Ryan Cleland

As Salient’s unofficial Canadian correspondent, I’ve been writing far and wide. I even managed to write an entire satire piece on my flight from Vancouver to Quebec City. But one habit I’ve picked up on my travels has nothing to do with writing for magazines. It’s postcards. Yes, postcards: the outdated mode of communication used exclusively by old people, or left at the scene of a crime so the grizzled detective knows where to look next. I have sent upwards of 15 postcards on my journey,...

There is this idea that the best way to kill a revolutionary ideal is to idolize their leader, converting them into harmless icons that can be put upon a pedestal. How many Che Guevara t-shirts are there? How many Martin Luther King Jr Boulevards? I think in some twisted way this happens to us as well. When we lose someone, when they disappear from our lives, our nostalgia grips us and takes hold and their memory is forever unblemished and held above. I fear this will happen to you too, now...

Salient has been a driving force on campus since 1938, and has become a fixture of student life. From infamously helping collect VUWSA funds for both the Viet Cong and South Vietnam in 1972, to setting up the somehow more controversial “Lundy 500” in 2009 where teams of vehicles travelled from Petone to Palmerston North in an attempt to recreate Mark Lundy’s alleged timeline of the infamous Lundy murders, Salient has had its fair share of tumultuous history. Throughout that time, we’ve always...