By Madelyn Stone

News Correspondent

Through the publication of a calendar and two magazines per year, Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine has provided Northeastern students and faculty with an outlet for creative expression for more than 50 years.
The openness of Spectrum’s compilation and editing process allows students of all majors and interests to get involved, whether they submit their own photography, paintings, poetry and prose or attend weekly meetings to review the submissions.
Middler English major Andrea Hampel, Spectrum’s editor-in-chief, said she is glad such a variety of students can participate in the magazine’s community.
“[Spectrum]’s a big collection of what a bunch of students have been doing that maybe they don’t get to express in their majors,” she said. “We get a lot of photographers and English majors at our meetings, but a lot of times we also get other people that are submitting. We’ll have engineering people and things like that and they don’t usually get to write creatively in their classes so I think it’s just a nice outlet for everyone who’s interested in that.”
At 7:30 p.m. every Monday, the Spectrum editing staff guide general meetings in 340 Curry Student Center. At these meetings, the staff goes over and rates submissions.
To Advertising Manager Taryn Sadauskas, a junior graphic design major and business minor, Spectrum stands out distinctly among Northeastern’s many publications.
“It’s more of a portfolio rather than a magazine where there’s articles, like there’s a lot of work that you can look at and read, so that’s what makes [Spectrum] different,” she said. “It’s very unique.”
Sadauskas credits Layout Editor MacKenzie Cockerill with the increasingly professional design of the magazine, another facet she believes makes Spectrum such a special publication.
Cockerill, a middler English major, says the magazine stands out in other ways as well.
“We don’t cover current events or trends,” she said. “We just cover people’s emotions, people’s expressions.”
Striving to better share Northeastern’s creative talent with the entire community, Cockerill said she has a vision of Spectrum evolving beyond its publications to become more of a literary and arts club.
The group has worked to expand its social media with Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter pages, and plans to involve more students through various artistic events. Spectrum’s recent poetry reading and its co-sponsorship of the upcoming dialogue and spoken word night Nov. 5 are just a few examples of the activities the group has initiated.
“It would be really awesome if we could get more events and more people involved and things like that,” Hampel said. “Just because then the quality of the publication will improve because we’ll get more submissions.”

While events and general meetings are integral to Spectrum’s goals as a student organization, student submissions remain at the heart of the publication.
“Definitely, more submissions would be great,” Spectrum Secretary Eryn Carlson, a sophomore English major, said. “It would especially be great to see other kinds of art, because we like never get anything besides photography. And maybe more prose, even monologues or something, besides poetry. We get a little prose but it’s very, very little.”
Additionally, since Spectrum does not hold any rights to the pieces they receive, students should not be afraid to submit due to copyright reasons.
“We don’t own anyone’s work so you can submit it to us and then submit it somewhere else too,” Sadauskas said. “So we’re trying to get better quality work and photos and artwork.”
Students can submit art or literary work to [email protected] or drop off a hard copy at the magazine’s mailbox at 434 Curry Student Center. Formatting guidelines are on the Spectrum website, www.spectrum.neu.edu.