Arete has been St. Edward’s University’s award-winning academic journal for the last 22 years. This year, Bekah Morton, a junior English writing and rhetoric major, is the editor-in-chief. 

Arete’s new faculty advisor Amy Clements is excited that Morton is the new editor-in-chief. Morton was on the editing staff last year, and Clements has had Morton in class before. Clements thinks Morton will be a good fit for Arete and has total confidence in her as the editor-in-chief.

Dianey Leal, a junior political science and English writing and rhetoric double major, is one of Arete’s copy editors for the second year in a row. She said she thinks Arete will be more structured this year. 

“Last year we kind of did a mix of everything,” Leal said.

However, this year she believes Morton has other plans.

“From what I’ve heard, the difference is we’re each going to be assigned a specific role,” Leal said.

According to Morton, Arete Vol. 23 will be much more diverse and representative of a liberal arts school. There will be two types of staff positions available this year: manuscript readers will decide what will be published, and then copy editors will revise and edit the chosen essays.

The Arete staff has historically been heavy with English majors, but this year Morton has recruited people from disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, biology and others to work as manuscript readers.

“I’m hoping to get different perspectives on what is a good paper, outside rhetorical criticism,” Morton said. “I really want to broaden the audience of Arete by broadening the content.”

According to both Morton and Leal, there was always a general agreement about the quality of submissions last year. Since there is going to be a much wider variety of people, Morton suspects there will be a lot more debate this year. She believes that she can be a good moderator, however.

Morton also said that she expects civility and respect between the members of the group, even if they disagree on submissions.

“I think it’s really healthy because most consumers of text are not English majors, so I think it’s very good to get feedback, perspectives and criticism from people who aren’t English majors,” Clements said.

Both Morton and Leal found out about Arete through Drew Loewe, an assistant English professor and Arete’s faculty advisor last year.

Leal says that working for Arete has strengthened her writing. Morton had a similar comment.

“I feel my extra-curricular informs my school work, and vise versa, my work informs my extra-curricular,” Morton said.

Clements believes that student publications are very important and that she would not have her career if it was not for them.

“What’s very different about St. Ed’s is the classes in the English Writing program feed into student publishing so seamlessly,” Clements said.

Arete will accept admissions from November through January and Clements said that they hope to have copies in people’s hands by early May.

According to Leal, students are still welcome to join the staff, and they are encouraged to do so since publishing Arete takes a lot of work.

She said some of the submissions can be long and dense but others are fun to read 

“You feel so accomplished after,” Leal said.