Executive committee, from the left: Tima, Lili, Elina, Teodora, Zétény, (Pamela not pictured)
About The Stand
The Stand is the student-led magazine of Central European University in Vienna. We publish reporting, opinion, art and advice by CEU students, online and in print, and anyone at CEU can write for us.
What We Publish
FEATURES: longer reporting and interviews
OPINION: arguments and responses from across CEU
LIFESTYLE: life in Vienna and at university
ARTS & CULTURE: student art, photography, poetry and fiction
ADVICE CORNER: Doctor Strangelove answers your questions
Read our editorial and publication guidelines here →
Executive Committee (Editors-in-Chief)
Elina Silver
Lili Androsch
Pamela Cretu
Teodora Risteska Daskalovski
Tima Goretsky
Zétény Cseresznyés
Editorial Board
Anastasia Burmester
Anja Doneva
Carl Hileman
Diba Mottaghi
Helena Soriano Lago
Niya Krasteva
Nutsa Khutsaidze
Mariam Komakhidze
Simrit Dhillon
Susi Sopper
Sophie Jones
Zsofia Nej
Visual Board
Maya Fekete-Molnár
Oleksandra Kolotii
Saci Lukacs
A Brief History of The Stand
Editor’s Note: Every medium has an origin story, and ours begins in a hummus bar on Oktober Street. This piece, written by one of the founding editors of the CEU Weekly, traces the scrappy, affectionate beginnings of what would eventually become the Stand, late-night meetings, borrowed templates, a funding pitch to the Student Union, and more than a few controversies along the way. Yusuf writes with the warmth of someone looking back at a place that genuinely shaped him, and his account reminds us that the Stand was never polished or perfectly organized. It was just necessary. His closing words „Now, CEU itself struggles to stand. And I cherish and celebrate the newspaper‘s new name“, say more about this publication‘s purpose than any mission statement could. We begin this edition here, at the roots, because you cannot understand what the Stand is trying to be without knowing where it came from. Yuksekdag, Yusuf. “A Brief History of The Stand.” January 2019, 2
Editorial Board, CEU Weekly issue launch event, spring 2012 at the Budapest campus
We founded The CEU Weekly in the Hummus Bar on Oktober street in 2010. It might be even have been in early 2011. Sorry for the confusion– it’s been a while!
Rodrigo Avila Barrerio initiated the whole ordeal. I’m not sure who was there in the first meeting. That’s a blurry memory for me, after 8 years. However, I remember the meeting right before our first issue. Whose house it was at, I am not sure. Might have been Moritz Poesch. Maybe Elliot R. Roper, who was actually the one who provided the first template for the newspaper. Natalia Andrea Peral and Lucas Gilardone were there too. Not sure if Jonathan Day was there, nor Donal Mogeni. Jonathan was there in all the hours-long meetings throughout the year though, and Donal was always ready to provide some content.
Then, surviving. I remember making a case to the Student Union in their meeting to get some (extra) funding. Well, that one worked well. Rodrigo had always been the talkative one, but he wanted me to do the presentation for some reason. He did make things happen alright, but he was definitely not the charming one. Over the two years I was at CEU, I also had the pleasure to work with Erik Kotlarik and Tamas György, who have made the newspaper develop impeccably. In the end, we maybe didn’t accomplish what we wanted, ideally. In the end, we were simply a student newspaper. But yes, we did cause some controversies. Infamy! A CEU professor once wrote a piece full of stigmatized discourse against homeless people in Budapest and sent it to us for publication. We discussed for some time if we should run it, and then we decided to go with it.
That did lead to some heated criticism towards the newspaper. It was not our intention to engender a polemic though. We just cherished the debate, the idea of it. Another time, some of our colleagues in Gender Studies were very pissed at a satirical content piece which we published anonymously. Its aim was to ridicule things happening at the university. A particular article in one of the issues did lead to some public email exchanges within the university’s e-mail groups. I don’t know if you can send e-mails now that everyone can read. It’s likely that that was the time they imposed some limitations.
I should confess now that I was preparing those satirical pieces, including the one which led to all that kerfuffle. It doesn’t matter who was right or wrong at the moment (NB: yup, it was kinda my fault). It was simply nice to be in that bubble.
Yes, CEU was a bubble for us. It has not been merely an academic setting but a home where post-grad students all around the world could freely express themselves, socialize in an equal manner and produce an egalitarian socio-political environment within. With its struggles it did grow. As we created this newspaper, we wanted to contribute to this process of growing, and we hoped that The CEU Weekly could stand with it.
Now, CEU itself struggles to stand. And I cherish and celebrate the newspaper’s new name.
The Stand!