Submission Guidelines
Last updated: November 2024
We accept a wide range of content, most typically campus news articles and opinions. Comics, artwork, short stories, periodicals, and advertisements are all accepted. For formatting purposes, we recommend that poems not be submitted unless the author is open to possible changes to make the lines format properly.
We aim to publish everything that is sent to us. We do not allow political or otherwise prohibitive opinions or biases to dictate what we publish. Members of the Olin community (directly or by association) are encouraged to submit any kind of opinion piece. However, we reserve the final right on determining publishable content. Anything submitted that is harmful or disrespectful toward other community members, endorses hate speech, is not the author’s own work, or primarily serves to negatively impact the community may not be published.
In general, 600 words is one page, 1300 words is a spread. We aim for articles 600-800 words or shorter. Text with word counts in increments of 300 words helps with formatting. If necessary, superfluous words may be cut to make a submission fit within the allotted space, and if the author cannot be reached the changes will be printed without deliberation. Please include the title of your piece in your submission. Most articles will be edited like traditional newspaper articles: short paragraphs, short descriptive title, and little if any formatting. If you give your article an “artsy” name, we will likely replace it with something more self-explanatory. Too much specific formatting makes the layout difficult, so please be kind to us and keep the bullet points to a minimum.
Deadlines
Frankly Speaking is usually distributed on the first weekday of every month. The editing and printing process is finalized the night prior. In general, first draft submissions should be made one week prior to the first weekday of the upcoming month. However, if an article idea comes to mind two days before printing, it’s worth reaching out to the editors to see if it can be published.
Anonymity
We need to know why: If you’d like to publish an article anonymously, you need to send a well-articulated reason why it should be anonymous. We will publish articles anonymously to protect the identity of people describing sensitive experiences. We will not publish articles anonymously solely because the author is expressing an unpopular opinion, or if the author is admitting to activity that is illegal in the eyes of the federal government. If you are submitting an article to a distributed publication you should be willing to take ownership of your words unless there is a legitimate privacy concern or associated risk determined to be beyond typical criticism or dissent. Any articles that admit to illegal activity can result in an investigation and as a rule, we will not publish these pieces.
We need to know who you are: Even if your article will be published anonymously, we as editors need to know who has written it. We might need to contact you about some of your content, and in the rare case there is an honor code violation, there needs to be a way to hold our contributors accountable.
Affiliation and Legal Disclaimers
Frankly Speaking is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. That being said, the paper is printed on school owned equipment with school bought paper and ink at the discretion of the administration. We welcome debate through opinion pieces and will print those opinions as long as they are not harmful. Examples include: administrative policy opinions, opinions on laws (both local and federal), opinions on classes, opinions on music, etc. Examples of things we will not print (and why): admittance of illegal activity from a federal perspective (the school receives federal funding and an author claiming to have committed a felony would require an investigation), hateful opinions of any kind (that’s hate speech), plagiarized content (plagiarism is illegal), etc.
(The link above will direct to a Google form for submission. Contact mfahey@olin.edu with any questions.)