This past September, I was rummaging through the cramped space of SHEI Magazine’s office, which we share it with the advertising department of the university’s newspaper, and which is about the size of a dorm room. I think I was looking for business cards or the box of SHEI logo nail files, but in my search, I stumbled onto an unassuming white storage container that held every issue of SHEI ever printed. With only ten minutes until our editorial board meeting, I didn’t give them more than a cursory glance. The only thing that immediately caught my eye was the issue from fall 2010. Its cover photo was so guilty of Native American cultural appropriation, complete with feathers in the model’s hair, face paint that was intended to look tribal, and faux furs against a green field completed the insincere tribute against a green field that my sincerest hope was that this particular magazine never got dredged back up. I put the lid back on the box and walked into the conference room where the rest of the editors were waiting, and scanned the agenda that I had created for that evening. There was a little itch in my brain that was telling me what a wealth I had just stumbled upon, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. It was overwhelming, all of the history and hard work that had been put into the magazine for the past 40 issues made me distinctly aware that my Letters from the Editor would soon end up in this forgotten box as well. I started off our meeting with some announcements about new partnerships I was working on with the rest of the executive board and then delved into adjusting deadlines and getting prog-
ress reports from the 16 people sitting around the table with me. I joined the magazine my sophomore year as a general staff member of the fashion team and was elected Print Fashion Editor the following year. In those roles, I conceptualized and executed fashion photoshoots for the magazine which included sourcing clothing, finding models and a location, and directing the models and photographers on site. After the launch party of my first magazine as a print editor, I went home to journal and cry while the rest of the board went out to a bar. I was exhausted with fashion but the validation from seeing my name on that masthead fueled my decision to move to a more administrative, big-picture role as Editor-in-Chief. On a Sunday in October, I attended a student publications board retreat held at an Irish Pub on Ann Arbor’s Main Street, during my first few weeks as Editor-in-Chief. I looked around the dim room at the nine adult members who were supposed to be our mentors and guide our growth as a publication and I was impressed by the lineup, albeit a bit annoyed that the agenda said we would be there from 12-7PM. We were the newest publication under their umbrella, we’d only been added five years ago, and I felt like our production had stagnated since then. I wanted to show them the potential that we had, and the work that we were willing to do to progress our magazine. When it was time for SHEI to present our plans for the upcoming year, I detailed standard procedures that needed to be updated, like