The Collegiate Commons is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news publication, founded in August of 2023 with a vision of providing an independent, common space to connect students to their wider community by covering the news on campus and around Central Indiana. We are also working on forming a partnership with https://www.theamericancommons.com to give perspective on national news topics. Hopefully this article can answer some questions about the organization and explain how you can support its work.
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How we are different
Student publications are often limited in their ability to be a genuine and independent student voice for a number of reasons.
- Typically only journalism students participate in student publications. This limits their perspective to issues journalism majors tend to care about, leaving things like science and religion coverage scarce. Their perspective is also limited by the fact that journalists (and presumably future journalists) tend to be more politically left-leaning and less religious than the general population.
- Student publications are often limited in their coverage and diversity by either direct oversight by the school administration or journalism department (including in filling editorial spots) or financial dependence on the university.
- It is incredibly difficult to sustain a traditional publication on a commuter campus, meaning that the unique perspective of working and non-traditional student is often ignored.
We have sought to fix this by remaining financially and editorially independent from the university.
Most of our contributors currently attend Indiana University-Indianapolis or Indiana University-Bloomington, the former of which is a commuter college. Our contributors also come from a diverse range of majors, from neuroscience to sign language. Ideologically, our contributors include distributists, georgists, libertarians, Democrats and Republicans. We are a non-sectarian and non-partisan publication, and currently have Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, evangelicals, and agnostics on our staff.
That being said, our editorial perspective unifies and gives focus to our diverse staff, through a particular view of the common good informed by Christian social teaching.
We hope our journalism contributes to a better democracy.
How to Support Us
If you want to be a part of our educational and civic mission, there are a few way you can support us.
You could become a writer for us, by filling out this form. We are also looking to fill editorial positions.
You could also support us financially. If five people gave five dollars per month, it would cover all of our current liabilities. Eventually The Collegiate Commons would like to start paying writers and editors too, since everyone involved is currently a volunteer (some of whom are working at least ten hours a week on this project). Since we are a 501(c)(3), all donations are tax-deductible.
We appreciate your continued patronage of The Collegiate Commons, and hope you will consider supporting us below!