Talented Tenth, a new campus publication focusing on black Vandy students and their experiences will begin publishing in September. I am thrilled at the addition of another (probationary) VSC publication for me to read during class.

Certainly, blacks need to be better represented on campus as a whole, and more press is a good start. However, I have some serious doubts about the pragmatism of such a venture. I fear that this will only lead to an even greater lack of diversity among student publications.

First of all, Talented Tenth probably will be read largely only by Vandy's black community. Potential white readers will mostly be turned off by a publication they see as irrelevant to them. Of course they'd be wrong, but they still won't read it. There goes getting the message of diversity across to the majority of the campus. Getting white readers to pick up Talented Tenth may prove difficult, and, like most other Vandy magazines, the problem will be compounded by the fact that one quarter of the student body changes every year. You have to start from scratch with every freshman class.

I also think that Talented Tenth will draw black writers away from other publications, and many white writers would feel uncomfortable contributing to it. I really hope that contributors to the Talented Tenth will work on the staffs of other publications as well, but that can prove difficult and time consuming.

Finally, I also see black issues receiving less press in all the other publications for two reasons: an increased homogeneity as a result of siphoning off of black writers and Vandy's periodicals' tendencies against blatant rehash. I fear that The Hustler and Versus, for example, would hesitate to write about black issues (and step into another publication's realm) if Talented Tenth can do it so much more effectively. Of course, the whole argument for Talented Tenth is that existing papers haven't been writing about black issues, but still...

As Vandy goes through immense change and tries to redefine itself, now is not the time for the black voice to marginalize itself even more than it already has been.

Anyway, I really hope I am proven wrong and Talented Tenth works. I know I'll be picking up a copy when it comes out.