The idea for The Amherst Public, or AmhPub, began with a conversation Grausz had with two other Amherst students while in South America during Interterm. They shared the belief that Amherst students should have more opportunities for open and productive conversations with one another. Although they agree that the dining hall is an apt setting for dialogue, they feel it imposes a number of limitations on interaction, largely because students generally elect to sit with the same group of friends or sports team.
“Our goal was to make a space in which you could get beyond those barriers,” explained Grausz, “and [a space] that would also encourage Amherst students to do what they are particularly good at, [making] fully fledged, fully thought-out arguments, and put them out there on the Web in the form of a blog.”
Erik Andrews ’09, another contributor to the project, expressed a desire to increase thoughtful inter-group discussions across campus. “So often we go to an interesting talk, read an article in a publication, are struck by a class lecture, talk about it at the dinner table for five to 10 minutes—and then stop there,” said Andrews. “I hope AmhPub allows us to extend those conversations past our immediate friends, chipping away a little bit at the walls of self-segregation we too often stay behind.”
The basic structure of AmhPub lies in a network of blogs. Any member of the Amherst community can set up a blog based on their Amherst e-mail address simply by going to the site and registering. Students can then write and go to other people’s blogs and comment. Because every blog is linked to an Amherst e-mail address, AmhPub is purposefully not anonymous.
In addition to individual students’ blogs, there will also be a core of 10 staff writers who will be paid nominal salaries to produce articles of about 700 words in length once a week. Each columnist will write on a specific topic such as world politics, campus affairs and books among others. All campus groups will also be able to set up their own blogs.
“The idea with the blogs is that you’re not limited to talking about a single topic,” said Grausz. “You can write about anything and tag each blog post according to the topics you feel are relevant.”
One advantage of the internet over print publications, Andrews pointed out, is the ease with which students can engage in cross-campus discussion, while print media requires much more formality, effort and time. “Hopefully AmhPub will be less intimidating and easier to engage with for the majority so that more people jump on and we can start to approach that ideal of vibrant debate many of us had of Amherst upon admittance, but now only find in glimmers,” he said.
According to Grausz, the creators of Amherst Public aspire to join the ranks of the many other Web sites that students routinely check when they peruse the internet. “Our eventual goal is that in the same way people check their e-mail, Facebook account, The New York Times, that they will also go to The Amherst Public and see what the latest things written by Amherst students about music, politics and other topics are.”
To this end, AmhPub will feature a home page with a variety of windows, updated multiple times a day to display new posts and popular posting topics. “The reason we’re doing that is to encourage Amherst students to come back to the site, to view it as active and dynamic,” said Grausz.
In addition to the internet network, there will also be an associated print publication, a weekly newsletter of about 16 pages, which will include the 10 staff writers’ articles from the week, as well as six or so other pieces from the site.
The executive board for AmhPub consists of Grausz, Andrews, Aaron Nathan ’10, Jimmy Laff ’09 and Colombina Valera ’10. Dean Chung ’10 also contributed to the Web site and Charlie Quigg ’09 worked on the layout of the newsletter. The whole group began developing the project about a week after the semester began, said Grauz, but he and Laff spent a fair amount of time thinking and planning individually prior to the start of the semester.
AmhPub will officially launch in the coming weeks, although still in beta testing mode until the end of the semester. “We encourage everyone to go onto the site to comment and post,” said Grausz. “And if they run into any trouble using the site, then they should tell us, and there will be a place where you can post problems on the Web site.” After fixing any problems over summer break, the site will be ready for use again at the beginning of next semester, prior to orientation.