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Show CarnpUsNews Page 2 Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 Anderson points finger at media BY ADDISON HALL staff writer Ross "Rocky" Anderson called for action Friday afternoon, telling students the media have oppressed society and supported a corrupt government. USU students need to band together and join a movement to rid the U.S. from corruption, he said in a Media Morris Society Lecture sponsored by the journalism department. "This is an important conversation for journalists and journalism educators," Department Head Ted Pease said. "But even more important for citizens in general during an election year." Anderson said the media have enabled social injustices. "We have two categories of people in this country," Anderson said. "A twotiered system of justice and a two-tiered financial system and in large part that has been enabled ... because of a media that has lulled the American people along." Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City and presidential candidate for the Justice Party, spoke in the Eccles Conference Center to a group of about 100 students and members of the community. He said the news media have either misinformed or neglected to inform the public on important topics, particularly climate change. "Throughout all of these debates the words 'climate change' never were mentioned. And yet that is going to be the greatest crisis you all face in your lives," Anderson said. The reason we don't hear about such an important issue is because of the media attempting to remain impartial, he said. A majority of the scientific community agrees that there has been a climate shift but the media doesn't report it because a few scientists disagree, he said. He feels that people are being confused. "To strongly identify one's status as an American is easily confused with conforming to the government's interpretation of what being an American means," Anderson said. "The Bush and Obama administrations have been keenly active in promoting a vision of American identity or patriotism as uncritical acceptance of the government's policies and practices." Anderson said the aforementioned administrations used this conformity to condone unconstitutional actions like torture and murder. "These administrations have been keen to use this conception of identity as a cudgel against dissent, especially when the administrations' actions abuse the public's trust," he said. "All too often the media have simply taken the government at its word and cultivated a mentality of 'my country, right or wrong." Anderson said this same mentality has led many Americans to stick with either Democrats or Republicans regardless of ROCKY ANDERSON SPEAKS at the second Media and Morris Society lecture of the year. The event was sponsored by the communications department. MICKELLE YEATES photo any wrongdoings they see. Andersen said one example is drone strikes sent by President Obama killing many innocent people alongside suspected terrorists. "We've got all these Democrats standing up blindly behind him saying, 'He's our guy. He's on our team,"' Anderson said. "They just totally forfeit any claim to principle because if that had been George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ... Democrats would have been holding congressional hearings." Anderson said regular citizens need to act together and make the government change. Anne Shifrer, a Logan resident and one of Anderson's supporters, said she liked the way he "exposed a network of misinformation" but wanted to know more about the present. She believes corporations are obstructing the government. Shifrer said she won't stop supporting Anderson, though she still believes he could have focused more on what he could do to change things. "I love his progressive ideas," she said. "Getting tied up in the misrepresentations of the past, that's great that we do that, but there's an urgency to be looking at the present situation." Alayna Learning, a journalism student at the university, agreed with Shifrer. "I was expecting him to talk more about the election than he did," Learning said. "But because of my media smarts class I agreed with a lot of things." – addison.m.Lhall@gmail. corn HURRICANE: Atlantic City, New York covered with water *From page 1 PEOPLE MAKE THEIR WAY THROUGH a flooded street in Sayville, on Long Island's South Shore on Monday afternoon as Hurricane Sandy gains strength. MCT photo Schools, colleges and universities shut their doors, in anticipation of power outages and dangerous road conditions, and some announced they would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday as well. D.C. taxi cabs announced a $15 per ride emergency surcharge. U.S. stock markets did not open Monday — their first weatherrelated closure in nearly three decades — and were expected to remain closed Tuesday as well. President Barack Obama, who canceled campaign plans for Monday and Tuesday so he could remain at the White House and oversee the federal response to the storm, urged affected residents to obey evacuation orders and other instructions from state and local officials. He warned that failure to do so could endanger firstresponders and lead to fatalities. "We are certain that this is going to be a slow-moving process through a wide swath of the country, and millions of people are going to be affected," Obama told reporters at the White House. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has pre-positioned supplies and is working closely with state and local officials. Asked about the storm's effect on the election campaign, Obama said: "I am not worried at this point about the impact on the election. I'm worried about the impact on families, and I'm worried about the impact on our first-responders. I'm worried about the impact on our economy and on transportation. The election will take care of itself next week. Right now, our number one priority is to make sure we are saving lives." In its latest advisory, the National Hurricane Center said at 5 p.m. Eastern time that the center of Hurricane Sandy was about 30 miles east-southeast of Cape May, N.J., and was expected to make landfall there early Monday evening, accompanied by a "life-threatening storm sure and hurricane-force winds." The center said hurricaneforce winds are also expected along portions of the East Coast between Chincoteague, Va., and Chatham, Mass. But gale-force winds were already battering a stretch of Mid-Atlantic coastline from North Carolina to southern New England. Health and wellness introduces free magazine BY JANESSA ZEEMAN staff writer The Student Health and Wellness Center has released USU Student Health 101, a free online magazine subscription for all USU students. Lauren Gould, the public relations and marketing intern for USU Student Health Services, has been working on promoting the magazine since August. Readership of the first two issues is still climbing. "Everybody who has opened it and read it, they love it," she said. The magazine comes from Student Health 101, an organization composed of health professionals and student writers from across the country. She said the articles are analyzed by a professional advisory board and student advisory board. She said the content is specifically targeted to USU students. "We kind of tailor it towards our student body so that it's engaging and it's what people here want to read about," she said. She said the usage of the magazine is analyzed to determine how much students are accessing the publication and what they are reading most. The magazine includes videos in some of its articles, some about cooking and exercising. "I am a visual learner," Gould said. "I like seeing the exercise done on Youtube so I can get in front of my computer and mimic the exercise." Gould said normally a one year subscription would cost the university about $8,000 dollars, but this year's subscription is a free trial run. Ryan Barfuss, the prevention specialist at USU Student Health Services, has been working to involve Student Health 101 with USU for a few years. "Because of the cost associated with it and no budget for it, we have not been able to get it here on campus," he said. Over the summer, Barfuss said USU won the trial subscription for the year. "This is a huge opportunity for the students to receive this type and quality of information and at no cost to them or the university," he said. A survey is given out every two years to students, asking them if they've received health and wellness information. Barfuss said the majority of people have not received this information from The Health and Wellness Department. He said this is one of the reasons the office wanted to have Student Health 101 involved with USU students. Barfuss receives a monthly report giving him the statistics of how many views the magazine had and how much time students spent on particular articles. "My favorite parts of the magazine are some of the videos that the students produce," he said. "They are very creative and the students can relate to them really well." Barfuss and Gould are working on a promotion plan that would involve Facebook, Twitter, table tents in dining areas on campus and advertising within on-campus housing units. Barfuss said by reading the articles, students can learn new ideas to help enrich their lives to make them healthy and happy. "The more students read and take advantage of this online magazine, the more likely we can propose that we have this magazine next year and the years following that," he said. – janemiche13@gmail.corn |