Featuring a bounce house for the kids and mimosas for the adults, the University of New Mexico Honors College hosted an alumni outreach event and silent auction for Scribendi.
Following this year’s homecoming “Wolfstock” theme, the Honors College brought back many of its alumni to celebrate and ask for donations to both the college and its nationally syndicated literary arts magazine, Scribendi.
“We’re locked out of doing a lot of the stuff that regular student organizations do,” said Amaris Ketcham, the faculty advisor of Scribendi and professor of interdisciplinary liberal arts at the Honors College.
Scribendi receives around 500 submissions from other Honors Colleges in the Western Regional Honors Council. Submissions include creative non-fiction, short stories, photographs and poetry, to name a few.
Alyssa Aragon is the magazine’s current editor-in-chief. Aragon said that selecting submissions and designing the magazine is done through an Honors College class.
This characteristic of Scribendi is what the Associated Students of UNM described in 2015 as “(a) circumstance that qualified it more as a class than a student (organization),” according to minutes notes taken from a Sep. 23 Full Senate meeting.
ASUNM voted to defund Scribendi in 2016, despite one senator at the time saying they “haven’t seen a student group more passionate.”
Jeremy Zcilik, a communication and journalism student who graduated in 2018, was an editor in the semester after the defunding. He said the attitude at Scribendi in the immediate aftermath of the defunding was dour.
“There was a high chance we weren’t going to be able to make it through,” Zcilik said.
Zcilik said Scribendi staff hit the streets going into Albuquerque restaurants and Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, asking for donations.
The magazine did run in 2016 after being defunded and continues to run two years later.
Lily Taichert, Scribendi student treasurer, was optimistic about this year’s funding.
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Aragon and Ketcham said it takes about $20,000 to produce Scribendi every year. Ketcham said that about $7,000 comes from the Western Regional Honors Conference, the rest from awards, donations and fundraisers like the silent auction.
Mimosa-consuming alumni and students had several odd and interesting items available to bid on.
A dozen El Pinto salsa jars of various heats and flavors were paired with T-shirts and care packages. A pearl necklace, valued at $111, was one of the first items available to potential bidders.
Aragon said the items available were all collected locally, including several pieces of fine art and a collection of mystery novels by a local author.
The author of the novels also promised to have a character named after the winner in one of her upcoming books.
The Honors College gave out a Distinguished Alumni Award to Bill Pickens. Pickens attended UNM in 1968. He said the honors program at that time was two professors and 12 students. He said he was drawn to the program after graduating from Highland High School because the honors program offered early registration.
Pickens went on to the University of California, Davis after graduating from UNM.
He said, “the worst thing about the (Honors) program at that time was that they served Tang and granulated decaf coffee.”
Children of the honors alumni could be seen and heard laughing in the bounce castle outside as Pickens received his award.
Justin Garcia is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers ASUNM. He can be contacted by email at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Just516garc.
