The Watermark cast a long shadow, which is to be expected for a journal that existed in some way, shape, or form since the early 1990s. Earlier, if we include Howth Castle. Earlier still, should we accept the august Wavelengths into the lineage. To put that into perspective, it is older than I am right now. To tie it all together, there has been a student undergrad journal on UMass Boston for 46 years, with notable and worthy-of-mentioning amount of offshoots, experiments, and projects indicative of a thriving culture of student publishing up until about 2014. But, this too is guesswork. The truth of the matter is, the record is still incomplete despite what you have read, or are about to read on the rest of this website. 

Much of its later history lay scattered across the internet. Looking at my own notes, DMs, and memory, I have either reached out to or spoken to numerous Editors, Co-Editors, Editors-in-Chiefs, former students, current students, judges, readers, and Professors / Staff / Faculty involved on campus beginning with the year 1999 to 2025 and involved, aware of, or adjacent to student publications. Projects like, Writ Large /  LUX, Watermark, Waterfront, Queeah, Literally, The In-Between and even Howth Castle, as well as other independent projects, searching them out across Linkedin, Instagram, professional emails, personal websites, social media handles, and (blessedly) simple text messages to friends. A lot of those people, if they even responded, asked me if this was for a grade. I told them the truth, ‘no’,  and then they cut contact with me. Others still, apparently enthusiastic about the idea of being interviewed for their work in undergrad, promised to answer my questions and then cut contact. 

Of those interactions, I received a small handful of ‘first contact’ responses. From those first contact responses confirming I found the right person, or the right department, with a ‘sorry but...’ email, I had an even fewer number of actual conversations. 

I would reach a point where I decided the work was done. I had sat it down and said; this is as close as we shall get. Then I would either find someone, or be put into contact with them by someone else, who would go on to re-open this section of the website. I have included everyone who actually responded, and then consented to be published, regardless of if their answers line up with my ideas. I did find Editors from 1999, and 2006, and did reach out to them for their perspectives. Only one filled out the Questionnaire. Naturally, this means our narrative skews closer to the closing years of The Watermark. Not its glory days barring 1-2 major exceptions which, frankly, independently confirm the theories about a Golden Age narrative (Questionnaire #4.5 and #8, respectively.)

 I have, as a professional marker of respect, not included the list of actual individuals on campus who occupy roles as Professors, Faculty, or Staff who did not respond, or else ghosted me, but the lists of questions I sent them which are now, given the depth of other data available, partially answerable through historiographical reconstruction. Much of those answers can be found in the previous pages. The absence of faculty involvement is perhaps the biggest weakness of this work, which must be acknowledged openly and fairly. But one works with the data one has, not the data one wants. Even then, the picture is somewhat surprisingly complete based on publicly available data and the Questionnaire sets provided by former and current students. 

 Truth be told, almost all of the Questionnaire’s present are only present because I had some working relationships, friendship, or association with the people in question. They already knew my deep interest in systems, logistics, and obscure things, and humored me as they always kindly do. 

There is also the distinct possibility that no one was interested, given the number of times people saw me in the halls and awkwardly promised responses to emails that never came. On more than one occasion, individuals who had previously expressed interest in responding avoided further engagement in person. This, ultimately, reinforces the ideas we are operating under, that institutional drift, fatigue, and competing obligations coupled with the apparent marginality of student publishing made the work unimportant. 

Interestingly, I must note every student / former student who worked on student media who was also a current librarian or librarian in training enthusiastically agreed to talk to me in some capacity, suggesting quite clearly an overlap between material culture, history, and memory preservation we would be wrong to not mention. 

 Early in this work there was one name that came up over and over and over again with respect, compassion, trust, and borderline reverence for the amount of energy, knowledge, kindness, respect, and patience that they brought to working on The Watermark. That there was one person in the world who had the most complete, most accurate, and most honest account of The Watermark before the creation of this work, concentrated into one person, and that this work could not possibly be considered complete without at least 30 questions directed their way and a sincere plea that they even half-remember. 

  I did not have to look particularly hard to find Donna Neal, only to learn that on January 7th of 2018 she passed away. Her obituary stated that, In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Donna may be made to the Mass Media at the University of Massachusetts.