Wow.
Just,... wow.
Let's ignore the baseless accusation that SF lacks academic merit (clearly, Orwell, Shelly, Poe, and Huxley aren't worth studying) for a moment. TLE has provided educational grounding for many students. Everything I know about publication either comes directly or can be traced to my time working at TLE. It's because of TLE that I could start doing other work, which is why I have my job today. Frankly, TLE has much more to do with my career than anything the English department did.
This is very sad.
If you guys need more allies, you may want to approach Dale Pratt in the Spanish Department. Mr. M took at least one class from him. He's the one that sponsored my ORCA grant about comic books. I don't know what he can commit to it, but it can't hurt to have faculty allies, right?
I'll start trying to send a $6 check for each issue, to do my part to keep you afloat. In addition, any work that you can farm out electronically to me I will volunteer to do. I don't want TLE to die.
Thanks, we really appreciate the support. We did look into being under another department, but unfortunately the only departments that the College felt we could be under is English, and Linguistics and English Language (which has the editing minor). Neither of these would take us and the College wouldn't let us be under them. So there you are.
I agree with you that it's a great experience for students. Much of the faculty (Linda Adams, Mel Thorne, and Zina Peterson at the top) are very supportive of us and think we're the most professional magazine at BYU, but what can we do. We'll be accepting donations as well, and so we're hoping to be able to get enough that way. And we still have our BYU bank account (which we are being given permission to take with us) which will help (but not a whole lot). Here's hoping we get enough money!
What will really help is being able to use the HumPub still and having student
slaves volunteers to help us run it.