The Infamous Centerspread

Last semester I walked into a classroom to see a white man talking in an Indian accent. Three blonde-haired blue-eyed women laughed openly as he continued to talk in his mocking tone. I stopped in my tracks. I was more surprised than offended as the man continued. He turned and saw me staring directly at him. He stopped immediately. I continued to stare. He attempted to meet my stare but gave up after a few seconds. I went to my seat while my mind was racing furiously. I started thinking about other minorities on campus and whether they felt the same way. I was angered for a reason I couldn’t understand.

I talked to a couple of other minorities. They told me about how they had been treated on campus. Even a staff member shared a story about something that had happened to them.

In situations like these, I respond with one thing: I write.

And so I walked into the Clause meeting on a Tuesday night and asked to write this article. Nenji Yilpet, the senior staff writer decided to help me and we started working on it together. It didn’t even print. All hope was lost until this semester when the editor-in-chief wanted to print it again.

This was an emotional piece for Nenji and I. We were trying to do our journalistic duty while still recognizing the fact that as minorities these issues were important to us. It finally got printed this past Friday. You can find it here (WARNING: pdf file).

Happily, nothing was chopped and both Nenji and me were pleased with the final product.

I had good conversations with a large number of people with this article and came away with the conclusion that APU, as a Christian university, has a long way to go.

Something that didn’t make it into the article but was important was Woody Morwood’s comment to me during a hour long conversation. Woody is the campus pastor and is an all around nice guy. Woody said that it was difficult to get to a point where we had little problems simply because of the new students that come in every year. The university has to reteach an entirely new generation of students. That is an important fact to think about and I hope can be addressed somehow.

I recognize that racism will always be a problem. I just don’t get why ignorance still is.

Valentine’s Day

Screw it all.

Front Page!

I had my first front page story ever last week. It was about “Going Green Week” at Azusa Pacific University. The only problem was that because of the increased concern for the environment, there was no print edition.

Damn. I really hate the earth now.

The article got a bit chopped and put online. Some things that didn’t end up in the article:

• 197 shower heads were replaced across the campus which will save the University about a million gallons of water each year.
• The administration has a huge part in this entire thing. Terry Franson, the vice president for Student Life and the Dean pushed for this and has recieved criticism from others in the Evangelical community.
• The money issue is huge. This part really got me: at one point, during a move-out month, the school had to spend $25,000 to dispose of garbage.
• Toney Snyder, who I mention in the article has even looked at wind power as a way to conserve energy. Sorry kids, we’re not in a wind zone. Oh! Fun fact– wind turbines need to go seven mph to be even of any value.
• Your cafeteria grease ends up as bio-diesel. And we give it away for free.
• Point Loma is way ahead of us in the green sector.

Way too many bullet points for one post but it really was a lot of information. I heard from students who were critical of the Cafeteria for giving up styro foam containers for the week and not offering an alternative for those who couldn’t eat inside.

Stay tuned in for more articles.

World News Story: Russia is Scaring the Crap Out of Us; don’t steal from A.P!

I think I got a call at about 12:30 A.M from my editor about the world news story that I had turned in.

“You just cut and pasted half of this article!”

Before you call me stupid, just know that I really was under the impression that we could use the Associated Press wire and that my editor would just credit them and not me. Apparently I have to change a lot of stuff around in order to make it work.

Story has a happy ending though: I cleaned it up and rewrote the article but not before my roommate had the nerve to say “Shattered Glass” in a very sleepy and snarky manner. I learned my lesson as I always d and submitted the article.

It’s about this new row between Britain and Russia about the British Council. Putin’s regime is so obviously anti-democratic and anti-West that I am just waiting for Lenin to rise from the dead like in that old Simpsons’ episode. Remember that?

Lenin: Must crush Kap-it-a-lism!!

people run in fear.

Enough fun reminiscing– here’s that article at The Clause.

enjoy

Blogging is Fun!

It is SUPER FUN TIME!

Anyway, I’ve started blogging again but more importantly, I’ve started writing for the College newspaper. The Clause is a decent publication and I do enjoy writing for it even if it gets seriously stressful a lot of the times. I’m struggling a lot with coming up to A.P style since I’ve been writing for Broadcast for the past few years. I’ve gotten one opinion piece in about Feminism in Christianity and you can find it here.

This was an interesting piece because I actually came around to a different point on the religious spectrum from what I had thought before. I met with Murray Flagg who happened to be a “pronounced feminist.” I also talked to Jamie Noling for a few minutes but didn’t really include any quotes from her in the actual article.

I think my biggest surprise was simply the amount of women who told me that they were not feminists. And I was even more shocked at the amount of women who found it incredulous that I considered myself a feminist.

I’m working on a Wesley piece right now which I’ll get back to you on.

Thank the Lord

Over at the Mutineers’, Razib just posted a link to a map that shows high incidences of “cousin-love.” I freaked out a bit, because India was pretty dark but thank the Lord! Kerala is pretty light– we’re aren’t screwed up!

Incidentally, I always made fun of those bloggers who link to every freaking word.

Sad huh?