Feature Writing 3060 Spring 2013

With people in the community feuding over their children’s education, schooling seems to have become a competition as opposed to a privilege. A space in a school building called the Jackie Robinson Complex is up for grabs which has caused a division between parents and the schools. One side feels they deserve the spot while the other appears to be the school that will be allowed to occupy it.

The East Harlem Scholars Academy and Central Park East I and II are the schools involved. Central Park East I is located in the building but they were hoping to occupy the space available to expand its program and they believe they should have gotten it since they’ve been asking for a spot for about 4 years. On the other hand the East Harlem Scholars Academy is investing $40 million in private money and with a March 11^th meeting with Community Board 11’s Youth and Education Committee; it would appear that they will likely be granted the opportunity so they can expand their program. Is education becoming a “bidding” war or granted to who invests the most money? Or it might be that charter schools are filling the void where some people might say some public schools have failed. Are more public schools going to phase out and be replaced with Charters? Parents from both sides might not see eye to eye and after the hearing on March 11^th it will be interesting to see how both sides react even though there might not be any real winners.

Aaron Ferrer

Jamilya Nurkanova
Conflict Story Proposal

With the beginning of the midterm week, Baruch students as well as other college students at The City University of New York will benefit from the open 24-hour libraries on their campuses. As a public college, Baruch’s William and Anita Newman Library gets most of its funding from the city. Compared to private schools and its libraries in New York City, the Newman library is open daily from 7 a.m. to midnight. Many students at Baruch feel that this needs to be changed. College students have different schedules, some take classes in the evening from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., some from 7 p.m to 10 p.m, which at the end of a school day leaves them with a few hours to study in the library. Also, as a commuter school, many Baruch students work during the day, which leads them to study at night. I think this issue is important because as students, we have the right to have a place to study that is open to us at any time. There are so many factors to consider: some students have abusive homes, where they can’t physically study; some of the households are loud and noisy, etc. While the college officials claim that a 24-hour library is not cost effective. By having less people, they can turn off heat, dim lights and save energy. It doesn’t make sense to have it open 24/7, when there are only 10-15 people in the whole building. Yashvir Soborough, senior at Baruch College says: “We go to an University. We need a place to study, to study efficiently.  Regardless of the time of the day.” Another student at Baruch, writes on the forum: “I’ve always argued that CUNY’s are as good as any private school, but this is one of their shortcomings. CUNY libraries either close at 10 or 11pm.”

For this story, I would like to conduct a survey in our class, to see how many students would vote for a 24/7 library. Also, I am trying to contact the Student Government to know their thoughts on this issue and whether students have previously brought up this topic in order to fix it. And I am looking to find an official contact, who would be able to give me official and financial data, and reasons for library’s current working hours.

sources:

Yashvir S. – 201 334 7190

Henry Ma – 646 269 5027

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15647

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/library/about/hours.html

Alex Goetzfried

JRN3060

A war is being waged in New York City, and many citizens are afraid that their rights are being taken away. Mayor Bloomberg has successfully passed a ban on New Yorker’s right to sit down and ingest a gallon of diabetes inducing soft drinks at their free will. Many are up in arms over the controversial ban, and some judges have already refused to uphold it.

The real question here is can the government tell people what to drink and eat? And if they are given that right where does it end? Will they be allowed to go to fine dining restaurants and ban foie gras like California has done? On the other hand America is an obese country ridden with diabetes and other maladies directly related to poor diet.  What’s wrong with a politician wanting to make his constituents healthier and stronger, while also taking some of the pressure off of the healthcare system?

For this article I will interview convenience store owners, doctors, dieticians, nutritionists as well as average New Yorkers who agree and disagree with the ban.

After the world exhausted the famous song Gangnam Style by Korean rapper Psy, it was swept away again by a new trendy dance called “Harlem Shake.” This new meme should not be confused by the real “Harlem Shake” dance portrayed in P-Diddy’s music video back in 2001. The dance involves a single person with people in the background not paying any attention to this individual. The dance starts and the individual (usually masked or in some type of costume) starts to dance to the song. The beat drops and the scene switches to the inattentive people in the background in the previous scene joining the individual in their version of a crazy dance (usually a stroke-like dance). Each video is 30 seconds long and has been uploaded to YouTube by colleges all over the world. Harvard med students have done and CUNY had its own unofficial “Harlem Shake” challenge with Baruch, Hunter and many other CUNY colleges uploading their own version.

As many of the fun things that Baruch does, the dance as a group activity was used to release stress. It would be interesting to investigate who came up with the idea. Who organized and advertised that they were going to do the dance and how the making of the dance was used to advertise the new major at Baruch: Digital Marketing.

As possible sources I could interview the maker of the advertisement, the person who organized the dance and the students who participated as well as members of the Undergraduate Student Government who are in charge of organizing events like these.