Editor’s note: Ava Hosseini, current co-editor of The Rag, is a former Texan staffer. Hosseini worked for the opinion department from fall 2022 to summer 2023.
After almost 50 years of disbandment, The Rag, a counterculture magazine that critiqued campus and federal politics through humor and satire, was revived by two UT seniors.
After meeting with the “old guard”, a group of alumni who worked on the original magazine, The Rag released its first new publication in September, which covers topics such as the Campus Protection Act, Texas’ congressional redistricting and UT Student Government.
The magazine emerged in 1966 in response to a range of social issues and covered issues related to anti-Vietnam War movement, free speech restrictions on campus, feminism, racism within UT and criticism against the UT administration before being disbanded in 1977.
“We’re looking for people who don’t take themselves too seriously,” said Ava Hosseini, a humanities senior and co-editor. “We’re looking for counter-cultural critique, whether that comes from any political aisle.”
When Alice Embree, an original writer for The Rag, arrived at UT in 1963, the school was still segregated. Between 1960 and 1963, students called for full desegregation at the University and organized sit-ins at local businesses near campus, according to Behind the Tower, a public history project.
“All of that direct action, which was nonviolent, is the inspiration of the civil rights movement,” Embree said.
In 1969, the UT System Board of Regents sought an injunction in state court to ban the distribution of the magazine on campus, Embree wrote in a blog. A countersuit was appealed by the Board of Regents all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to court documents. The court dismissed the case in 1972.
Many of the same problems from the 1960s are still relevant today, Embree said. Small said threats to free speech on campus are “a lot more blatant,” after the University received a compact from the Trump administration that would grant federal funding in exchange for meeting certain requirements in line with the administration’s goals. She said the magazine’s revival speaks to a “legacy of political activism that is deeply ingrained in the history of the University.”
Kira Small, a theatre and dance and humanities senior and co-editor of the Rag, said the new student team wanted to preserve the print format of the original magazine. She said the humorous tone of the publication can be more effective than communicating anger in response to political and social issues.
“Anger burns really quickly, and it’s kind of ineffective for getting anything done because it’s there and then it’s gone,” Small said. “If you laugh about it, (or) rather, laugh at a common enemy, then this is the place to do that.”
Sociology sophomore Grant Lindberg wrote a piece arguing that a greater sense of solidarity is needed to unite progressive voices across campus to “engage with one each other across organizational divides.”
“When people can get together and have something physical to talk about, it really does a lot more to build a sense of community,” Lindberg said.
The Rag reignites the fight that began across college campuses during the 1960s and 1970s, Embree said. She said learning from the history of social movements is important for the next generation.
“It’s not the rebels that cause the troubles,” Embree said. “It’s the troubles that cause the rebels.”
