By Rebecca Shen, Jim Walsh, and Anna Pluff
Do you feel that your creativity is being restricted in class? Express yourself through writing poems, or essays, or narrative nonfiction, or short stories, and email your submissions for Rambunctious to litmag@jd.cnyric.org by the end of March to have the chance to be featured in the Spring Edition of Rambunctious.
This year, to increase the amount of poems for the magazine, the staff set up a poetry drive. They asked each English teacher to encourage students to write poems for the literary magazine, and the class that submits the most will win a donut breakfast. The magazine will take submissions from any student , and poems can be submitted by email or given to teachers. The magazine hopes to increase the amount of poems in its next edition. Students can also email their submissions for Rambunctious at any time for future editions.
The Rambunctious staff members once again proved their prowess as literary magazine editors with an outstanding Fall 2015 issue. Unlike its usually colorful counterparts, this edition was printed in black and white. According to club member, junior Kate Salvo, this decision was made in order to “make [the magazine] look more professional (and) different from the last.” As with previous issues, the magazine was formatted with Scribus, a professional formatting software.
The school’s literary magazine just published its fall edition, but it will also publish a scholastic edition where it features scholastic art and wrting winners and a spring edition. Being featured in Rambunctious is one way students at Jamesville-DeWitt High School can share their diverse creative abilities. The magazine accepts a variety of student works: creative writing varying from poetic pieces to prose, photography, and art, including ceramics and various other mediums. These diverse submissions are what bring the pages of the magazine to life.
Rambunctious gives students a way to show off their abilities and creative talents as well as enjoy the works of their peers. Rambunctious staff carefully selects which submissions it wants to show in each edition. There is a voting process during which every piece is reviewed by the members of the Rambunctious club. As explained by a club member, junior Kristina Bell, submissions are first organized on a spreadsheet. A dropbox is then created for staff members to access the submissions, where they can read through them all and cast their votes. Each piece is read or examined to see if it will be a good fit for the magazine. While submissions are not reviewed anonymously, club members cast their votes without prejudice. Club member junior Melissa Gao explains, “pieces are judged with as little bias as possible, so it’s usually not a problem. [We] read the submissions, then see who submitted it, and staff members never review their own submissions.”
What members of Rambunctious take pride in is the fact that this club is mostly student led. The students get to take on leadership roles, and do all the work themselves. English teacher and Rambunctious adviser Matt Phillips says the staff sometimes asks him for advice. He says he is “like the repository for the history of the magazine,” as he only acts as a “warm body” during meetings. However, Phillips still loves the time he spends as the adviser for Rambunctious, because he “gets to see the best of the creative efforts of students all over the school,” students that he may not have had in class or that I don’t have in class, and don’t necessarily take my creative writing class. ” In addition, club members don’t choose official leaders either, since this club is wholly based on a team effort. Students can submit any writing pieces or artistic pieces for the upcoming spring edition by email to litmag@jd.cnyric.org.
For students who are looking to be recognized by their fellow J-DHS peers and teachers for their literary or artistic talents, Rambunctious is an excellent and exciting way to express creativity and voices.
