Hunger means blood on our hands

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25fri2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

This was an editorial written for the New York Times, published on February 24th.

The structure of the editorial, I felt, was complete and balanced and the content informed and quite adequately informing.

As for timeliness, the editorial pulls up statistics from 2008, but the author does their job to pull us back to now, and back to the current and rising situation.

This is apparently a series issue which is, for some reason, taking a back seat in our news and media. The numbers are serious. The world is in crisis, our tax dollars are being allocated in "small" intervals, and the numbers themselves prove the widespread effects this crisis is causing as we speak.

Starvation, exterme poverty, barren land, rising food prices.

I could go on and on. About the amount of distasteful, inconsiderate extreme and disgustingly frivolous wealth which we exploit, allow and harbor here in America. Celebrities, athletes, corporate executives, old money and new money. More money than anyone could ever need. Houses which are hardly lived in- millions of dollars. Could save the world. Save the world. End the need for war and starvation. And its hoarded. Selfishly. STOLEN. Anyone who accepts those amounts of money, puts a billion dollars in the bank, is sinning. It is the reason why the world will end.. the reason why people die. And people are starving. Humble and modest people who never had a chance are dying. I cant stand it.
Thank you and now I'm depressed.

Fact of the matter is, the author concludes his/her piece by saying


"This isn’t a question of charity. It is an issue of life or death for millions of people. And the hard truth is that if the United States doesn’t keep its word, no one else will. "

This is true, the United States- although all of us excuses makers and lazy finger pointers would like to think that the word "united states" simply entails our government- no it doesn’t. It is us... every one of us who have been granted the opportunities by, believe it or not, our government-- for whatever sick and overly trustful reason has allowed our people to actually make and maintain these frivolous amounts of money. It is us, the people - DEREK JETER- BILL GATES- KIM KARDASHIAN- who has completely and disgustingly taken advantage of our government granted abilities. They have done everything in their power to ensure.. not only that THEY have the ability to put a mil in the bank- bus all of us too. And now that some people own over a billion dollars- enough to solve the problems of a small country- we want to just hold on to it and watch from our marble balconies- and our infinity pools (one of the five that we own on our properties) while the rest of the world burns.
How do they sleep at night? I don’t know.


While they eat thousand dollar dinners-thousands don’t eat dinner at all.

WCSU Faces Cuts

It is no secret that the 2011 proposed state budget cuts will effect the CSU system and all higher education programs in Connecticut. The question is, how are the schools, Western in particular, fixing to prepare for cuts along the lines of 5-15% while 15% could mean 250 layoffs. This portion of state funding makes up roughly 35% of the entire WCSU budget, therefore if the decreases do happen to reach 15% the results can be, as stated by the President in his opening meeting, “apocalyptic.” For those who don’t know, (according to the Merriam- Webster online Dictionary,) Apocalyptic: foreboding imminent disaster or final doom.

This does not sound good, particularly when it is coming from our president and amidst rumors (which were later debunked by Malloy himself,) that one of the CS Universities were facing closure. Although, I have to be honest, I think Shmotter was more trying to get rise out of the crowd with his choice of vocabulary, rather than stating a hard fact.

But moving on, through my research, while I couldn’t find much on the actual budget, which was proposed last week, I found other things about our “trusted system” which were mildly- highly disturbing.

In the last year, students at Western have seen an increase in tuition by $477 for commuters and $950 for residents. In the same year the CSU Chancellor and University presidents each received a 10% raise. Jodi Rell later struck down the decision and the raises dropped to 5%. But the fact of the matter is, the same man (Shmotter) who stands before us and speaks of Leadership and Advocacy, stating that “we are all in this together,” did not decline to receive a quite frivolous sum of money.

The president of Eastern Connecticut State University has made it public that she makes along the lines of $299,460 per year. 10% would be an increase of $30,000, that’s just about $16,000 dollars off from the entire salary of the average worker in Connecticut.

Anyways, moving away from the “our leaders are evil money hoarders,” portion of this piece, there have been a few proposals put into place to make sure these kind of increases in spending don’t happen for students and faculty alike, which includes a tuition and salary freeze to be in effect through 2012.

Although, it has been mentioned that if the CS Universities cannot handle the budget cuts, that the tuition freeze could fly.

In the mean time administrators, individual departments and leadership programs are contemplating creative and effective ways to adjust to a lower budget with the least amount of negative consequence. Program cuts and the need to restructure administrative responsibilities and services are inevitable.

Another idea mentioned in Shmotter’s speech was to reduce the amount of special faculty appointments (professors hired on a year- to- year basis)which would directly affect the amount, and quality of, educational services for students.

Throughout this whole ordeal Governor Malloy has put major emphasis on the importance of Education as imperative for creating a valuable and sustainable work force, which would than, in turn, lead to more corporate interest in our communities and eventually help to boost the economy.

We can only hope that those who will take on the responsibilities of mapping out our educational futures will do so efficiently and with competence. 

uh-oh

http://blog.ctnews.com/steinmetz/2010/10/19/malloy-responds/

Hoping that Malloy didn't take the misinterpretation of his statements too seriously, it wouldn't be advantageous for the PR rep for a University to loose the good graces of the State's Governor.

How could the News Times have gotten a hold of this information??!!

Mysteries and wonders.

:)

Writing Opinion For Impact

What I have gathered from this  book so far is that writing editorials and columns are actually not so much different, in some cases, than writing journalistic pieces.

There is still the aspect of having a responsibility to the readers and to deliver them the sound and true facts that are used to back up one's own strong opinion on something. It also has to be somehow relative and timely, and the ultimate goal (just as for journalistic pieces) is to invoke some kind of thought and action within the reader. There is also the underlying responsibility to the publication and ultimately the advertisers which is sad, yet unavoidable fact of all news and media.

Some of the differences seem to be the researching and reporting process in general, and who is held accountable and responsible for the information within. In a hard news story the facts are revealed by the sources who are regarded as experts on a matter and are expected to be revealing the facts accurately (as long as they have been quoted accurately.) While in an opinion piece, the person writing the information is the one who has researched and become an expert themselves and should be held accountable for what they have chosen to write. But it seems in some cases with editorials, the person does not have to sign their name to their work, leaving the publication itself at risk of being scrutinized for something that may be proven to be false within the piece.

Ultimately I feel like writing editorials are probably much more tedious than columns because at least as a columnist the person has chosen something of a niche to write about. But than again, those chosen to write editorials are probably people who have strong opinions anyways so they may not have so much of a problem expressing them.

Also I think it may be fun to write in this style because really it is your own style rather than having to follow the inverted pyramid structure of hard news. It seems like there is a little more room to let loose and enjoy.

And this is when I realized that the free preview I was taking advantage of on google books was cutting out large sections, so the rest of my take on this topic will have to come when I receive the book in the mail. :)