Qirtas Staff Manual | AUIB Society of Arts and Letters

Proposed until the Founding Meeting on Tuesday, March 30, 2027.

How Qirtas, the Society’s paper, is run day to day, for its masthead, staff, and contributors: independence, the masthead, the sections, Games, Write for Qirtas, the pipeline, the Edition, and the Sunday Paper.

1. The paper and its independence

Qirtas (قرطاس) is the paper of the AUIB Society of Arts and Letters: news, letters, and art by AUIB students. It publishes online at auibsal.org/qirtas as pieces are ready, prints one Edition a year, and sends the Sunday Paper to members each month. Qalam, its summer program for high school students, is part of Qirtas.

Qirtas has its own nameplate, its own masthead, and editorial independence.
The President serves as Publisher: the Publisher protects that independence and never selects, edits, or blocks work.
The Editor-in-Chief has the final word on what Qirtas publishes.
The Director of Media promotes Qirtas on the Society’s channels but never decides its content.
Qirtas holds no budget. What it needs, such as printing for the Edition and certificates for the Mutanabbi Prize, goes on the Needs list: the Editor-in-Chief adds each item, and the General Secretary sends the request to the Office of Student Life.
Qirtas pages, plans, assignments, and schedules are written in Notion, and pieces are copied from there to the site. Submissions, the names behind blind IDs, scores, agreements, and approvals live only in the Diwan (auibsal.org/diwan/qirtas). A name or score copied into Notion breaks the confidentiality pledge (SAL-EXB-01 · F-40).

The masthead (auibsal.org/qirtas/masthead) is generated from the roles people hold in the Diwan.

Role	How the seat is filled	What it does
Publisher	The President (the Acting President while the President is abroad)	Protects the paper’s independence; never selects work
Editor-in-Chief	Elected by Qirtas’s staff: the editors and contributors with at least one term on Qirtas	Heads Qirtas and Qalam; sits on the Council; gives final approvals; leads the Edition and the Mutanabbi Prize; keeps the paper’s needs
Managing Editor	Appointed by the Editor-in-Chief	Deputy to the Editor-in-Chief; the calendar, the staff, and the Sunday Paper
Section editors: News, Voices, Letters, Gallery, Video, and Games	Appointed by the Editor-in-Chief	Assign, edit, fact-check, and approve the work in their sections
Qalam lead	Appointed by the Editor-in-Chief	Runs Qalam under the Editor-in-Chief
Staff: reporters, readers, photographers, illustrators, and videographers	Join through Get involved	Report, read, and make work for the sections

Until the first elections in October 2027, the Editor-in-Chief is Mohammed-Ali Ehsan Ohmaid and the Managing Editor is Mia Hakimi. The other seats are open.
Open seats are listed on Get involved. The Director of Membership runs hiring, and the Editor-in-Chief chooses.
Everyone newly appointed serves a first term on probation and is then confirmed by the Editor-in-Chief. The elected Editor-in-Chief has no first term.
The Society records staff hours and service in the Diwan and writes a service letter on request.

3. The six sections

Section	What it takes (examples, not a fixed list)
News	Reports, features, interviews, profiles, event coverage, explainers
Voices	Reviews, columns, opinion essays, letters to the editor, debates, recommendations
Letters	Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, translation
Gallery	Art, photography, illustration, comics, calligraphy, photo essays
Video	Members’ films and video stories, recorded performances, animation
Games	The word, word search, crossword, anagrams

Types are flexible: each section takes what fits it.
Voices keeps one rule for opinion: no party politics, religion, sect, or ethnicity.
Video publishes members’ films and video stories, as a newspaper’s multimedia desk does. The Company may submit recordings of its performances.
Next Stop, the Society’s video show, is not part of Qirtas.

4. Games

Four games appear daily, in English and Arabic: the word, word search, crossword, and anagrams.
The site generates them, and the editors check each one before it goes live.
They are numbered from No. 1 on the day they start. Until the site generates them, there are no daily games.
Members send no games, and Write for Qirtas does not take them.
Readers’ progress and streaks are kept on their own devices.

5. Write for Qirtas

auibsal.org/qirtas/write is the one door. Members send work in every section except Games, at any time, from the day the site launches.
Everything is read blind: readers do not see who wrote a piece until a decision is made, and the Diwan enforces this.
The author chooses the byline: their name as in the Register, a pen name, or “Anonymous.” For a pen name or “Anonymous,” the Editor-in-Chief must know the writer and keeps the identity confidential.
Work must be the author’s own. Work drafted, written, translated, or generated by AI is not eligible; spellcheck and basic grammar tools are fine. Each submission asks the author to confirm human authorship. AI detectors are never used as evidence on their own: where there is a real concern, an editor talks to the author and may ask for drafts.
Authors keep their copyright. The license they grant the Society is set out in the Terms of Use (SAL-GOV-05).
An author may withdraw a piece at any time before a decision.

6. The pipeline

Intake. Within 48 hours, an editor checks each piece, gives it a blind ID, and asks for one fix if needed.
Review. The section editor reads blind. Letters pieces get two blind readers, plus a third if their totals differ by more than 20 points.
Decision. The section editor decides, by blind ID, and every author hears back.
Edit. An editor works with the author, who approves every change and the final layout.
Approval. The section editor and the Editor-in-Chief (or the Managing Editor) approve the piece.
Publication. Once the author has signed the Publication Agreement (SAL-EXB-01 · F-43) in Write for Qirtas (staff news excepted), the piece publishes at its scheduled time.

Readers score each piece on SAL-EXB-01 · F-41 Reader score sheet. A piece scoring 80 or more is accepted; from 65 to 79, the section editor decides; under 65, it is declined unless a reader champions it. Each reader may champion two pieces a term.

Qirtas’s forms are in the Society’s forms register. They are digital and filled in on the site, and kept only there: F-40 to F-42 on the Diwan’s Qirtas desk, F-43 in Write for Qirtas, and F-44 at auibsal.org/forms/F-44.

SAL-EXB-01 · F-40 Confidentiality pledge
SAL-EXB-01 · F-41 Reader score sheet
SAL-EXB-01 · F-42 Author letters
SAL-EXB-01 · F-43 Publication Agreement
SAL-EXB-01 · F-44 Contributor and image consent form

Editorial standards, corrections, consent, and house style: SAL-EDT-01 Editorial Standards and Stylebook.

7. The Edition

Qirtas prints one Edition a year: a year in review.
It gathers the year’s top News stories; the best of Voices, Letters, and Gallery; a crossword; and Video pieces shown as a still with a QR code. The Mutanabbi Prize winners are featured.
The editors choose from work already published; there is no separate call.
The Edition is launched at an event, made in the events manager like any other event.
Printing is requested from the Office of Student Life through the Needs list.
The first Edition comes out in spring 2028. It covers the site’s launch to March 2028 and features the first Mutanabbi Prize.
Print specification, an item on the Edition’s needs list: A5, about 80 pages (a multiple of 4), 100 gsm text, 8 color pages for Gallery, a 300 gsm cover, perfect bound. The run is the confirmed need.

8. The Sunday Paper

The Sunday Paper is the members’ newsletter, sent monthly on the first Sunday of each month, from the first Sunday after the site launches.
The Managing Editor puts it together from the month’s pieces and games.
Subscribers confirm by email, and every issue has a one-click unsubscribe link. The sign-up never asks a signed-in member to subscribe.

Qalam, Qirtas’s summer program for high school students: SAL-EDT-03 Qalam Program Handbook.

The Mutanabbi Prize: SAL-EDT-04 Mutanabbi Prize Rules.

SAL-EDT-01 Editorial Standards and Stylebook
SAL-EDT-03 Qalam Program Handbook
SAL-EDT-04 Mutanabbi Prize Rules
SAL-GOV-05 Terms of Use
SAL-MED-01 Media Manual
SAL-EXB-01 Leadership Handbook