KUNSTEN Å GRINERUNKE
KUNSTEN Å GRINERUNKE
...is my favorite article ever published in Tuntréet. A product of 2009, when Tuntréet was everything but a ‘proper, serious publication’, “Kunsten å grinerunke” delivers exactly what’s asked of it. A guide to a good crywank.
Journalist: Elina Turbina
Photographer: Tord Kristian F. Andersen
Universitas is the largest student newspaper in Norway, and it comes out every week (I think, I choose not to fact-check). It has a full-time employed Editor-in-Chief who sometimes isn’t even a student (what exactly qualifies it as a ‘student’ newspaper then?). Together with the editor, the staff gets paid to entertain the whole student population of Oslo on practically every topic of student interest. That’s a very exciting task with quite some responsibility! To be the largest student newspaper is to hold a standard of what student journalism should be in Norway.
Tuntréet has tried out multiple publication formats during its history until settling on the current format. As a magazine that comes out every third week of the semester, the duty of entirely volunteer staff is to entertain the whole student population of Ås for free filter coffee and waffles. Our editors are elected at Samfunnet’s General Assembly and keep being full-time students alongside this position. There is also no journalism study program at the university, we train mostly through trial and error. And yet, Tuntréet does exactly what’s asked of a student magazine: we capture the student life of Ås at the current moment.
To be part of the editorial staff is to brainstorm, discuss, question, experiment, collaborate, and make sure your work is aligned with the values of the publication you’re a part of. In a magazine, unlike a newspaper, one can do much more than focus on immediate news coverage.
Having more time between issues also allows for things like fact-checks and quotechecks. And while we all are bound to make mistakes from time to time, in a newspaper this might be a more rushed process, given the time constraints.
So...is that why year after year Universitas continues to be disrespectful towards fellow student publications? Is it a lack of time that doesn’t allow the staff to understand the differences between their publication and those published in other student towns? Is it a lack of time that makes Universitas misunderstand the caliber at which they operate compared to a publication like Tuntréet? Is it a lack of time/material that makes them insult our volunteer writers, the subjects of our profiles, or the topics we choose to discuss in our issues?
Don’t close your eyes, Norwegian student!
We must also discuss international voices in student publications. As someone who doesn’t write well in Norwegian just yet, I’ve had the pleasure of being allowed to write for Tuntréet in English. Moreover, I wasn’t asked to stick to pizza reviews in the campus canteens. I was encouraged to write about Norwegian society and (student) politics, and my writing has been presented in every issue I wrote for. And if we do hear about internationals in Universitas, it’s still through the lens of a Norwegian journalist.
We are grateful for the important political work each student publication does through the discussions they bring forth and continue highlighting. It is never right to stay apolitical just because one has that choice. On the contrary: students (among others) must vocally exercise their ability to question the narratives that seemingly keep inequalities afloat. Universitas is great in its ability to provide this platform for discussion. Why are they then wasting their layout space on their “veslevoksne” views on student journalism instead of giving space to, say, international students and their concerns?
By punching down other student publications, Universitas creates a hierarchy where they are at the top. By giving space to writing that goes against the “Vær Varsom” principles they subscribe to, Universitas creates a hierarchy where telling another student publication to close down is considered to be the right financial investment for SiO. Is this the level we should strive for in our editorial boards?
When I think about the article “Kunsten å grinerunke”, I think about the self-awareness and irony with which its writer discusses the failures of students’ seduction attempts. He isn’t out there slagging off the garlic he ate before the vors, the alcohol intake of a girl that won’t sleep with him, or the H&M sales advisor that didn’t tell him the shirt he’s buying is ugly. He just recommends putting on My Chemical Romance (yeah, I know) and wanking off in the shower, accepting how “jævlig tragisk” this is. Universitas crywank, but they do it without such self-awareness. Maybe it’s time to finally succumb to getting off that emotional load in the privacy of your shower? It’s embarrassing to look at.
If I were to take the position of a journalist in Norway’s largest student(?) newspaper, I would feel more at peace with my journalistic integrity by getting paid to write about the art of a crywank, rather than picking on those who write for a discounted price of a bad pils at Samfunn(d)et. Even that would be more debate-worthy than whatever the debate section of Universitas is getting paid for.
