Whitman’s latest literary outlet, Spark: Student Journal for Social Justice, was introduced to campus this week online. Spark is the creation of Kim Hooyboer, who also runs the literary magazine quarterlife on campus.   The journal, which will be released primarily online for ease of access, provides Whitman students with the chance to share the academic papers they write on social justice issues with peers.   One print edition of the first issue will be available in the coming week. Hooyboer started Spark as a final project for one of her classes last semester.

“I took Melissa Wilcox’s ‘Religious Intolerance in the Contemporary U.S.’ class,” said Hooyboer, “and we spent the last day talking about what we could do about all these problems we’d been learning about in class. It came down to realizing that people need to be educated in order to act. Whitman students have this mentality that we’re very educated about issues of social justice, but we’re not.”

Wilcox, who teaches in the religious studies and gender studies departments, gives her students in “Religious Intolerance” the option in of an interactive final in hopes that the activism within the curriculum can reach students personally.

“The final project needs to focus on religious intolerance in the contemporary U.S., but other than that, the students get to decide,” said Wilcox. “There are three format options. One is a formal research paper, one is a service-learning project and one is a creative project. Usually this is a research project, where you express your findings and analysis in a creative format.

Kim’s project falls somewhere between the service-learning option and the creative side.”

One of the other creative projects chosen last semester was photography, which is featured in the first edition of Spark. As it stands now, only work completed in Wilcox’s class is online, but eventually Hooyboer will include papers and projects from several different classes.   The option of posting in Spark is available to any interested students.

“The current issue is focused on religious intolerance, so the site will list the course info and assigned books along with the papers from the class,” said Wilcox.

Some issues will have themes like the first one, but papers on a variety of subjects will be posted constantly.   Hooyboer’s hope is that students who become experts in one subject area of social justice in their classes will share this knowledge through Spark with other students.

“There are certain classes that people get really engaged in, but then nothing goes beyond the class,” she said. “The papers for Spark are already written for the classes: there’s no work involved that you wouldn’t do anyway. This is a way for your academic work to have a real medium.”

Hooyboer is a senior this year, but is hoping the journal continues in the future.

“It’s something important for the campus to have, and it’s so little effort for the student,” said Hooyboer. “This is much more along the lines of what Whitman students are willing to do to make a difference.”

Read more about Spark online, including the first issue and mission statement, at whitman.edu/spark.