It's Saturday. I awoke this morning at the unholy hour of 7:45, and found that I was counting lawyers. (Makes sense: to fall asleep, count sheep. To wake up, count lawyers.)

The count was relevant to a dream which I was having, in which a girl from my high school had somehow been charged with editing my college's hate magazine, the Omen. The only sense this made was that she had the same first name as a male editor of that magazine; aside from that, she'd never been to my college and I don't disproportionately associate her with hate, magazines, or editing.

In the dream, she had just gotten to the end of reviewing full-color comics produced for the ten-year anniversary of the magazine, and had slashed -- not just with a red pen, I mean slashed, with an X-acto knife -- out the contribution of two prominent alumns who had been editors. I was text-messaging her in outrage to try to explain what a bad idea this was, which was hard to do, as the texting medium I had available consisted of tiny orange text in which I could only send about twelve characters at a time; when I'd write more than that it would overwrite the previous characters I'd written.

The best argument I had for her was, Look, you're completely going against the Omen's editorial vision by making it into a buttoned-down literary magazine. In fact, I'd say you're falsely publishing something else under the Omen name. This is a really bad idea, considering the number of Omen veterans who have gone on to be lawyers. Stephanie, Dan, Brady, Jordan... and then I tried to figure out others, and whether the ones I'd mentioned had actually become lawyers or not, and that's when I woke up.

And I couldn't shake the thought. The Omen was routinely a pariah at Hampshire; started by libertarians who felt they had no voice, it continued on under less-focused editorial eyes to become what I call a "hate rag" -- unfocused editorials from absolutely whoever wanted in -- with occasional news. I wrote some of the latter, some of the former; friends of mine were its editors. Later the Omen became more of a culture 'zine. The magazine's stated policy of accepting all submissions without any significant editing whatsoever made it a perennial lightning rod on a campus where political correctness was at times more poisonous and pervasive than (I now think) it ought to be. At its very lowest point, its least visionary editor published a page of racist jokes, just because he could. Oddly, this was not the moment at which the college's then-president, Gregory Prince, attempted to shut it down; that came later, for reasons I currently don't recall. The general feeling seemed to be that the Omen was a poke in the college's eye with a stick sharpened using Student Activities funds.

I don't think my count of the number of editors is right, now that I'm awake -- Brady's still in law school, Jordan's actually a professor, and I don't remember if Dan actually wrote for the Omen, or whether he just hung out with its editors. But if you consider that the Omen was full of badly-written horseshit, didn't have a clear editorial vision, was universally loathed by people who had any sense, and to add insult to injury was printed on saddle-stitched tabloid laser-printer stock, it's surprising some of the things its editors have gone on to do. Its alumns include:

a lawyer (Stephanie) who does, in fact, specialize in intellectual property;
a published humorist, also a member of a cult musical group (Negativland) known for its run-ins with intellectual property law;
a professor of law at American University;
a well-regarded DC journalist and editorialist, nominated for a Webby;
two moderately well-known comics artists, one of whom is having his characters optioned for a show on Nickelodeon;
a librarian at Harvard;
a Brooklyn schoolteacher (MA from one of the top ed schools in the country);
at least two doctoral students currently studying at Ivies;
and another student working on a law degree.

And this is within fifteen years of the graduation of the magazine's founders. (And I'm still trying to remember whether Dan wrote for the Omen or not; that would add another lawyer.) For Hampshire, this partial list seems like a pretty strong concentration of ambition. Perhaps it's not surprising, as the Omen tended to attract students who rejected the more communally-focused, anti-establishment Hampshire community.

I'm wondering how this compares to the other Hampshire publications (though certainly the crossover is enough that various of the Omen staffers, like me, also belong to the Forward and possibly the short-lived Phoenix). The Forward boasts a writer who went on to write for the show CSI; and it appears former editor Gabe Ruegg continued his design career, taking a master's in design at Pratt this year. The Phoenix was home to rising comedian Eugene Mirman, who among other things has written for Conan O'Brien's show. And if not other publications, how about other programs? How does the Omen's track record compare to that of, say, the Lemelson program? The Peace and World Security Studies program? I know, it's probably a kind of pointless exercise; ambitious students will gravitate towards any institution which offers leadership roles, so it's not like the Omen was exactly the crucible which molded us. (And you might ask what it did for Casey or Mark.)

Still, I think the Omen comes out ahead on a count of notable alumns. It seemed like a lot more when I was half-asleep and doing the math... and that's when it hits me:

The Omen may be the closest thing Hampshire has to the Lampoon. A Lampoon for bloviating future lawyers and artists.

And if it is, what should Hampshire do about it? Establishing it as the historic launching point for Hampshire's brightest and best would kill it dead. Hampshire hates anything resembling tradition. So don't tell any of the current students about my hunch. (Particularly considering what students are publishing in the Omen these days. Have you seen it lately? Christ, in my day it was BAD, at least, not just mediocre! Cmon, guys, if you're gonna mouth off, you can at least try to piss off the hippies. What's with all this "drag ball isn't radical enough for my transqueer agenda so we shouldn't have one anymore" bullshit? Hippies!)

Nor do I think Greg Prince did the right thing by trying to shut the Omen down. If I recall correctly Greg kind of made a career of meddling with student newspapers; there had been some fracas when he was still up at Dartmouth, and he interfered with that paper's editorial board too. Certainly it makes the Omen into a cause which students can rally to any time anyone wants to cut off its funds, strengthening it somewhat. But a paper can't survive on that kind of boom-and-bust cycle.

So I don't know. If I was to advise the current president on how to approach it, I'd probably tell him to quietly egg the Omen's writers on. The magazine was at its best when it struck out at ideas, political or just cultural, which were popular at the school but poorly thought-out. If there was some way to get Omen writers to think a little harder, it might be nice, but owing to the paper's no-editing policy that would take some personal conversations with people, rather than looking at an already-written piece and saying "you missed a spot." Maybe Dr. Hexter should have Public Safety haul Omen writers out of bed at eight on a Monday morning and forcemarch them to breakfast with him. That should be just about a popular enough strategy to get the hatin' juices flowing.

* * *

OK, enough of this silliness. Probably I shouldn't try to make arguments out of ideas that come out of dreams I have on only six hours of sleep.

On a much sadder note, in poking around looking for backup on this piece, I found Hexter's rather nice convocation address for this year and learned that Eric Schocket, a Hampshire professor of American studies who I admired from a distance, died just before the semester started. That is really, really awful. He seemed like a great professor, one of the best things Hampshire had going for it, and he was very young.