We are honored to present the 15th edition of MAGIS: A Student Development Journal. This journal represents the strength, creativity, and dedication of the Seattle University Student Development Administration (SUSDA) community as well as the radical opportunity emerging practitioners are presented to deconstruct and rebuild what it means to engage in academia. As Co-Editors-in-Chief, we wanted to explore and stretch the confines of academic journal creation, and we did so by inviting submissions of all forms. Our goal, and the goal of MAGIS as an element of academic and professional development in the SUSDA program, is to empower one another to be part of the growing conversation around student development and to celebrate knowledge and learning in their many forms.

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Although we did not have a formal theme to this year’s journal, each piece is deeply influenced by the individual and communal losses of 2020 and 2021. In these pieces, you can find connections to the pandemic and increased racialized violence, and you can see a hope and vision for equity in higher education. We begin the volume with three pieces which center media, from film to literature, particularly the way media may facilitate both reflection and relationship to higher education. In the later section of the volume, pieces explore criticisms of and visions for higher education through increasing basic needs support including mental health and food insecurity initiatives, reckoning with racial injustice and systemic oppression, and the evolution of higher education in reaction to the pandemic.

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To our editorial board, thank you each for your dedication, creativity, and time. In a year like no other, we are deeply grateful to you for joining us in creating this volume. This volume would not have been possible without the dedicated work of our 2020-2021 editorial board:

 

Tsetsen Anuurad, ‘22

Zachary Galván, ‘21

Alyssa Severson, ‘21

Patricia Snow, ‘21

 

Additionally, we would like to thank our faculty adviser, Dr. Erica Yamamura and the SUSDA Executive Board for their contributions to the formation and publication of this year’s issue.

 

Throughout this year’s journal, among traditional submissions of critical analysis and research, you will find reflections, poems, an opinion piece, and artwork. We invite you to equally consider the meaning making of each contributor during their content creation and to equally value your reflections and learning.

 

With gratitude,

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Sayuri King Barron & Elise Whisler

MAGIS Co-Editors-in-Chief, 2020-2021