Topics Left out of TOA:
While much of this page has been analyzing the topics included in The Only Alternative, it is interesting to note what topics were left out or were at least not frequent subjects of articles, especially when compared to the content of the "average" underground.
Sexuality: This may seem contradictory as "sexuality" was one of the topics included earlier in this analysis. While sex is a topic included in the newspaper, it accounts for roughly 3% of the articles in The Only Alternative, an insignificant amount. Despite this fact, members of the Muncie community condemned the newspaper as "obscene" or "dirty." This more thorough analysis would suggest that the sexual revolution was not as important to the staff of TOA as other issues including the Ball State administration and the Civil Rights Movement, as illustrated below:
These charts show that while the word "sex" and other derivations of that word show up throughout the text of the newspaper, it does not compare to the frequency of the word "black," which in the context of The Only Alternative is typically making reference to the Civil Rights movement or African-Americans in general. "Black" has an average frequency of about 25 instances per issue while derivations of the word "sex" are all below 5 occurrences per issue. Articles in TOA are at least 5x more likely to be about the Civil Rights Movement than about sex of any kind.
With other underground newspapers like the Berkeley Barb, the East Village, and the Los Angeles Free Press, the classifieds were the most likely place to find more explicit references to sex. (McMillian, 125-126, 175) For TOA on the other hand, the classifieds were almost exclusively about people seeking items or selling items, or just simply making a joke or other statement. None of the TOA classifieds were explicitly an ad for sex, unlike the Berkeley Barb which featured dozens of that type of ad per issue.
Homosexuality: This next graph shows the frequency of the words "gay," "homosexual," and "homosexuality" per issue. While it is clear that the topic of homosexuality is rarely discussed in the newspaper, the fact that there are two articles about gay students at Ball State and the gay scene in Muncie is significant. This more controversial and difficult topic was often left out of the undergrounds. For the most part, the Gay Rights Movement joined with the Civil Rights movement until the 1970s when they branched out, eventually starting their own publications by around 1972 or 1973. While it is commendable to the staff of TOA to include these eye-opening articles, they are exclusively about gay men, completely ignoring the existence of lesbian students in Muncie, something that falls in line with most other publications as well.
Women's Liberation:
One of the problems with many of the underground newspaper was the high level of sexism within the papers. While TOA avoided this problem for the most part, there are a few instances of pictures which could be considered sexist. In addition, the topic of Women's Liberation does not appear to have been significant to the writers. In fact, it is not until the final ten or so issues that this subject is discussed with any regularity. While this may not have been on purpose, the fact that only 7 articles in the entire newspaper had to do with this subject is significant. This becomes even more significant as there were no women in leadership positions in TOA, something that was on par with the rest of the underground newspapers. (McMillian, 57-58)
The following graph illustrates the number of articles on Women's Liberation compared to the number of Civil Rights articles on a per issue basis:
Not only are there only 7 articles on Women's Liberation, it is not until Vol. 3 that this topic starts to appear with any regularity. The topic of Civil Rights on the other hand, appears in nearly every issue and has two issues dedicated to that topic. It is also noteworthy that only 3 of the articles on Women's Liberation were written by TOA staff members. The other 4 are reprinted from either LNS packets or Motive Magazine articles. The next graph illustrates the increase of the word "women" over time in TOA. While this only serves to confirm the previous statement about Women's Liberation not appearing until Volume 3, it is still interesting as it shows the significant increase in this topic after its first appearance.
While the topics of sexuality, homosexuality, and women's liberation were not a large portion of TOA, they were among the most shocking to the Muncie community, especially articles on sex. While these may have been too much for the conservative city of Muncie, when compared to many of the other undergrounds, TOA was certainly on the more conservative side.