Do OU Students Really Care about Senate Bill 5?

Senate Bill 5 (SB5) is now a very controversial political issue in the State of Ohio. Signed into law by Gov. Kasich in March, SB5 will limit collective bargaining rights of public employees. Ohio SB5 veto referendum, known as Issue 2, is scheduled to appear on the general election ballot in November to repeal SB5.

Athens County, the poorest county of Ohio is expected to suffer from SB5 as most of its public employees are working at Ohio University (OU), the largest employer of the whole county. A protest of about 250 OU students took place on campus in March to oppose the cutting budget proposal of Gov. Kasich in higher education sector which OU belongs to. Last Wednesday, more than 50 OU students showed up at the OU Student Senate weekly meeting to speak out on SB5 and request the Student Senate to take a stance on it.

However, the above mentioned groups of students is modest compared with the total of 20,857 students, Athens campus alone. A large number of students do not care or even know about SB5. Many students think it is a political issue and not directly affecting them. "OU students are no different than most people in the world. A lot of people don't pay attention to politics", said David Smith, a student at OU. From the side of OU Student Senate, they seems to have the same opinion said by President Kyle Triplett : “The opinion of the Student Senate executives is that it’s not Student Senate’s role to get involved in issues that are purely political".

We will need to wait for an official figure to know exactly how many students really care about SB5, how many of them sign in form to vote against it and for them SB5 is just a State issue or OU-related issue.

Can vote, why can't drive?

Women in Saudi Arabia may now vote, as declared by King Abdullah last Sunday. This would be for the first time in the history of Saudi Arabia that women have the right to vote and run in local election due in 2015. For the women, it is a remarkable stepping stone in line with the Arab Spring - a rebellion wave of protests in the Arab world since last April. For the rest of the world, it is a victory in the field of gender and development for women to be on an equal footing with men.

While the news still heats up, the first reaction of many people is whether Saudi Arabia women can now drive. Many argued that voting is not enough if women are still prohibited from driving. The news is therefore becoming debatable: why granting women the right to vote, but not the right to drive? Women's rights is always a controversial issue in the Muslim world. However, it was argued that the issue was not being viewed from within, but rather influenced by Western perspective. For example, veiling is negatively viewed by Western as violating women's rights while many Muslim women are proud of wearing it as part of their culture and tradition.

Back to the voting issue, the declaration might be a manipulating action in response to the heating protests and international pressure on women's rights in Saudi Arabia. In the field of gender and development, we talk about practical gender needs (PGN) versus strategic gender needs (SGN); if voting right lies within SGN, is driving right as PGN just a matter of time to be met?

So, you can vote but remember I still have to drive you to polling station is exactly reflective of the nature of the issue.

"Life is being complicate even by online"

I'd like to start this entry by quoting the top headline of my JOUR314/514 classmate's blog: "Life is being complicate even by online" and "Can't we live simply?"

I had to restore my Twitter account which was abandoned for the last two years. The latest and also the only tweet I made was on October 2009.

The reason for my Twitter restoration is not because I am afraid of being left behind in the world where social media is dominant. I am not an anti-fan of social media. In contrast, I acknowledge and highly appreciate the big impact that social media brought about in transforming society and the way we communicate and interact with others. However, to acquire an appropriate understanding of social media is not easy. I find it complicated, perplexing and beyond the limited thinking capacity of myself as an individual. Simply enough, social media is a collective product of millions of brains. Can you confidently say that you understand what's going on in the heads of social media creators, developers and users? To what extent it will go forward?

I just read an online article named "Basic principles of online journalism: I is for Interactivity" and I very much agree with its main thesis "the rise of interactivity means thinking about how you can give control to your readers". I think the greatest thing about social media is that it breaks the circle that encompasses every single person to join a circle of collective individuals in the chain of the society. It is the I as "Interactivity", not the I as "I" that makes social media an appealing shared platform for all participants.

"Life is being complicate even by online" is not a critique of social media but a double-faced statement of its nature: complex and interesting.

US top national universities

US News has just released rankings of the top fifty national universities. The top ten comes not as a surprise because of the familiar names of these universities. The first ranking, as usual, goes to Harvard University. Harvard University was one of the oldest institutions in the U.S., founded in 1636, it now boasts of the most prestigious alumni all over the world.

Together with Harvard, Princeton University as member of the Ivy League ranks the first. The next rankings in the top ten belong to: Yale University (3rd), Columbia University (4th), California Institute of Technology (5th), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (5th), Stanford University (5th), University of Chicago (5th), University of Pennsylvania (5th) and Duke University (10th).

The rest of the rankings include:

#11 Dartmouth

#12 Northwestern

#13 Johns Hopkins

#14 Wash U in St Louis

#15 Brown

#15 Cornell

#17 Rice

#17 Vanderbilt

#19 Notre Dame

#20 Emory

#21 Berkeley

#22 Georgetown

#23 Carnegie Mellon

#23 USC

#25 U of Virginia

#25 UCLA

#25 Wake Forest

#28 Michigan

#29 Tufts

#29 UNC Chapel Hill

31. Boston College

31. Brandeis

33. College of William and Mary

33. NYU

35. U of Rochester

36. George Institute of Tech

37. UC San Diego

38. Case Western Reserve

38. Lehigh

38. UC Davis

38. U of Miami

42. UC Santa Barbara

42. U of Washington - Seattle

42. U of Wisconsin - Madison

45. Pen State

45. UIUC

45. U of Texas - Austin

45. Yeshiva

50. George Washington

50. Resellaer Polytechnic Institute

50. Tulane

Ohio University ranks the 124th among the national universities.

Paw Paw festival

The 13th Annual Paw Paw Festival will take place from September 16 to 18 at Lake Snowden in Albany, Ohio. The main purpose of the festival is to promote the sales of paw paw which is one of America’s largest native tree fruits. Paw paw looks like mango in shape with tropical flavor of avocado, mango and custard-apple combined. Paw paw has many seeds and it is grown in Southeastern Ohio and other parts of the country.

The festival is a good occasion for the paw paw growers community to get together and share experiences in planting trees. Through educational activities, residents of the region will understand more about the fruit, appreciate its unique flavor and give recognition to the native Americans who grow and preserve the fruits.

Friday Night in rural Appalachia

I took a van to Johnson Road in The Plains where Hannah House is situated. Hannah is one of the two houses that belong to Good-Works, a local organization in Athens, Ohio. Good-Works was found in 1981 aimed at helping poor people in rural Appalachia, one of the poorest parts of the States. They provide shelter for homeless people to stay temporarily before they can find a cheap place. Good-Works also helps with maintaining houses, planting vegetable, making friends with the seniors, teaching computer skills, etc. for the poor.

The event I came today is called Friday Night Life which takes place every Friday from 5pm to 8pm. Residents of the Timothy House get together with residents of Southeast Ohio to talk, participate in recreational activities and have dinner. The dinner is made thanks to the generous donation of the church, local restaurants and individuals.

Right after the dinner was camp fire where we burnt marshmallow. The kids were excited to know that I am from Vietnam. They asked me to teach them how to say "hello, thank you, mom and dad" in Vietnamese.

The event brings a great sense of community and everyone is part of a big family. See you all next Friday!

A typical scenery in rural Appalachia

(Photo Source: Internet)

Guest speaker

It is always a great idea to bring guest speakers who are practitioners in your field to the class. It is even more beneficial for journalism students to interact with journalists because journalism is all about reality. That's why we were so excited to welcome our guest today: Marshall Allen who is a reporter for ProPublica. Within such a limited time, he shared his "Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas" project collaboratively written with Alex Richards for the Las Vegas Sun. The series covered stories related to health care in Las Vegas, which, according to Allen, is twenty years behind other places in the U.S.

Being humble, Allen shared how the initial assignment turned into a great work regardless of many constraints during the investigative process. It was not the multimedia interactive applications (they are cool, though) that mattered. It was the story that mattered. No matter what type of media being used: traditional or new media; the story and its verified truth still play the most important role in winning audience.

Photo source: http://businessjournalism.org/2011/02/11/goldsmith-prize-nominee-check-out-hospital-safety-data-available-in-40-states/

A lonely leader

Okay, as said in the previous note, we planned for the big event which was the opening convocation at Chatham University last Sunday. The main purpose of the event was to welcome new and returning students. Chatham has initiated a program named Global Focus which will focus on one country or one region every year for students to obtain understanding of selected country or region. More information about the program can be found here. This year, Vietnam was chosen because of two reasons: 1. Vietnam is globally interesting and 2. Vietnam has its presence in Pittsburgh through the Vietnamese Community. I supported the program as an intern, mainly to kill my time in Pittsburgh. Pitt is a very charming city, everything looks so ancient with numerous churches. It might be exaggerated when saying that Pitt is as beautiful and elegant as DC. But you know, after spending two months in NY, returning to Pitt is just like going to the countryside. I guess NY is the only place worth living in this country. Everywhere else is so dead and boring.

Back to the event I mentioned earlier, most Vietnamese students in Pitt are pursing PhD in University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University (I have no idea of CMU until my boyfriend keeps talking about its first ranking among top engineering and CS schools in the States. It now ranks the 6th by U.S. News). I, again, acted the role as the leader to call for people's contribution to the convocation. Sometimes I hate myself for doing that. If people don't fucking care, why should I try to beg for their forced kindness? I was so fed up with event management - the thing I tried to give up a million times when I realized my previous job - as Communication Assistant - was exactly an entertaining crap. Every job has its own crap, though. Crappy bosses count!

I emailed the whole group shortly after a meeting with coordinator of the program. It was only a week left before the event took place. I thought it was impossible and deep inside, I didn't want to invest a hundred percent of my time and efforts into an anticipated failure. My boyfriend did not allow it happen. He insisted that we could do it and it was only the matter of time to have people's attention. Sadly enough, he was right. Mobilizing resources is tough at the first place but you don't need to worry about anything else once resources are allocated to the work. Being a leader is easy, some might argue that, all you need to do is just point out your finger and as a miracle, somebody will make things done in a way you wish. Easy huh? No way, being a leader is probably the hardest thing. You have to be very firm and assertive, you have to know what you want to achieve with no second of hesitance. On the other hand, you need to be very flexible, open-minded and supposed-to-be nice and understanding. "I understand you fully. You are absolutely right", be careful, the hidden part is "BUT you still have to do what I asked". As a leader, you have to take the main responsibility and be prepared to take the opposite side against others. Nobody likes a leader. Nobody wants to make friend with a leader. Instead, they want to stay away as much as they can. Being a leader is equal to being lonely and even aliened. Can people really avoid being leaders? I guess the answer is as hard as can you deny your identity. Leadership is an inborn ability that is granted to a minority of people otherwise we will have a bunch of leaders with no followers.

(Cont)