Is UMass violence spiralling out of control?

Pictured left:UMass, Amherst campus

The reputation of UMass Amherst is in dispute after a recent run of violent events. Within a couple of days, several incidents occurred.

On February first, there was a fight that resulted in eight players from the lacrosse team being suspended. The next day, reports of assault and sexual assault were filed. On February third, there was a violent attack in one of the halls, which resulted in the injury of three men.
Emily May, a sophomore BDIC in Music Therapy student thinks UMass gets a bad reputation because people speak out more here.

“It is such a big school so when something bad happens at UMass, everybody is talking about it. At the end of the day, a lot of the violence-related problems are caused by alcohol and UMass is not the only school to have this problem.”

The Journal of Studies on Alcohol Supplement (2005) found that 1,700 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes. These figures highlight the scale of this problem throughout college campuses.

The Times higher education 2007 world rankings report placed UMass number 175 out of the top 200 world universities. Their position has fallen since 2006 when they were placed 124.

The Journal of Studies on Alcohol (2002) found that About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall.

Increased binge drinking could be one reason UMass has fallen down the board. Emily Reynolds, a junior in journalism, thinks the move towards all-freshmen dorms are a bad idea.

“In my freshman year, I enjoyed having older students living around me because it allowed me to learn from their experience.”

University officials say that the rowdiest parties tend to occur off-campus, where the university has little control.

Property owner, Patrick Mastey has added a new stipulation to his leases that requires all college-student tenants from St. Cloud State University to enroll in the universities alcohol education awareness program.

Obama's journey inspires Kenya

Photo: Reuters

The "somewhere in Africa" section on the blog page I am following has recently posted a blog on Kenya and the ongoing developments.

The recent trouble in Kenya was a topic that received wide coverage when the riots and fighting occurred. This issue has now dropped off the media radar in mainstream US media.

Despite the small international coverage, February 21 was an important day in Kenyan history. The day began with tension occurring over the position of a new Prime Minister post.

There were fears circulating that further trouble would spark further protests from Odlinga's party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).

However by the afternoon, Kenya's political leaders "largely agreed" on the structure for a coalition government. The chief mediator Kofi Annan said that there was "finally light at the end of the tunnel."

A leading political columnist in Kenya, Onyango-Obbo, thinks that if Obama can come from nowhere and force change, then so can Kenya.

This shows the appeal that Obama has. He represents, and indeed uses it to his full political advantage, the notion of change that he represents. He became a senator in 2005 and is now a leading candidate in 2008 elections to become the president of the United States.

How can you tell whether information provided by a site is reliable?

I decided to focus on a search engine other than Google because I am so accustomed to using it. By focusing on Yahoo, I hoped the differences would become more apparent.

However, I found myself falling into the ‘Google trap’ by using its search engine to search for a search engine! This shows how much of a monopoly Google has in my daily internet use.

The familiar red ‘Yahoo’ logo reinforced to me that I was on the right search engine. My eye is drawn to the news bulletin’s headline and picture in the center of the page. Once clicking on the story, I find the Associated Press logo at the top of the article. This confirms that the source of news is reliable.

There are many icons down the side of the page for the user to visit. When clicking on ‘Yahoo maps’, I was given the option to view ‘The Holiday Inn’ locations and the network area of ‘Sprint ahead’. These companies were also, not so surprisingly, running a medium sized advertisement down the side of the page.

This shows that there is vested interest at bay here. Whilst looking on the map for an area to visit, you may see the advert and decide to look for Holiday Inn hotels within that particular area. Although you may be receiving additional, possibly unwanted information, the reliability of the map can not be undermined.

Using ‘Yahoo’, I typed the word ‘smoking’ into the search engine and from there, found one website and one blog to analyze. The first website that caught my eye was americanheart.org. The .org suggested to me that this website would be credible.

Once clicking onto the site, I saw a professional looking logo. This was another factor that suggested credibility. It also had a copyright label at the bottom of the page suggesting this web site has been properly registered.

This organization has an annual report which can be viewed online. One of the reports had been jointly researched by the Alzheimer’s Association and the American Heart Association. This joint relationship with another registered organization gives validity to the report.

The American Heart association also has TV/radio commercials and print ads. By branding their name in various media outlets, the credibility of the website increases. Your viewing of the TV ad may entice you to click on the Web site for further information. The association also holds scientific conference, another indicator that the information on the site is likely to have been well researched.

To find a blog, I focused on the same topic and came across cigarrestblog.com. I analyzed this blog to allow a contrast to the above Web site.

It is apparent by the layout that this is not an organization sponsored blog page. It has no logo and has no copyright label at the bottom of the page. Instead, it says ‘stop smoking today with CigArrest!’ The blog comments do refer to statistics and surveys however the author of the blog is named as ‘admin’.

Being unable to determine the author of the blog poses several problems as we are not able to determine whether they have a bias. For all I know, ‘admin’ could be a member of an anti-smoking campaign or an employee of the top cigarette brand in the US.

The issue of anonymity is a topic that has recently surfaced after The New York Times used anonymous sources in an article about McCain. The anonymous source told the Times that McCain’s top advisors had to intervene "to protect the candidate from himself" from getting romantically involved with a female lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

If this statement is true, it could do a lot of damage considering McCains past record. However, the use of any anonymous source undermines the reliability of the source and the Times have been heavily criticized for their use of it in such a highly publicized story.

Iraq from the inside

The reason I wanted to review a blog from inside Afghanistan or Iraq is because you get an insight into the real life of the people.

I have recently read "The sewing circles of Herat" and "The bookseller of Kabul", two books that are excellent in showing a side to Afghanistan that is often concealed by the day to day media reports.

What I liked about these books is that it reported from the perspectives of the real people that are going through real suffering. A blog, in some respects, can give you that same insight.

The report on Febuary 12th, "Logic" discusses the new plans by the US to allow local reidents defend their own neighbourhoods.

"When the Americans decided in away or another to depend on the local residents to defend their neighborhood, they knew for sure that they had made a very difficult decision because they were 100% sure that some of residents if not the majority are members insurgents groups and they have their own ideologies which might not agree or meet with the American ideology in any way."

I was struck with how powerful the words "When the Americans" were when put in this context. By viewing things from the perspective of somebody inside Iraq, the writer is posing you to situate yourself in their situation and observe things a little differently than the mainstream US media would otherwise portray.

A tragedy Iraqis will never forget

I did not find this article on the blog that I am planning to follow. I stumbled across this site, almost by accident and it has left a memory with me that I will remember for a long time.

The blog, titled "old stories of the war" describes a tragic event 17 years ago in Iraq when an American pilot obeyed orders to drop a bomb and consequently burn a thousand people to death. This order was due to claims that the building was hosting meetings of high ranked military personnel.

I had never even heard about this event previous to reading the blog so it really shocked me to find out about this holocaust.

I think the pictures on this blog offer a great example of how photojournalism can be just as powerful as the accompanying text.

Personally, I found the pictures to stir up more emotions as they were so shocking and striking to the eye. I think those images will stay with me for a long time.

A basic summary of the events are as follows:

Three bombs were dropped into a shelter where about 1000 people were sleeping.

The shelter was thought to be filled with mostly women, children and elderly.

Ironically, they were using this shelter to protect themselves from the American bombs.

Everybody in that building except six burned to death.

Here is a quote the blogger got from one of the survivors. I found this to amplify just how tragic this event was.

‘My son was only 5 days old. I don’t even remember his face. I don’t have a photo of him. I can’t even proof that he ever existed.’

These people lost their lives in circumstances that are painful to imagine - Over a decade on, stories like this are unfortunately being repeated.

Blog of choice

I am going to follow the blogs run by the "McClatchy company." It is a blog that is updated by journalists working for McClatchy newspapers in Iraq, Jerusalem, China, the Middle East and Africa.

These blogs are first hand accounts of the experiences the journalists encounter whilst out reporting in these countries.

Obama's clean sweep puts all eyes forward to March 14th

The primaries of February 12 have left Barack Obama in a strong position. He swept to victory with a large majority in Washington D.C, Virginia and Maryland.

McCain also had an impressive victory on the Republican side, gaining 68 percent of the vote in Washington alone, according to The New York Times.

The biggest surprise of the day was the scale of Obama’s lead in Virginia. He picked up 64 percent of the vote while Clinton struggled a little more, only receiving 35 percent of the vote.

Virginia voters do not register by party therefore voters were free to choose a candidate from either party. This could have been one factor that led to Obama’s lead as this system appeals to independent voters.

Obama had a lead in every demographic except white women. Clinton held her lead in this category by 10 points in Virginia and 13 points in Maryland, and Obama won 90 percent of the black vote in Virginia.

It seems that Obama’s thorough campaigning in these states paid off on the day. His grassroots approach was evident in Washington, with almost 1,000 volunteers turning out on the day to encourage voters to go to the polls.

In addition, another 150 students from Howard University were out supporting him. TV Ads were also run in Washington for a week before any of Clinton’s TV Ad campaigning began, according to the washington Post.com.

Half of the voters in Maryland and Virginia listed the economy as their top concern. This highlights where candidates need to concern their focus in order to gain further support.

Mike Huckabee, who failed to win any states, has said he has no intention of dropping out the race. “The nomination is not secured until somebody has 1,191 delegates” Huckabee said, according to cnn.com.

Tuesday’s primaries in Washington, Virginia and Maryland have made it clear that neither Democrat can win the 2,025 nominations without the backing of the superdelegates. This fact has begun to shift the focus of both candidates according to the washingtonpost.com.

Tuesday’s election have put anticipation towards the March 14 Primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont. Until then, the political spin will continue.

(Three news sources for this article: New York Times, Washington Post, CNN)

Will Google kill Journalism as we know it?

There are those who will snarl at any new development in media. TV was supposedly going to kill radio, Internet was going to kill Print.

But we only have to look at our present situation to see that this has not happened. No media platform has yet to crash and burn but instead has adapted itself to the environment in the best way that is possible.

The idea experimented with in Epic 2015 that google could Buy out the New York Times may not necessarily mean print journalism will die out. Google could combine its internet skills and future mobile outlets with the reputation and knowledge of the New York Times.

An acquisition of the New York Times could therefore be viewed as a way of expanding the options through which news can be accessed. It may also help to counter act the 70% decline in value that the New York Times has witnessed over the past five years.