Kamp Student Radio

xforever warx at Fellowship Hall, 2/13/26. Source: Jessie Carlton

Last year on Edge Day, I wrote an article on my ethic on straight edge. I’ve since taken the article down, mostly out of embarrassment, but I think it’s worth revisiting the bones of my argument. It went something like this: 

• if you’re seriously offended by straight edge, re-examine your choices in life;
• if you’re straight edge, then that’s fine, but if you’re not that’s fine as well because we’re all part of the same scene.

Maybe you’ve heard the inspirational hardcore frontman speeches before. If you’re the median KAMP Student Radio article reader (aka other KAMP music directors), you’ve almost certainly not heard as many as I have. Some were good, most were bad, but almost all of them make some sort of overture towards the idea of community. I want to augment my defense of community, particularly as it relates to the notion of being straight edge. It’s been a long four months since I began writing these articles here, and it’s been a longer three-going-on-four years that I first claimed edge. Somehow, I think it’s only been relatively recently that I’ve fully actualized what straight edge is to me.

This past weekend, I had the privilege of visiting some friends in Salt Lake City. SLC is arguably the most temperamentally straight edge scene in hardcore for many, many reasons, to the point of having been under close scrutiny by federal law enforcement for keeping to their straight edge convictions. I won’t argue the rationale behind bombing mink factories some thirty years later since I figure I have diametrically opposing views to the median KAMP article reader (again, mostly other KAMP members, who are predominantly neither vegan nor straight edge); I bring this up to outline how much more of an effort I’ve made this past year to seek straight edge community offline. I had the privilege of talking with my friend Chuck about straight edge, and he said some words that have been in my mind on repeat these past few days. It goes something like this:

• if you’re straight edge just for yourself, that’s not enough;
• because there’s pride behind being straight edge and setting an example for others around you.

The community is the point. There’s not a great deal from my original article that I think is very salvageable, and yet I keep saying this one line again and again in my head. Going out to Salt Lake City for a local show again really belied this for me, and I think this is the reason why I’ve felt more proud in being straight edge this past year than the preceding two.

Aside from See It Through and their addicting, melodic vision of youth crew, I used to complain all the time about the lack of straight edge bands here. I think the problem cuts a lot deeper than that; there simply is a lack of a lot of straight edge people here, or at the very least people who are vocal about it. Maybe it cuts deeper still at something broken about our world today.

I think if our generation is to be remembered as anything—over than the one that stood idly by as the world careened towards a climate catastrophe—it would be as a generation of posers. Everyone is closer than ever, anyone is instantly accessible at the press of a button, and somehow we are more distant than ever. We define ourselves in the negative spaces of curated internet presences, read relationships through being left on seen or likes sent on an Instagram story, spend our time in person sending each other reels, obsess over fake aesthetics like Frutiger Aero, keep our activism to infographic reposts and threads and on if watching X celebrity’s movie or supporting Y fictional character is selling out convictions. We don’t know anything relationships or community, actual tangible communities outside of fandom culture or stan wars or the mirage of punk, to say less of conviction.

With every late night show appearance or viral mosh compilation account or news article about this scene “having a moment”, I fear for hardcore. I can’t count the number of talks I’ve had with friends about some bubble bursting, about how hardcore will inevitably become untrendy and uncool again (because, let’s be honest, it is a trend right now). It’s little consolation to know that the realest people will remain if shows will struggle to get 20 people through the door. Maybe that’s part of the allure of straight edge for me.

Being straight edge will never be trendy. There is no world where it will ever be, especially in such a youth-oriented subculture. This doesn’t mean there isn’t pride to be found in it.

In that Edge Day article, I claimed that “being faithful to others only extends as far as you can be faithful to yourself”. Our generation is being poisoned by irony and indifference every day. Our world is being poisoned by the indifference towards human, animal and ecological suffering. All of these three are preventable and unnecessary in the modern world, let alone unjustifiable. If you are straight edge to better yourself, then that is great. I have several friends that aspire to claim edge and are making steps towards that direction, as well as friends that view straight edge as a means to remain sober. I frankly never had a serious problem with addiction or intoxication; in a strange, roundabout way, some of the people in my life who are not straight edge are decidedly more sober than I am. I think that, for the longest time, I was in the category of people who straight edge for no reason at all, and I’ve reached a point where I fail to understand why.

One of my friends, someone who is also vegan straight edge, described it as being “straight edge for myself and vegan for the animals”. With respect, I don’t know if I agree. I see them both as commitments to others, be it anger for the world or a commitment to inspire others to change their lives. As I’ve gotten more vocal about my XVX convictions, I’ve noticed more people come up to me with questions about veganism or being straight edge. A good deal of them are making some moves in those directions.

Maybe being vegan or straight edge or vegan straight edge isn’t the end goal, but I don’t think it necessarily has to be. This world worships violence and decadence, and for quite some time I was jaded that people just didn’t care to make even the smallest steps to do something. Every Starbucks cup or AI window I see on campus doesn’t help these sinking feelings at all. But it’s the littler things that I’ve seen in the people who do matter to me that propel me further. Most people who work at animal shelters or towards climate change advocacy aren’t vegan, for instance. I imagine most people who work in sober halls or 12-step programs don’t know about Have Heart or Earth Crisis, and I honestly don’t think it matters. I just wish more people would care in general.

Straight edge is something of a weapon to me. Like a weapon, it can be left to rust or be put to action. It can be misdirected just as much as it can be operated perfectly. I think viewing straight edge as mere abstinence, a label to call yourself and to be passive about is missing the point. We wear these X’s on our hands for a reason: a bold, unmistakable signal to others, straight edge or not.

We don’t need the approval of people who will always look down on this movement, and frankly we shouldn’t want it. That was the problem of my old article.

Straight edge for itself is nothing. Straight edge, if not selfless, is meaningless.

Straight edge is a tool that anyone with able arms can pick up and use. So use it. XVX