Counterculture Magazine Issue One

Letter from the Editor In September of 2021, I, a first-year student with no connections, money, or any idea where half of my classes were, made a crucial and life transforming decision: I wanted to start a social justice magazine.

Many have asked me how I came up with the idea to start Counterculture.

Admittedly, it was in some ways quite selfish. The moment after I moved in my last box, I was ready to jump into the world of activism that had drawn me to Richmond. My second tour at the university was punctuated by the climax of the still-ongoing battle over the names of the Humanities Building and Mitchell Hall. Everywhere I went, evidence of this war was all around me— from the rough red splatters of graffiti spelling out “Black Lives Matter” to my own tour guide, an admissions officer who sheepishly told me the student guides weren’t available to show me around. Many of the other liberal arts schools that I had applied to often told me about the spirit of social justice that punctuated their student bodies, but I largely saw the same homogenous liberalism that decried racism but did nothing to solve it. Here, though perhaps small, I saw proof that this wasn’t just a school where students just talked about the issues that plagued their campus. They did something about it.

A few weeks into my freshman year, I attempted to join groups and organizations that I thought would continue this legacy but found myself increasingly disappointed in the scope that they were limited to. I am a person who is interested in all kinds of social justice issues due to their interconnectivity: to me, all issues are the children of white supremacy and its conjoined twin, capitalism. I noticed my peers posting on social media what could have been the introductions to ridiculously well-written op-eds about issues both on campus and all over the world. Where were these students?

Why were their voices not being heard? And more crucially, why wasn’t there a platform for these ideas to be expressed in a way that wasn’t just limited to an occasional op-ed in the student newspaper or a lengthy Instagram post?

The original name of this magazine was “Provocation,” in what I thought was an edgy attempt to imply that its contents would be provocative. But a part of me knew it wasn’t right. Counterculture Magazine reflects the changing demographics of the University of Richmond, a school that was and still is defined by a largely white and Northeastern population. This magazine is intended to show that with the rise of students of color, LGBTQ+ students, first generation and low-income students, and our white allies, there is a counterculture.

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