From The Hillsdale Conservative to The Hillsdale Forum: A Small Publication Finds its Identity

At Hillsdale, where the Tower Light, Winona, and The Collegian dominate a lively portrait of student publications, The Hillsdale Forum, a small, bi-semesterly political journal, waits at the edge of notoriety.

Chris McCaffery, The Hillsdale Forum’s second-in-command and managing editor, seems to believe that a stronger reputation may not be far off.

Hillsdale’s College Republicans club founded the magazine in 2003. Then called The Hillsdale Conservative, it gave students an opportunity to add their own voice to the conservative political thought that they spent four years merely listening to. Despite such noble goals, Chris tells me that the ensuing years were tumultuous for the fledgling publication– although it sought a national audience, clashes with other student organizations and issues with staff grounded the Conservative in the reality of a second-class college periodical. Things began to change in 2006, when the journal separated itself from the College Republicans and changed its name to The Hillsdale Forum. Gone also were its national ambitions; as Chris points out, The Hillsdale Forum first needed to establish its reputation on campus before reaching out beyond the bounds of Hillsdale County.

In speaking with Chris, it becomes clear that Hillsdale’s own student body is the lifeblood of the journal. He assures me that the name change was symbolic—meant to bring the publication back to campus, its content being generated, quite literally, by a ‘forum’ of students. The name, now, seems to embody The Hillsdale Forum. The magazine prints humor and music columns alongside its characteristic political essays, edging ever closer to becoming the prominent, “twice-a-semester review of what students are thinking about and having an argument about” that Chris desires it to be.

Shortly afterward, Chris describes a short story contest–new to this quarter’s edition of The Hillsdale Forum — as an attempt to build the magazine a resume of “timeless campus features.” The goal, now, is one of identity, derived, as Chris tells me, from The Hillsdale Forum staff’s enduring drive to “carve out our own space” in the canon of Hillsdale student publications.

Interested in reading Hillsdale’s own student political journal? Check out The Hillsdale Forum’s blog.