me to publish it because they didn’t want girls to get upset because everyone has a Goyard bag.”
CORE’s staff is comprised of an all-female team across marketing, visuals, graphics and journalism, which Gilchrist said was “definitely” reflected in the product.
“We did an article last time about drag, and … I don’t think anybody else would have been comfortable doing a topless shoot with a bunch of drag queens,” Gilchrist said.
Despite the creative team, CORE faces the same struggles as many other student-run organizations. Chief among them is deadlines.
“[Publishing semesterly has] made it pretty difficult recently because we have [longer] deadlines and people have a longer time to get their stuff done,” Gilchrist said. “It makes people actually not get their stuff done because they have so much time.”
Nevertheless, Gilchrist defended the model, contrasting it with TU Fashion’s web publications, a separate entity.
“I think that making it long term … is what makes us able to collaborate across teams and have time to do revision,” said Gilchrist. “There have been a lot of times where we’ve done photo shoots that have been like, oh, this sucked. And they’ve been able to do a completely different photo shoot with different colors, and different goals.”
CORE also has to navigate the murky waters of being a collaborative and accepting environment while also maintaining the expectations of a self-producing publication; timeliness, efficient management and composure.
“The school is so small, you don’t want to cut some girl out of your club because she’s not following through and then see her around on campus,” Gilchrist explained. “But we need to cut people out because they’re not following through.”