The Borders Issue

Volume 11 Issue 2, September 2011

Read individual issue articles

No, Blueprint Magazine is not going through another round of budget cuts. Our (mostly) black-and-white issue can be owed to an purposeful editorial decision, to illuminate the duality of this month’s theme of ‘borders’.

Most submissions in this issue speak to the polarizing nature of a border, dividing people and identities into separate groups. One group becomes “us”, distinct and opposed to “them”. The distinction becomes politicized, as particularity among these groups becomes cause for celebration or conflict.

But a border is more than a line on a map, something that delineates one physical space from another. When higher education is made inaccessible to a young person, they face a border to their personal development. Characteristics denoting minoritized groups and identities deny individuals access to certain spaces, along largely arbitrary lines. Even at this school, Orientation Week competition pits team against team. A border is not simply an amorphous concept, defined by geography and politics. As borders become imposed on the individual, it is our bodies that become the battlefield.

Morgan Alan
Editor-in-Chief