At Syracuse University, Hermes is both a winged messenger god and a newspaper that features greek life. Now it’s using its aeronautical qualities to expand to a new venue.

On Tuesday, Hermes distributed its first issue of the year on the Cornell University campus. Justin Silverman, the co-founder of Hermes, said that releasing the paper on a new campus was not that difficult.

‘We have two years of experience behind us,’ Silverman said. ‘There is also recognition out in the community.’

Silverman believes that Cornell was a great choice for expansion because of its strong greek presence.

‘What you have [at Cornell] is a campus that is passionate about their greek life,’ Silverman said.

Silverman stressed that Hermes is still operating as one company although the two editions had some slight differences in advertising and content.

‘There is still one Hermes,’ Silverman said. ‘It’s more one solid operation than two split publications.’

Another thing that eased the expansion were the similarities between the Cornell and the SU campuses, Silverman said.

Both Cornell and Syracuse have about 30 percent of students involved with greek life. Students are open to the expansion and hope it will prove an asset to the campus, said Lisa Kulak, a junior hospitality management major at Cornell University and vice president of Pan Hellenic recruitment.

‘I hope they write about the positive aspects of geek life because a lot of times people focus on the negative aspects,’ Kulak said.

Cornell University also has a greek magazine, The Greek, which primarily covers fraternity life. Hermes will be good for covering the entire Greek System, Kulak said. The campus’s daily newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, is also hopeful that Hermes can benefit the campus.

‘It is our hope and belief that Hermes will provide the Greek System with an additional outlet to express themselves, allow members to keep up to date with the inner workings of the Greek System here at CU and provide Cornell’s greek students with a forum that they might find useful,’ said Nate Brown, the editor in chief of the Cornell Daily Sun, in an e-mail.

The Sun doesn’t plan to change the way it does business in response to Hermes expansion, Brown said.

‘The Cornell Daily Sun has over 120 years of history under its belt and in all of that time, we’ve dedicated a lot of energy and newsprint to every aspect of life here at Cornell, including the university’s large Greek System,’ added Brown.

It is unclear as to whether or not Hermes will expand beyond the two campuses. As a business, the paper is always looking to expand, but Silverman could not see any solid commitments in the near future.

‘Right now our goal … is to cover greek life accurately and completely, just like we have done for the past two years,’ Silverman said.

Published on August 27, 2003 at 12:00 pm