If you haven’t heard of Junk (junk-mag.com) and Sheer Magazine (sheer-mag.com) then you are completely out of the loop when it comes to Oberlin’s new student-run online magazines. Either that or you have not been eavesdropping on sleep-deprived juniors in Mudd’s A-Level who are filling out their profiles on ObieMatch and studying the interesting mix of photos and articles in Junk and Sheer. Both magazines are an eclectic mix of articles, short stories, naked men, poetry and witty vignettes, though naked men are mostly featured in Junk.

Publications by Oberlin students offer an opportunity to expand what we all know as the Oberlin bubble, twhich usually ends at the bottom of Main Street. Sheer Magazine began as an idea to catalyze a feminine response to Junk’s monthly photos of male students at Oberlin in the nude. Senior Brad Walsh, editor-in-chief of Junk, summed it up with: “Junk is trashy and Sheer is classy.”

Sophomore Garrett Miller and senior Adam Tate, along with sophomore Jackie Pokusa, and senior Laura Hobbes met and put their heads together to build a response to Junk. The feminine counterpart idea was scrapped and Sheer became an online magazine that features a 57 flavor array of photos and student-written pieces on a unique theme every month.

The magazine acquired its name through a naming contest that Pokusa won with the label Sheer, which contrast the ideals of the magazine with its counterpart, Junk.

Sheer is billing itself as a multi-faceted literary magazine. Miller says Sheer’s goal is to “create an emotional rollercoaster.” The fact that every monthly issue centers on a theme does not interfere with the diversity of content. The first issue’s theme modesty presented writers like sophomore Baraka Noel, who in “Naked Me” wittily explores his own and America’s Rocky Horror Picture Show obsession with nudity.

This month’s issue surrounds mischief and includes Laura Hobbs’ article “Good Girls Gone Wild” on Oberlin’s students and their rejection of the status quo as just an excuse to “do drugs and run around naked, not necessarily at the same time (though it certainly helps).” Next month’s theme, irony, will showcase photographic and written narratives on the subject. Miller will be teaching an ExCo focused around the magazine to promote the participation of new writers and photographers. He also points out that the plans of the magazine to involve Oberlin alumni as well as faculty as writers.

Kingman Brewster, the president of Yale from 1963 to 1977, said, “While the spoken word can travel faster, you can’t take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader.” How much more complicated is the notion of the reader’s control over the material he or she reads in the case of an online publication? Sheer Magazine allows for writers and readers both inside and outside of Oberlin to delve creatively into assorted subjects. The Grape, The Oberlin Review and the many literary magazines published and distributed around campus like Enchiridion and Nommo and now online magazines like Junk and Sheer will afford students the opportunity to document the peculiarities of Oberlin’s anti-mainstream consciousness.