The Plains Paradox, the Boulder County campus Literary and Arts Journal, celebrated its 22nd annual publication on April 25th, 2024.
This volume in particular stands apart from all others. It has something that no other volume has had in over two decades of publication. Two somethings, technically.
This is the first time the Plains Paradox has featured a content notice advising readers of potentially distressing material and an editor’s note.
Katie Calhoun, a student editor for the Plains Paradox, said “There was a lot of research that went into this,” of the content notice.
“The first thing we had to decide was what was it going to be called. Was it going to be trigger warnings or was it content notice,” said Andrea Mann, another student editor.
From there discussions ranged from the logistics of categorization to the ethicality of labeling another person’s work in the first place.
“I rather start and do it wrong and say ‘please help us grow’ than never do it because we’re too scared to make mistakes,” said Grey Hanvey, the student editor behind the push for the content notice. “That is not how you care for your audience,” said Hanvey.
In the end, the editorial team decided to take a broader approach and include a QR code to provide support resources to readers who might need them.
The notice also included information on mandatory reporting, “Just so that people can use the resources with knowledge of how they operate and be safe with how they use it,” said Hanvey.
A QR code was also published alongside the editor’s note, this one allowed readers to offer feedback directly to the editors.
“There’s a section where you can talk about the content notice specifically like, ‘Was this helpful?’ and ‘Do you want to see this in the future?’,” said Calhoun.
“We just tried to make it the best we could, that’s why we put these two things in,” Hanvey concluded.
