An Incomplete Reconstruction of Distribution Logistics for The Watermark

I have, up to now, spent some time talking about how The Watermark was made. Later in this work, I map actual distribution in real time (The In-Between) over the course of a semester. But this is now impossible to do for The Watermark. We are too late, beyond two facts:

• My own 2022 (spring or fall semester, I cannot remember) memory of seeing a physical copy of a Watermark journal on a Mass Media news stand 

• Repeated confirmed testimony that this is how these books primarily moved. 

We cannot say much more than that. What we can do, however, is track the Mass Media newsstands themselves, as they exist now with the understanding that, as a longtime student, I’ve been looking at them since 2016-now and have missed ones which might have been placed,  moved, removed, or relocated between the years 1993-2015. This list is not exhaustive, and cannot be especially since the campus of UMass Boston has physically changed with the demolition of  the old science building (1974-2021), which existed remarkably close to confirmed existing nodes of distribution and might have formed a sort of triangle between McCormack Hall, Campus Center, Wheatley Hall, and the old science building following departments:

Africana Studies Department

American Studies Department

Anthropology Department

Applied Linguistics Department

Art & Art History Department

Asian Studies Department

Classics & Religious Studies Department

Communication Department

Conflict Resolution, Human Security & Global Governance

Economics Department

English Department

History Department

Latin American & Iberian Studies Department

McCormack School of Policy & Global Studies

Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures Department

Performing Arts Department

Philosophy Department

Political Science

Public Policy & Public Affairs

Psychology Department

Sociology Department

Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Department

Note how The Watermark circulated predominantly in the environment that is most fertile to a literary journal. Arts departments, departments for marginalized voices, the English department and field-adjacent fields like Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies. It was perfectly situated to live in this space especially, and it thrived informally given later accounts of hours-long staff meetings in a cafe situated on Wheatley Hall’s fourth floor (later / earlier 3rd floor) called Wit’s End Cafe run by students and explicitly thanked in several editors notes from 1993-2000-ish copies of The Watermark, and replaced with a Dunkin Donuts in Campus Center, as well as another independently owned cafe in McCormack on the 1st floor. 

Now, if you want a coffee you can go to Campus Center Dunkin Donuts, which does not even take Dunkin Donuts gift cards, or The Integrated Science Building. The Campus Center has vast, crowded, messy open air seating that makes it difficult for more than 3 people to sit at one table, and is outside of  / adjacent to the Bursar's office. The Integrated Science Building’s Starbucks has no real dedicated seating, and I routinely see a bible study group who meets there having to drag chairs from every corner of the lobby to create a circle that can fit 12-15 comfortably. 

The cultural cost of this repeated loss of informal, loungeable, and student-centric space should be obvious. 

Note, I am unsure of which departments specifically were hosted in the old science building, but these three academic buildings + the campus logistical node can be considered an extended ecosystem because, up until 2021, they were connected via a series of catwalks. 

Below is an incomplete list of every Mass Media newsstand I could find. I believed, at the time of writing there are around 10-14, but was am unsure of the exact number. In September of 2026 the UMB Alumni magazine's latest issue, Beacons, confirmed 12 active newsstands printing 1,500 copies biweekly for distribution at the time of writing. This was confirmed by Elijah Howarth. whoever wrote the introductory blurb to this unsigned article would also say, I feel pointedly, that the student newspaper "is financially supported exclusively [emphasis mine] by students and operates independently within the office of Student Activities and Leadership." 

• Wheatley Hall, Asian-American Studies Department (abandoned, Mass Media did not know it existed until I asked, so do have to ask if it even counts in their own recollection?)

• Wheatley Hall, first floor, by the vending machines

• Campus Center, by the water fountain on floor #2 near the door

• Campus Center, by bathrooms, first floor

• Campus Center, by the exit to the dining hall, floor #2

• University Hall, by the front doors

• McCormack Hall, by water fountain on Floor #1 near escalators and door

• McCormack Hall, 2nd floor, by stairs

• Outside the Library front doors. 

• Quinn Building, first floor

• Quinn Building, 2nd floor, outside of the doorway leading to the catwalks connecting it to the library. 

Below is a list of every ‘free book’ bookshelf I have found within Wheatley and McComack buildings, as well as known locations of faculty dumping spots during end-of-semester clean-outs. Note that copies of Howth Castle were once found by me in one of these nodes (1985-1993) as well as early copies of the earliest years of The Watermark (1993-2000). 

• The English Department, 6th Floor Wheatley Hall where every table at some point or another functions as a free bookshelf 

• The Political Science Department, 5th Floor Wheatley Hall, mid-sized 4 story shelf

• The Sociology Department, 4th Floor Wheatley Hall, squat but wide 4 story shelf

• The Biology Department, 3rd Floor Wheatley Hall, large, tall shelf (I am 6 foot 2 inches tall, it is as tall as me)

• The History Department, long 2 story shelf as wide as I am tall

• Boxes left outside of individual offices in McCormack 4th floor Classical history department

• One corner of the anthropology department by a newsstand type shelving which holds fliers for Cinema Studies, and Anthropology degrees.  

• The bench outside of the Applied Linguistics Department, McCormack 4th floor, near elevators. 

• The Library Free Bookshelf, outside of the front door, five floors down from The Archive. (note, this is only included because a single copy of volume 11 was found here. But other odd things have been found, like Apartheid-era anti-Apartheid socialist manifestos from 1980s South Africa.)

I have, also, gone into student lounges in departments and storage spaces not my own in an attempt to see / ask if the near-complete run of journals found in the English Department survived in field-adjacent spaces. This is that list. 

• The History Department Grad Lounge – Nothing

• The Philosophy Department Student Lounge – Nothing

• The Political Science Student Lounge –  1 copy of Writ Large Volume ? (Fall 2022) on a table in the corner of the room. It being the only thing on the table. 

• The English Department Undergrad Lounge– 1 copy of Watermark Volume #35. 1 copy of Writ Large Volume ? (Fall 2022)

• The English Department Teaching Fellows Office – 1 copy of LUX  buried under a stack of New Yorker magazines

• The English Department Grad Lounge – multiple copies of non-contiguous years and publications. 

• The English Department Storage Closet – not insignificant, random copies of Watermark. Many duplicates of earliest Writ Large volumes. 

• Random boxes left in hallways around the English Department – copies of The Marble Collection (a non-profit associated with UMass that later was able to negotiate print discounts for The Watermark during the Golden Age period), Watermark, and other publications

There are, of course, Mass Media newsstands in University Hall, a physically larger and newer building than either McCormack or Wheatley. But University Hall was open to the public in 2016, which represents the last moment before the rapid spiral into archival incompleteness, confusion, and documented low print runs (Issue #21, in particular, will be discussed in the next chapter.)

This is the official landscape as described by the University of Massachusetts Boston’s own website: a 500-seat auditorium, four 150–200-seat lecture halls, two case-method classrooms, a multi-media 63-seat studio classroom, thirteen 30–40-seat classrooms, five 20-seat seminar classrooms, studios for digital media, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video critique, presentation, and exhibition spaces faculty, staff, and administrative offices..faculty and staff offices, a café, student lounge and study spaces, a printing station. 

University Hall was built, designed, and is subtly advertised as a major node of student movement. 

If copies of The Watermark circulated heavily in this environment we cannot easily prove it.