One unfortunate side-effect of this limited appeal which editors stress is intrinsic to any literature or arts journal is a difficulty in generating revenue for the magazine. "People don't believe in it much as an advertising medium," says Murphy. This perception and a relative drop in alumni support during recent years have often left the Advocate's staff struggling to fund its $10,000-$12,000 annual budget. With three expensive issues a year to put out, editors have sometimes found themselves freezing through winters in the Advocate building because they couldn't afford to heat it.

Although board members are cheerful about these difficult periods, Murphy also believes that something can be done to put the magazine back on its feet. She dates the current financial hardship to the middle '60s when an issue ran with an inordinately expensive glossy cover. So, for the first time in many years, the Advocate will not have a photographic cover this November.

Murphy also hopes to build up a core of business-minded editors by reforming the business comp. "Most people who come to the Advocate are shy about selling ads or dealing with money," she says. "Now this is changing--people are becoming more sensitive to the fact that since we don't attract business types, everyone has to take a share in keeping the apparatus of the organization functioning properly."

More important than financial reform, however, is a new direction the Advocate seems to be taking in the character and goals of its membership During the past ten years or so, the clubby spirit of the 40s or 50s has changed to what many perceive as jet-set elitism. Although they have always solicited work from any member of the Harvard community. Advocate editors have sometimes seemed like what editor Chris Caldwell '83 calls a "collection of cocaine snorting, cavalier, callous glitterati." As an arts magazine, the Advocate has appelned to the avant garde in some people, and thus scared others away.

But Caldwell, Murphy, and other editors stress that this super-sophisticated outlook has dissipated this year mostly because much of that element of the magazine graduated last June. "We're getting a broader group of people now," says Longobardi, noting that a large and diverse group of freshmen is in the current comp. Since all freshmen received a copy of the Advocate in their registration mailing, many came to the comp without any preconceived notions of what an Advocate per on should be like, he explains.

"The Advocate is really changing," says Prose Board Chairman Barbara Eppler '83 The rising seniors make up a "more sincere group, mere of a group devoted to the magazine than a social one," she elaborates "We're trying to mediate some of the traditional terror of elections--It's become a more truly open society, in which people earn laurels based on how acute they are about literature," and not on "how clever they can be at the expense of someone else's piece.

Editors hope this sense of openess will draw more people into the building itself. Murphy plans to install new furniture, carpets and a refrigerator to give a cozier feeling. Longobardi hopes that with beer and a neater appearance, they can make it "more of a place for people to hang out." And Caldwell is reorganizing the magazine's library.

With these changes, the Advocate may well become much more than a place for great parties "The more people who read the magazine, the more people will want to submit things," says Longobardi it can become a tool of education that's the pinnacle-- a forum for thought, something that people will read and say 'that's what people are thinking about art and literature!'" After pauses for breath he continues. "Then, the faculty will read it avidly," he says. "And then suddenly it will be the place where if you're writing something, that's where you'll want it to be."