Some interesting historical forerunners to your favourite Strand sections
There is nothing in history without precedent, and that principle extends to the newspaper you hold in your hands (or read on your laptop or whatever). Below are some notable historical forerunners that echo forth in each of The Strand’s sections, to help you put in perspective the rich legacy of the material before you.
News & Politics:
Our vaunted News section deals in two types of stories: general Canadian political coverage that isn’t specific to the school in the slightest, or intra-campus drama that anyone who doesn’t attend couldn’t possibly understand or care about. In this way, they carry on the legacy of The Beatles, who either wrote songs about the most general topics possible (love is awesome, the sun feels warm, handholding) or about convoluted nonsense that only they could parse (eggmen and walruses, cephalopod horticulture, whoever Mean Mr. Mustard is).
Editorial:
One of the perks of being Head Editor (besides getting paid, unlike us rubes) is that you get a whole section to write whatever you want about the issue’s theme. As such, the Editorial section carries on the legacy of that guy on the TTC, with the flyer for his dodgy website taped to his chest, talking to you about how aliens built the pyramids or whatever. In both cases, you’re not necessarily gonna agree with what’s being said, but you’re a captive audience, and they have the authority here.
Opinions:
Opinions is The Strand’s bastion of free expression, a place where contributors can put forth their positions on thematically-related issues, no matter how unorthodox. In their unabashed questioning of authority, they maintain the legacy of the /advocatus diaboli/, or Devil’s Advocate: the officer of the Catholic Church who was tasked with arguing against the beatification of potential saints. Naturally, this proud position has continued…okay, never mind, it was deemed unimportant and essentially eliminated in 1983. Uh…don’t worry about it, Opinions, I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Arts & Culture:
Arts & Culture is the nerve centre of the paper, keeping it attuned to the ever-changing and ephemeral world of artistic creation and cultural production. It carries on the legacy of that guy at the local show going around and handing out flyers for his own, obviously less popular, band. Arts & Culture wants you to engage with the rich creative world around you, just as that guy wants you to come and see him and his dance-punk three-piece, The Trash Gobblers, play a bar on Queen next Friday. And, just as Arts & Culture is always looking for feedback on burgeoning new creative movements, that guy is examining where on his setup all that speaker feedback is coming from, so that he can start playing before the whole crowd has already left.
Features:
Features is the crown jewel of The Strand, containing the longest, deepest, and most thorough explorations of the issue’s theme. Naturally, they spiritually embody the legacy of that kid in your kindergarten class who wouldn’t share any of the damn craft supplies. Just like that kid hoarding the felt and buttons, menacing you with safety scissors when you tried to take any, Features gets the lion’s share of the space, the coloured ink, and the fancy graphics. But, really, you can’t blame them: the kid just wants to make art, and Features just wants to be as big and bombastic as they know they can be. Make sure to keep that in mind so you don’t fly off the handle when they cut your visual in order to add an extra paragraph to their visionary new article about how, get this, ChatGPT might be bad.
Science:
Befitting UofT’s status as a titan of pioneering scientific research, the Science section pays respect to Banting and Best by providing you with monthly, half-remembered student summaries of a Scientific American article they read that one time. They bravely carry on the legacy of Bill Nye, in that they’re an accessible and entertaining way to learn fun facts about the sciences, and also in that they are, definitively, not a replacement for an actual science textbook. Seriously, I’ve had someone link me a video from the 2000s of Bill Nye explaining what chromosomes are in an attempt to prove to me that there are only two genders – thanks, man, now are you gonna send me a video of Elmo teaching how to count to ten in order to disprove the existence of calculus? Ok, I may have gotten sidetracked by how annoyed that argument made me. You’re cool, Science. Carry on.
Poetry:
The Poetry section is a fearless and free place of expression for promising student poets, and a runaway victor for the Strand’s most formally unique section. It is clear to me that Poetry carries on the legacy of Ezra Pound. Just as Pound founded the Modernist movement and helped develop the voices of Frost, Eliot, Hemingway, and Joyce, the Poetry section has brought us such notable and successful poets as…well, I’ll get back to you on that. Anyway, yeah, just like Pound, our Poetry section is very important as an incubator of young talent, and it merits this honourable comparison. Just…do me a favour and don’t Google anything Ezra Pound did after 1933.
Stranded:
Oh, hey, it’s Stranded! You’re already reading it, so I assume I don’t need to do the introductory compliment that I’ve been doing for each section before the jokes start. I’d say that Stranded carries on the legacy of my childhood babysitter, Debbie; in both cases, the people who were theoretically supposed to be in charge of me basically let me have free rein to do whatever I wanted, to predictably catastrophic results. In Debbie’s case, it ended in crayon drawings all over our walls and an upended bowl of spaghetti. In Stranded’s case, it seems that the majority of the section has ended up dedicated to an article making fun of every other part of the paper, which can’t be good for our circulation numbers. Oh well! I’m sure I’ll receive no repercussions for this – though if next issue’s Stranded article is named: “A Toast to Our Glorious and Infallible Head Editors,” do come and check that I’ve not been chained up somewhere.