Submissions are open to anyone in the Amherst College community, from students to staff to faculty to alumni, and can be emailed to theamherstcontra@gmail.com along with whether or not you wish to publish anonymously. Submissions should be between 600 and 1300 words; response letters to past issues should fall between 100 and 500 words.

We do not publish submissions prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence, and reserve the right to reject any article on grounds of suspicion of AI use, up to and past the point of publication.

If you want to get involved another way, send us an email as well. We’re a student organization open to anyone.

Editorial Logistics

Upon receiving a submission, the Contra editorial team convenes and discusses whether or not to proceed with the editing and publication process. If the piece is selected for publication, the author receives one round of feedback with broad suggestions, and further rounds of line-level edits. These edits are intended to improve the argument being made and the prose being used to make it.

To safeguard anonymity, only the Editor-in-Chief has access to the identities of the authors throughout the duration of the editing and publication process.

Editorial Policy

In considering submissions for publication, the Contra looks for three things: (1) a well-evidenced and well-reasoned argument, (2) clear and precise writing, and (3) pertinence to the College.

The Contra is a strictly non-partisan organization along all axes of disagreement. Hence, regardless of the views of its individual editors, it does not have an institutional viewpoint, whatever the topic might be. This means that a submission to the Contra will never be accepted or rejected on account of the editors’ personal opinions regarding the submission’s thesis, conclusion, or general thrust. For evidence of our commitment to viewpoint diversity and editorial quality, we invite our readers to peruse our past issues.

Of course, pieces need not be perfect at the time of submission—this is what the editing process is for!

Historically, a majority of submissions end up published.

Response Letters

Members of the Amherst College community are encouraged to respond to our most recent issue in 100-500 words, and can do so anonymously. These responses will be published in full only on our website, though a brief summary of the response will be published in the next print issue, along with a link to the full response.