Since launching earlier this week, a fundraiser meant to help publish two more magazine issues by the University of Alabama students who worked on Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six before those publications’ suspension has raised over $22,000 out of a $25,000 goal.
Last week, the two student run magazines were suspended over what the university administration described as “legal obligations” stemming from a July memo issued by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Editors of the publications told APR and the University of Alabama’s student paper, The Crimson White, that they had not used so-called “unlawful proxies” and thought the decision was farcical.
In a statement on the suspensions, a University of Alabama spokesperson announced that the university would be replacing both magazines with a single general audience magazine set to begin publication in the fall semester of 2026. Gabrielle Gunter, the editor-in-chief of Alice, and Leslie Klein, Alice’s managing editor, both expressed their belief that this new planned publication would be unable to adequately replace the lost ones.
Due to the suspension of Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six being effective immediately, and the new magazine only launching next year, the administration’s plan would also leave the university without any student run magazines being published in the upcoming spring semester.
The fundraiser launched earlier this week is intended to “publish print magazines created by the student journalists from Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six in spring 2026,” with funds raised to be used to cover students’ pay, printing expenses and possibly office space.
During an interview with APR on Tuesday, Victor Luckerson described how the fundraiser came to be and why people from across the state should be concerned about the suspensions of Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six. He said that as of that evening, the effort had received donations from over 220 individual donors, “as small as $5 and as large as $500.”
A freelance journalist who served as the editor-in-chief of The Crimson White between 2010 and 2012, Luckerson is the president of MASTHEAD, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2020 to help encourage more diversity and better coverage amongst UA student journalists.
Shortly after the suspensions were announced last Monday, Luckerson explained, “we started talking as a board about some strategies, about fundraising. We quickly engaged with Kendal Wright and Gabrielle Gunter, the editors of the two magazines, and we tried to talk to them about whether they were interested in going independent.”
“So they talked with their staffs a little bit over the course of last week and found that they had a lot of people on their staff who really wanted to be able to continue writing with the same spirit they have been with their previous publications,” he added.
Wright told The Crimson White that going independent this spring would provide “invaluable experience.” Gunter similarly said she, and her fellow staff at Alice, were “fired up.”
Asked about why Alabamians should care that two student magazines have been shut down, Luckerson told APR that “first of all, student journalism is real journalism.”
“Students are putting in the same time and effort and manhours that professional journalists do,” Luckerson stated. “I know because I used to be a student journalist and so on that level, it is truly a free speech issue.”
“I also think we have to really look at what’s going on in UA as an institution right now, and how many opportunities are being cut off,” he added. “We saw the Black Student Union losing their access to space in recent times, and there’s also been this legal battle over SB129 and how it might be impacting curricula at UA.”
Free speech organizations have vociferously criticized the administration’s decision to shutter Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six. Marie McMullan, the student press counsel for the nonprofit FIRE, wrote in a letter to the UA vice president of student life stating that the decision was “ a violation of their clearly established First Amendment rights.”
The senior legal counsel for the Student Press Law Center, Mike Hiestand, similarly stated that “by shutting down only the magazines that primarily serve women and Black students—while leaving other publications alone—it looks a lot like they are targeting a particular point of view.”
“ I think it’s important for us as alumni and as Alabamians to care about when anyone’s free speech rights are being taken away from them,” Luckerson told APR. “ We have to support each other in a moment like this. And I think that providing these financial resources is kind of what gives these students back their freedom.”
