Kaycie's blog

Universities around the country are trying to crackdown on alcohol use and sexual assaults on their campuses. In the New York Times article No Kegs, No Liquor: College Crackdown Targets Drinking and Sexual Assault, they sent reporters to five different campuses to investigate the situation.

The reporters came back with pictures of party scenes that look like they came out of a movie. On the website the pictures are enlarged to cover the whole screen and convey a very obvious message about how bad things are getting. The New York Times writer approached this topic very interestingly. The writer stayed objective in the article but showed the real truth in the pictures that were captured.

The lead of the article was a story of an underage college student at a party and it basically showed how easy it is for college students to binge drink. Even though the lead was unconventional from a usual lead, I felt that it was effective because it caught the readers attention and definitely made me want to read more.

The lead is supposed to be a summary of what the article is about but the writer did eventually summarize the article in the sixth paragraph. Overall the article was very well written and in my opinion the introduction was good as well.

This week at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner, Donald Trump got booed and heckled on stage when he was roasting Hillary Clinton for charity. In the New York Times article Donald Trump Heckled by New York Elite at Charity Dinner, the author reports about how Donald Trump may have taken the jokes a little to far because he had the whole audience against him by the end of the night when he made jokes about Hillary being corrupt and about how Hillary was there “pretending not to hate Catholics”.

The article included three videos of the candidates roasting each other and one picture from twitter. Even though some may think that Donald Trump is being victimized by the media, I feel that this isn’t the case. Donald Trump did call out the New York Times in his speech at the charity for being rigged against him, but the New York Times is simply just reporting what actually happened.

The author did an amazing job keeping the article objective. To make sure of this the author basically just copied all of Trump’s own words and put them in the story so it wasn’t coming from the author himself. This was a smart strategy I believe because in the end the author just reported what Donald Trump had said and done and he lets the audience decide on whether it was right or not.

In the New York Times article Obama Tells Trump: Stop ‘Whining’ and Trying to Discredit the Election, it shows the video of Barrack Obama’s speech to the American people about how childish it is for Donald Trump to try and discredit America’s election. He explains how ridiculous Trump’s accusations are and even goes as far as to tell him to stop whining.

In this situation the article has more information than the video coverage of the event because the article can elaborate on the situation that Obama is discussing. The article discusses in more detail about what all Trump has said about the American elections and gives more background to the story.

The video of Obama’s speech does give good insight as well. Coming from the president himself, the words sound more urgent and frustrated than in the article, especially because Obama is an amazing speaker. This makes the information more relatable.

Overall both ways of delivering news are effective in their own ways. As demonstrated in class and in many New York Times articles it is very effective when they are combined.

Many students and faculty members would agree that Morningside College has a parking dilemma. Parking at Morningside College has become impossible to deal with for students and faculty. A student that goes here, Bruna Alessandri, explained that she feels that there’s not enough parking spots at Morningside for the amount of parking permits that are sold here, which does create big problems. One of the campus security workers at  Morningside College confirmed that the parking permit violations that are given out cost about four times more than any parking violation ticket given out by the city of Sioux City. The charges here are also doubled every week that the due isn’t payed.

The parking situation at Morningside College hasn’t changed in decades yet the number of students enrolled at Morningside College continues to climb by the hundreds every year. The students that stay at Dimmitt Hall have to park on a steep hill in the front of the building that is very limited or they must walk from the stadium lot to get to their rooms. This may not seem like much of a burden but some students like Madison Wilde, a Dimmit resident, complain that they are paying $100 dollars for a decent parking spot that isn’t even available to them. Madison pointed out that this problem is found all over campus.

At the Roadman dorms there are about 20 lucky students who get to park in the Roadman lot and all the others must park all the way down at the Pool Lot, which can be a little difficult especially when they have a backpack full of heavy books to carry.

The only dorm building that gets a break is the Plex. This building has three parking lots around the building leaving it accessible to all students that live there. Too bad this building is the least populated building on campus because of its location and age. The Plex has almost four empty rooms on each floor because of the lack of students living there.

There are approximately 1,600 students enrolled at Morningside College and the parking available for these students comes up short, especially for the off campus students. Off campus students must park in the guests lots or on the streets to avoid parking tickets but what if there literally is no parking spaces to park?

Appeals can be submitted against the parking tickets issued but must be within seven days of the incident and are usually revoked. After the seven days the security department, and namely Brett Lyon the head of campus security, won’t take any excuses for the parking violations.

Nick Shea, a student and a campus security member disagrees. He feels that there are plenty of parking spaces on the streets but people aren’t willing to park in these spots because it requires more walking. He also thinks that Morningside charges a fair amount for the parking tickets because most of them are for parking permit violations. Nick feels that there is no way to add more parking to the college. He ended with, “There is not much the school can do … they can’t afford it.”

Another view on the parking situation is one from Morningside student Kolyn St. Aubin who has a very opposite opinion on the subject. Kolyn believes that the parking tickets should be less because you aren’t actually breaking the law just the campus parking rules. He even went as far as saying that he believes that Brett Lyon, the head of campus security, abuses his powers because of this. Kolyn’s comment to the question of whether $100 for a parking permit is too much money was, “Yes, because I have a car to go to school here so why make me pay to park my car.” Kolyn thinks that a good way to help with the parking situation would be to make it so the permit works on all parking lots throughout the campus for everybody since classes are located in buildings all over campus.

Patrick Blaine is a Spanish professor at Morningside College. He has traveled the world and continues to influence his peers and students through these experiences. Professor Blaine first started his travels by spending a year in Spain as an undergrad. This trip changed his life forever. The experience showed him the possibilities of learning from other cultures, languages, and history.

Patrick Blaine is part of the Spanish faculty and has taught at Morningside College for six years. On campus he works with ISA, ODK, film club, and Spanish club just to name a few. Besides working at Morningside College he is also a professional translator and works with an immigrant services charity, the local radio station, the city environmental board, and the police department Spanish testing.

He started his travels with spending a year in Spain. He explained that this first trip changed him forever. He suddenly could see all the possibilities that were open to him. Professor Blaine did have struggles that first year with culture shock but he encouraged that you just had to break that pattern of thinking.

Patrick Blaine has traveled to over 15 different countries around the world. Growing in his experiences along the way. The longest time he spent outside the United States was the 3 years he spent in Chile working as an interpreter. There he met his wife.They eventually had to leave Chile because of the better opportunities that were offered to him in the U.S.

Professor Blaine encourages all students to study abroad. He says, “if you can do it, go”. He explains that through travel it teaches you self-reliance that no other experience offers. Patrick continued with, “the experience is one that changes you forever”.

This article, Why Wouldn’t Tiffany Trump Speak, discusses one of the reporters at the New York Times attempt at interviewing Tiffany Trump. Tiffany Trump is Donald Trump’s daughter from his marriage with Marla Maples, his second wife. Even though Donald Trump has used his family to help with his presidential campaign he surprisingly has left Tiffany Trump out, thus leaving people everywhere wondering why.

This article was written because the reporter never got an interview with Tiffany Trump. So instead, she wrote an article about her efforts. This was interesting because she did answer the class question about what to do if you can’t get the interview. This reporter just ended up making the Trump administration look kind of harsh.

The reporter wrote about how Tiffany did do the photoshoot for the article but emphasized that she wasn’t allowed to do the interview. In the end the reporter kind of got some pay back because she made them look suspicious in not letting Tiffany have an interview.

Obviously this was not the story that the reporter was after but I thought it was inspiring that she didn’t give up in her efforts. She didn’t come up empty handed in the end, even though it is a very short article.