January 27: Missing the Mark

We are a little over a month past the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary School. It has been 6 weeks since a madman tore apart dozens of families, leaving a trail of pain and questioning in his wake. Yet it doesn’t appear as though humanity is any closer to an answer to solving our egregious problem.

In the weeks following this tragedy, the American public started calling for better gun control laws. It appeared as though two very different ideas stemmed from the same issue.

The first idea was to create significantly tougher gun control laws. The defendants argued that it would make attaining a gun much harder for a would-be shooter, and thus lower the risk of such a tragedy occurring. Unfortunately, I am not under the impression that it is that simple. Most shootings occur in situations that would be incredibly hard to control. The popular saying “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is uncomfortably true. The problem isn’t the ability to use guns. The problem is with the people who are doing the killing.

Another proposed solution is actually to legalize the ability for college students to bring guns to school with them. The idea is that, if it isn’t possible to control the killers, you might as well arm the potential victims. To say the least, this is a ridiculous idea. As a college student myself, I would say that my judgment is suspect at best at times, and I would live in constant fear if I knew that my peers, who I trust far less than I trust myself, have the ability to carry concealed weapons on their person. There is no good reason that we, as students, should have to live in fear of having guns in our college classrooms. This goes for the legal ones as well as the illegal.

I am, in essence, on two seemingly oppositional sides of the same debate. I am not in favor of restricting second amendment rights, because I do not believe it is the government’s job to tell me how I am to protect my household. At the same time, I also believe that making guns more accessible is not the solution either, because more guns would not scare people straight. It would lead to conflicts where individuals would be far more likely to come out guns blazing. Literally.

The issue truly comes down to a need for further education. I am going to stop short of calling for schools to teach gun safety, but I do say that there is a need for students in public schools to learn what it means to wield a weapon, the ramifications of violence, and what it means to kill someone. While death is an uncomfortable topic of conversation, I believe it is one that must be spoken of more frequently in schools. The assumption at this point is that an initial conversation about death, what it means, and how it impacts people will occur at home. This conversation must stretch into the classrooms, so that a more thorough appreciation of life can stem from it.

The true root of the issue is the valuing of human life. A gunman intent on killing a classroom full of children demonstrates not only a mental illness, but also a lack of appreciation for the act of living. This is also one of the reasons, I believe, that murder-suicide is so common amongst high school shootings. A killer doesn’t have an appreciation for life, including their own. They don’t understand the power of their actions, and the finality of death. Which is why, with a better education on death, I believe the desire for killing would decrease.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, we have seen several smaller scale shooting incidents, which lead me to believe that this tragedy served less of an awakening as it should have. We as an American society owe it to the victims and their families to find a way to live together, and a way to cease from killing one another.

January 20: A man we need, the men we have

He sure isn’t the first college student to have a fake girlfriend, but Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o most definitely is the most famous.

Early this week, I got a text message saying that the girlfriend of Te’o, who had supposedly died early during the football season, was actually a hoax. I couldn’t believe it. The person who had served as an inspiration to the biggest story in college football this year was non-existent?

As the story developed, the blame game became a tornado of suspicion. Many believed that Te’o had been involved, looking for a big story to help boost his publicity. Others believed him when he said that he was the victim of a horrible scheme to try to make him look bad. Either way, it was a horrible example of just how messed up the world can be sometimes.

The first question that should be on everyone’s mind is what exactly was the definition of this relationship. Te’o admits that he never really met this girl, that their relationship was occurring strictly online. It was then revealed that all of the social media attributed to this individual were taken from some other source, another individual who was literally “the face” of the hoax. If this relationship was one in which he never really met nor had any in-person communication, why exactly was this a top news story. By most definitions it was not in any way a serious relationship. Why was it that when she “died,” it was as if she was his fiancé?  That is both a flaw in the relationship styles today, as well as the media craze that surrounds the personal lives of athletes.

If that wasn’t enough for a week, Lance Armstrong decided to talk to Oprah. Of all people, Armostrong’s choice to reveal is steroid use to Oprah demonstrates yet another publicity stunt, attempting to get as many headlines as possible both for the cycling star and for the television diva. It was a rough day, hearing that the American hero who had won seven straight Tour De France races was a fraud, and that he had, in fact, used steroids during all of them.

On the other end of the spectrum, the sports world was saddened to hear that Stan Musial, the great St. Louis Cardinals legend had passed away at the age of 92. Musial was a man who was known across the baseball world as a light unto the athletes of today. He conducted himself in a professional manner, and was considered to be a star not only on the field but off as well.

Isn’t it fitting, then, that the world lost a clean, good man the same week that a steroid user and a girlfriend hoax both came to light. A man who comes from an era when steroids were used to clear up a sinus infection, not to cheat.  A man who represented his team, the St. Louis Cardinals, for 22 years.

Between the media craze, conspiracy theory, steroid use, and other insanity of today’s sports world, this was an even more startling tragedy.

The world is a little worse off without this man in it, especially at a time where the world could use a hero. It is about time to use this man’s legacy as a dream, a message, toward living a better life. We expect better from our athletes. It’s about time we got better once again.

January 13: The Talking television

The lady on the television actually spoke to me the other day. Well, maybe not to me in particular, but the audience. On Sports Center, two analysts were debating whether or not Russell Wilson was going to beat Robert Griffin III in their playoff meeting. As the debate began, the moderator prompted the audience to tweet their opinion to their page, and the percentage of voters for each side would be displayed. Throughout the rest of the debate, the stat bounced back and forth, and the TV personalities reflected on their opinions with the help of the public poll.

This is just the beginning of the new generation of audience participation within television. TV has been speculated upon for its longevity, because many believe that the lack of interactivity will make viewers bored with simply viewing TV content. With the appearance of social media within the media, a new niche was born.

It started with ESPN’s show “Sports Nation,” which features a series of debates each day, with the conclusion to each debate being the voters’ response, which had been collected online over the course of the day. As that show grew more and more popular, the form of interaction spread to other shows on ESPN and beyond.

Even beyond the world of sports, social media has grown to allow for participation by the audience. Just yesterday, CBS advertised a new episode of Hawaii Five-O in which there are three possible endings. The audience has the opportunity, during the course of the hour long show, to vote for whom they think is the murderer. At a certain point, the network will take the result of the vote and change the content to reflect what the public decides. Twitter has, in this instance, totally changed the landscape of television, and the way in which viewers relate to it.

This form of interaction creates an instant investment of viewers in their media. A person can actually engage with who they think should be the “correct” suspect, and thus be more willing to stick it out to the end of the show in terms of viewing, so as to see if their opinion reflected that of the nation as a whole.

On the other hand, viewers may feel a sense of loss as the suspense of the show is taken away. There will no longer be true “surprises” in the show, because it will simply be the answer that is most popular, not the most creative or most well written.

This then, of course, leads to an incredible shift in the production of such works of media. First of all, actors will need to now shoot several different versions of each piece, in that they will need to create the content for each individual situation. Additionally, the writers will have less ability to impress their own views on the works, and will be even more at the mercy of the public entertainment.

This is only one episode of one show. But in reality, it is a test for all other media creators. If this show is a success, you can be sure that more will follow. As twitter becomes more and more influential, it will become more and more pervasive in different elements of media and life as a whole.

January 6th Action vs. Justice

As a part of RA training this past week, there was a strong focus on social justice, which has been one of the staples of ongoing training seminars throughout the year. For several hours we discussed social justice, and the different ways that it could be achieved. Unfortunately, the group did not necessarily have a full grasp as to what social justice is, and, sadly, few people truly do. On a college campus, what students should truly focus on is social action, not social justice. Social action is the form of acts that individuals can do to try to make a positive change within their communities and environments. Social justice, on the other hand, is the act of totally eradicating a certain problem from the globe, making it a non-issue. Very few examples of social justice exist in our world, as that would require a total fix of the problem. An example of social justice would be that all people have food to eat all the time, therefore erasing hunger from the list of problems plaguing human civilization. Social action would be sending food to an African nation struggling with emaciation. The trouble with the confusion is not simply logistics. The issue becomes when an organization tries to convince people that social justice is something achievable. It is a form of setup for failure. If the problem is not completely finished, the group must have been unsuccessful, even though any contributions of social action are, in many ways, solving a problem, even if not the problem. The real root of the issue is the difference between action and intention. Social action is an act that can be done, something physical, tangible, and quantifiable to make the world a little better. Social justice, on the other hand, is the intention of making the world better, the wish for better, the ideal of better. Another issue with misinforming individuals on the difference between social action and justice is the difference that can arise in the eyes of different types of people on social justice. There is not a single answer to what is and is not socially “wrong,” and therefore leads to questioning about sweeping statements of the need for justice. Some may not believe that solving problem is necessary. They may not even believe that such a problem is even a problem. Therefore telling a collection of over 300 RAs that the goal is social justice is misleading, and can lead to a sense of helplessness. The best way that the University can educate its staff is to encourage a diverse form of social action projects. Some may focus on one issue, others another, but that will allow students to truly feel connected to the projects that they are doing, and they can feel a tangible change happening in the world. Social justice can also be taught, but it must be done in such a way that individuals understand the loft of such a goal, and understand that they cannot achieve social justice alone, but rather that they can act toward making the world a better place as a whole.