Selene, a magazine created by University students and funded by Masthead, an alumni nonprofit, launched Thursday night at Druid City Brewing Company.
Selene is an independent successor to the formerly University-funded Alice Magazine, which the University permanently shuttered in December alongside another magazine, Nineteen Fifty-Six. The University cited a memo from former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that advised federal funds recipients on federal antidiscrimination law and provided nonbinding suggestions for compliance.
Sixty-Three, the successor to Nineteen Fifty-Six, launched at a separate event Friday at Monarch Espresso Bar.
Selene was distributed, and its cover revealed, for the first time at Thursday’s party. Its cover, depicts Mi’kayla Burton, a model and writing editor for Selene, as the goddess Selene, the personification of the moon in Greek mythology.
Gabrielle Gunter, the former editor-in-chief of Alice and current editor of Selene, mentioned both the cancellation of Alice and the beginnings of Selene.
“Let’s start with something I think is really poignant tonight, which is the First Amendment. So just to remind everyone in the University of Alabama what the First Amendment is, I will be reading it,” Gunter said, reading the amendment aloud. Experts have said the University likely violated the First Amendment in closing Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six, and Gunter is one of several students suing the UA System Board of Trustees over their closure.
Selene and Sixty-Three were funded after MASTHEAD launched a $25,000 fundraising campaign in the days after their predecessors were shuttered. MASTHEAD has started a subsequent $60,000 fundraising campaign to fund the publications through next year.
Gunter said the process of creating Selene was extremely challenging.
“I can’t speak about Selene without talking about all the hardships that we faced because of The University of Alabama shutting us down. We were decentralized immediately,” she said. “We lost all our resources. We were even scared at one point to use our Adobe accounts, because they’re through the school.”
Burton said she felt represented working on Alice and now working on Selene.
“I was able to give opinions on what I thought stories should be,” she said. “The one I did is the fashion behind the Black Panther Party. That’s empowering, because the Black Panther movement itself was empowering.”
Burton said she felt at home and welcomed by the staff of Alice and Selene, saying that the magazines “felt authentic.”
“I didn’t have to hide who I was, because I did that my whole life, and I don’t have to,” she said.
The University has weathered intense criticism for closing Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six as the issue made national headlines. Students and faculty have petitioned the University, UA stakeholders have written letters to The Crimson White, the Faculty Senate and another faculty group condemned the closure, and students sued the UA System Board of Trustees.
Gunter said that the University has a long history of discrimination.
“We deserve a place in journalism, and when we got that taken away from us, we were told we don’t belong in journalism, but also we don’t belong at UA,” Gunter said.
Bo Hicks, the owner of Druid City Brewing Company, also briefly spoke at the event, saying the University’s decision to cancel Alice was wrong.
“I’m a straight dude from rural Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but I have a 16-year-old daughter, and she is into fashion,” he said. “She’s into culture, and she also is into graphic design. Alice could have been something that meant the world to her.”
Gunter said it was unsurprising for the University to make these decisions following the passage of Senate Bill 129, a law in Alabama that prohibits staff, student, and faculty organizations from hosting state-sponsored DEI events and regulates the teaching of “divisive concepts.”
“We need to keep fighting. We need to show UA and other organizations and institutions that we belong here,” she said.
