Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 4/3/02 Section: Campus News

The lack of gay and lesbian publications at the Spartan Bookstore is becoming an issue of concern for the on-campus student organization, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Alliance.

Erika Escobedo, a junior in social work and a member of the organization, is surprised that publications related to gay and lesbian issues are not already on the racks.

"Earlier in the semester, my friend and I were in the bookstore and we were looking for (gay and lesbian) magazines like The Advocate or Curve," Escobedo said. "We noticed that there was Maxim and teeny bopper magazines - everything you can think of except what we wanted."

The Advocate is a national bi-weekly news and entertainment magazine focusing on the gay and lesbian community.

Curve is a best-selling lesbian magazine.

She said bookstore employees told her the publications were available in semesters past, but nobody was buying them and therefore removed.

"I wouldn't know that because this is only my second semester here," Escobedo said.

Alex Dale, the general books buyer at the Spartan Bookstore, said magazines are received through distribution by a company called Milligan News.

"Basically, they have a system that rotates magazines," Dale said. "If the magazines sell, they continue to stock it and increase stock. If a magazine doesn't sell at a certain period of time, they rotate it and change it to something else."

Dale said the bookstore is willing to provide the magazines again and that it isn't a financial matter, but a matter of having space for other popular magazines.

"If there are people that are buying (the publication) but are buying it elsewhere and would consider shifting and buying it here, then that would be the kind of thing that would keep it in the store," Dale said.

Escobedo said she estimates about 50 people in the GLBTA would purchase the publications if they were supplied on campus, but has yet to talk to Dale about it.

The GLBTA also had concerns last semester that the university library wasn't carrying gay and lesbian journals in its reading area.

Shanna Fein, a Mexican-American Studies graduate and former co-chair of the GLBTA, said getting the library to supply the publications was a priority for them last semester.

"The Advocate wouldn't be the most scholarly choice, but it would be something."

Currently, the university library does supply The Advocate in electronic form in the library database.

According to Edith Crowe, a librarian at Clark Library, the library emphasizes in publications such as scholarly journals rather than popular magazines because they are the ones usually at professors and departments request.

"The primary purpose of the library collection is to automatically support the curriculum," Crowe said. "Any popular magazine would be a hard sell unless you could put forth a good argument that it somehow supported courses taught at SJSU - especially when the Martin Luther King library is right down the street and subscribes to the paper edition (of The Advocate)."

Although Fein was frustrated by the quantity of books available at the university library, Escobedo said the collection is "pretty good."

She also said the organization is working on a petition to provide a gay and lesbian community room for the new university and city library opening next fall.

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