The fine print

Dubai Men's College students' magazine thrives

What started out as a class project has today turned out to be a statement by students of Dubai Men's College. The first-ever magazine produced and written by the students of the college is continueing to grow.

The students of the C-Net programme of the college are striving to be networking professionals with the backing of Cisco systems and their course is one of the few which offers internationally-recognised certificates through the help of Cisco networking academy.

The students also have to learn English as part of their curriculum, and this is where the idea of their magazine first took shape.

Around 17 students had grouped together under the guidance of their teacher, Anthony Pollitt, to put together an English project which required them to be involved in creative writing. "The students basically hate writing, so I came up with the idea of making them write about the things that they like," says Pollitt.

His primary task was to take the students away from the concept of writing for an exam or for the teacher and to motivate them to write for themselves and their friends. "Initially, it took a whole semester to help them understand what they really wanted to do," says Pollitt.

The project finally evolved as a student's magazine called What's On at DMC. "This is an initiative by the students, for the students and of the students," says Pollitt.

The first 1,500 copies of What's On at DMC was published in November 2000 and were soon exhausted.

"We learned a lot about teamwork, and we also realised that what we are going to write is going to be read by the whole college," says Mahmood, a student working on the issue. Subjects as varied as sports cars, taekwondo, disk jockeys in Dubai, as well as scuba diving have been written about by the students.

So far the students have produced three issues of the magazine and these have received interest and response from the students as well as the community. Al Boom Village and Al Futtaim Trading have helped out by sponsoring the magazine and have in turn encouraged the efforts of the students.

Even though the students of the class are graduating this year they would like this initiative to be continued. "We have put in a lot of effort into giving shape to this magazine and would like it to be an important part of this college," says Saeed one of the writers.