Subtext, Lancaster University’s alternative fortnightly e-newsletter, faces closure unless new volunteers can be found to join its team.
The popular e-newsletter, targeted mainly at staff and post-grads, launched in December 2005 following the university administration’s controversial prosecution of the George Fox 6. These were protesters at a university-hosted corporate venture conference featuring several multinationals involved in human rights abuse cases.
Since then it has tracked the development of ‘Lancaster University PLC’ with flair and humour, with a critical eye for encroachment on academic values, centralisation of influence and commercial corporatisation.
The latest posting entitled ‘Not Issue 62’ reads:
“subtext relies on willing volunteers, but time moves on, and people come to feel that it is time for others to shoulder the task. The collective is now down to three people, and that is not sufficient to produce subtext. Either we need more people to join the present team; or subtext can hand over to a new collective; or it disappears.
Rather than make an immediate choice, in a term replete with material to report, the present collective has decided to suspend subtext for the present and approach people who might come on board, pending a decision at Easter about the future. As always, overtures would be welcome.”
• All correspondence to: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk.
• Back issues and subscription details for subtext can be found at