If you were on campus last semester, you may have heard some buzz about a new magazine titled “Prolific” being created by a group of students. Starting as a passion project amongst POC students on campus, Prolific’s first edition was so successful, it has now become an official student organization on campus. The organization has a bright future ahead, and is laying the foundation for many prosperous semesters going forward.
Marcelo Acosta, a junior on campus majoring in business marketing and minoring in digital media production is the president and editor-in-chief of the magazine. When asked what running a magazine entails, he said, “Prolific Magazine is mainly a magazine that is here to represent multicultural students and POC students. So we are just providing that space for those students to freely express themselves, whether that be through their culture, their stories or their traditional attire. Basically, I’m just collaborating with other student organizations, like the Asian Student Union, the Black Student Union, UNIdos, and creating space for those students. … Basically, I am organizing, planning and leading Prolific Magazine.”
Acosta expanded on why he and the founders of Prolific found it important to start a magazine and how Prolific differs from the already established Uprising Magazine, saying, “Uprising is a great magazine, like, I love their issues. My main concern was that there weren’t really many POC students being represented here on campus. Especially with the DEI bill that was just recently passed, that basically just dismantled a lot of those DEI programs and I just wanted to take initiative and create a magazine in which all POC students are free and feel welcomed. It doesn’t just include POC students either, it includes a diverse pool of students who might feel underrepresented; so LGBTQ, international students, everyone is welcome. So that’s why I really wanted to take initiative in creating this magazine. Last semester, we created the first issue, but it was just with a group of people who got together and collaborated and created our first issue. So technically, this is our first official year being a student organization. Right now, we are just trying to build a solid foundation and get ready so whoever takes over next is able to have a well structured organization.
Acosta says that students can expect lots of unique content in the magazine. “We are planning on doing an article featuring International Engagement showcasing their international education week during November. I think we’ll take some pictures for them too. We also plan to include stories from students too, so we go ahead and interview them and then if they have anything that they want to share, we get some really interesting perspectives about their personal lives. Our team is broken down into the writing team, production team, post-production team and marketing team. So marketing handles social media contents, production is in charge of hair and makeup and contacting our models, post-production is basically our team for layout and edits, and, finally, the writing team are the people out on campus searching for those stories”
Students who are interested in learning more about Prolific Magazine, or joining the team, can go to @uni_prolificmagazine on Instagram and find the LinkTree in the bio to find both the link to the Prolific website and the applications to join the organization. There are tentative plans to publish the first official edition in December, or right at the beginning of spring semester. That issue will be available to campus in physical editions, as well as in a digital format on the archive available on the website prolificmagazinee.weebly.com.
