Author: m.markowicz

Brianna Arscott Grant is an African-American student who has been attending the University of Pennsylvania since fall of 2015. Her goal is to earn a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French.

Since joining University of Pennsylvania, her experience was largely positive. She became the secretary of the Black Student League and joined the executive board of Penn for Hillary and Black Pre-Law Association. She is also a member of the National French Honor Society and Big Brothers Big Sisters. When Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign gained pace, she gained an internship in Clinton campaign’s Pennsylvania headquarters.

When Clinton lost the election, Arscott Grant felt disappointed.

However, an incident that took place on Nov. 11 turned her disappointment into fear of her fellow students.

“For those who do not know, today the Black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania were added to a group called ‘Nigger Lynchers,’” Arscott Grant posted on her Facebook page. “They suggested daily lynchings and anti-nigger GroupMes. They went so far as creating lynching events to which they invited Black students.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center claims that in the 10 days following the election, 867 hate crimes have been reported. However, there is no data showing how many more may have gone unreported. There is also no data showing how many hate crimes were committed against college students who, like Arscott Grant, were victims of online or verbal harassment. Thus, different colleges found different ways of dealing with the fallout.

“People have experienced harassment at school, at work, at home, on the street, in public transportation, in their cars, in grocery stores and in their houses of worship. They most often have received messages of hate and intolerance through graffiti and verbal harassment, although a small number also have reported physical interactions,” the SPLC website states.

Because some of the attackers used Trump’s name during the attacks, the SPLC explained, it was easy to link those crimes to Trump’s election.

One such incident took place on Dec. 1, when three Trump supporters attacked a Baruch College freshman of Muslim background.

At 10 p.m. on Dec. 1, Jasmin Seweid was waiting for an uptown 6 train to take her home from a Women in Business fashion show that took place in Baruch College that evening. However, her commute home was interrupted when three men allegedly attacked her and tried to rip off her hijab.

In a Facebook post recalling the event, Seweid explained that the men who attacked her called her “a terrorist” and told her to “go back to [her] country.”

“Trump’s name was repeatedly said & it finally clicked in my head. No matter how ‘cultured’ and ‘Americanized’ I am, these people don’t see me as an American,” Seweid’s Facebook post also states.

Seweid went on to explain that when she did not answer the attackers’ comments, they approached her and told her to “take that rag off [her] head.” When she refused, they first ripped off her handbag, then attempted to rip off her hijab. In the end, she escaped without physical harm.

Seweid also claimed that while the incident was witnessed by other commuters, no one stepped in to help her and stop the attackers.

However, the New York-based media outlets that covered the incident were unable to find any recordings of the incident and there were no witnesses to support Seweid’s story. A week after the incident took place, Seweid told NYPD that she fabricated the story. She is now facing a year of jail time.

In response to the incident, Daniel Dornbaum, president of Baruch College’s Undergraduate Student Government, posted a statement on the organization’s website to show his support for the Baruch community.

“Baruch USG prides itself in our school’s diversity and there is no room for Islamophobia and misogyny at this college,” the statement posted on Dec. 3 states. “As members of the Baruch community, we cannot stay silent when act like this occur. Please speak up against hatefulness of any kind as playing the role of bystander is not an option.”

College students across the country had various responses to Trump’s presidency. Some, like the College of Staten Island, were openly cheering Trump’s victory. Others, including Baruch College and the University of Pennsylvania, embraced the ideas of safe spaces in their colleges and openly protested the choice of the electorate.

Clifford Michel works at The Banner, College of Staten Island’s student newspaper. In an email interview, he explained that CSI’s mood post-election reflected the vote of the borough.

“Staten Island being a primarily Republican borough, I did see a lot of high-fives being exchanged and a few pro-Trump chants,” Michel said. “I think since CUNY campuses are so diverse, a lot of his rhetoric and policy ideas hit home with swats of the community. To the vast majority of students that I’ve spoken with since, they view his success as a way of legitimizing those ideas.

At the time of the interview, the college did not organize any events in response to the election. However, Michel noted that an online petition has been circling to make CSI a “sanctuary campus.”

As the petition explains, a sanctuary campus is a place that protects its members from “intimidation, unfair investigation, and deportation.” It also “demonstrates [the college’s] commitment to supporting some of the most vulnerable members of [its] community.”

In Baruch, the response to Trump’s election was much more somber.

“Obviously more student have been upset about at the outcome of the election,” Dornbaum said. “I think that our campus is most left-leaning, but there are certainly some students that were excited about the outcome.”

To accommodate the group of students who were upset about the outcome of the election, Baruch’s Office of Student Life held a safe space event where students could come in and share their feelings and fears. The college also ran a safety pin campaign, which urged members of its community to wear safety pins to show that the campus is a safe space for discussion.

Andrew Windsor, a representative senator in Baruch’s USG, organized a self-defense seminar to promote safe environments and teach students how to protect themselves if a situation similar to Seweid’s was ever to take place again.

“I had felt that [Office of Student Life]’s and the rest of the campus’s approach to post-election worries was not enough,” Windsor said in an interview. “I thought that if there was a real worry about the safety of our students, we should have a self-defense seminar or a few of them just so people know how to protect themselves if there are real worries.”

The seminar took place on Thursday, Dec. 8 and lasted for two hours. During that time, Public Safety Officer Peter Flores showed the students how to escape an arm grab and various chokes. While the event did not generate a large attendance, this might have been caused by the fact that the event was organized three days before it took place.

Other students resorted to protesting. Bianca Monteiro is a sophomore intending to major in journalism. During the week when Trump was elected, she participated in two anti-Trump protests.

In an interview, Monteiro explained that she never attended any protests; the anti-Trump protest that took place on Wednesday, Nov. 9 was her first. Though she anticipated a lot of disorder, she was surprised to see that the crowd was moving without much confusion. Along the way, she saw police officers making sure that both the protesters and other New Yorkers were unharmed.

She left the protest around 34th street, when the police threatened to arrest protesters who continued marching on the street instead of the sidewalk. Monteiro believed that the peaceful behavior of the protesters was part of the reason why the police did not react with violence.

When asked why she chose to participate in the protests, Monteiro said that, as for many others, it was a way for her to express herself and find comfort among other New Yorkers.

“I honestly felt so distraught and I felt like I needed some outlet to express my anger and disbelief. The protests I participated in were nonviolent but just having people around you understand exactly the fear you’re going though, the fear of regression and hate, makes you feel like maybe there is hope. That, despite Trump becoming president-elect, we’re going to regress and we’re going to do what we can do [to] help move forward,” Monteiro said.

The second protest she participated in took place on Saturday, Nov. 12. Though others have been organized, she chose not to attend them.

While many worry about what will happen to them once Trump is inaugurated, some acknowledge that the hate crimes that are currently happening are not the direct result of his presidency.

“I don’t necessarily think [Trump’s] election was the direct cause of [the GroupMe incident] but I don’t think that would have happened if he hadn’t been elected,” Arscott Grant said. “I would say the direct cause was racism, bigotry and hatred. Donald Trump did not cause any of those. Rather, he enabled a platform that said all of these were acceptable in present-day America.”

In the meantime, college students are trying to find a way to cope with the new norm.

“I do know that there are many who are still very much afraid,” Arscott Grant said. “Because I am not necessarily afraid that there will be another GroupMe incident or something similar, that doesn’t mean that I’m not fearful for the state and future of this country, because I definitely am.”

When 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the European Union on June 23, few may have expected that the vote would spark a right-wing movement and xenophobia. Five months later, the country’s immigrant community is faced with anti-immigration graffiti and derogatory comments.

This behavior shows a dangerous shift in the attitude of British citizens. With the refugee crisis plaguing Europe and right-wing parties gaining support throughout the continent, a rise in anti-immigration behavior could harm the country in the long run.

According to a report published by the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, the United Kingdom witnessed a significant increase in racial and religious hate crimes.

According to the report, there were 52,528 hate crimes recorded by the police in a one-year period between 2014 and 2015. Of those, 42,930 were race-based hate crimes, while 3,254 were based on religion. This shows an 18 percent increase from that same period between 2013 and 2014, with the largest increase–43 percent–found in religious hate crime.

However, there is also an issue with unreported hate crimes. The report cites a survey conducted by the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which found that there is an estimate of 222,000 hate crimes per year, 106,000 of which are driven by race. This, the document states, means that only one in four hate crimes are reported.

The report claims that hate crime is caused by hate speech, which has been steadily increasing in the past few years.

“ECRI considers hate speech particularly worrying not only because it is often a first step in the process towards actual violence but also because of the pernicious effects it has on those who are targeted emotionally and psychologically,” the report states.

As a result of this behavior, many immigrants–including the estimated 850,000 Polish immigrants who live in the United Kingdom–feel as if they are no longer welcome in the country.

Major publications, including The Washington Post, published stories about the growing hostilities. The article cited one incident in Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, where people distributed laminated cards with “Leave the EU/No more Polish vermin” written on them in English and Polish.

The ECRI also reported a high number of violent race-based hate crimes directed at the United Kingdom’s Muslim community. In one instance, an 82-year-old man was murdered on his way back from Friday prayers. In particular, the Muslim community in the United Kingdom is often accused of not integrating with the British values.

The report states that a lot of this behavior is caused by the politician’s rhetoric, especially when coming from members of the UK Independence Party who tend to speak out about immigration. When Bulgaria and Romania got their rights to visa-free travel within the European Union, politicians affiliated with UKIP and the Conservative Party claimed that people from those countries would “flood” and “invade” the U.K. labor force.

However, the response in hate crime is not even across all of United Kingdom. According to the referendum results, 62 percent of the Scottish electorate voted to remain in the European Union. Bernard Agrest, who spent his past year in the University of Edinburgh earning his master’s degree, admitted that while the country’s attitudes toward other races and religions remained largely unchanged, he did notice that the messages sent by the pro-Brexit groups were, at times, xenophobic, especially when it came to the Syrian refugees.

“The Syrian Refugee Crisis was also a tipping point,” Agrest said. “The leaders of the Brexit movement–Farage and Johnson–came up with an ad of a ‘breaking point’ for the country and it showed a line of refugees.”

Agrest added that the Brexit campaign as a whole was filled with inconsistencies.

“When you look at the leaders of the UKIP party … they really propped up a lot of sketchy statistics and facts to say how much the U.K. was losing by being part of the UK,” Agrest said in an interview.

Back in the days, people used to say that the sun never set on the British Empire. Its colonies spanned the entire globe, from the 13 American colonies to India and South Africa. It ruled over dominions and protectorates that spoke many languages and followed different cultures than Britain’s. In many of those places, the British have a dark past, from Boer concentration camps to the famines in India.

After all that violence, the British people are, once again, committing violent crimes against the people who immigrated into their country. Some of those people come from the countries that were previously colonized by the United Kingdom. Others, like Poles, came to United Kingdom to find a better future.

The United Kingdom is made up of multicultural countries that have welcomed foreign resident for decades. Now, when the economy is not doing as well as it should, groups and parties like UKIP decided to put the blame for the country’s situation on immigrants.

Immigrants, however, contribute to the economic success of the United Kingdom. The same people who face xenophobia on daily basis work as construction workers, plumbers, salespeople, technical workers and waitresses, along with other positions. They work the jobs that they are qualified for and live their lives alongside other British citizens in order to give back to the country that gave them a more financially secure life. It is wrong to blame the country’s economic problems on people who are simply trying to lead a better life.

Instead of blaming the immigrant communities for the United Kingdom’s economic standing, the U.K. government should work with its immigrant communities to improve the situation of the country as a whole.

For this article, I wanted to write about something that affected many of us but has not been written about this angle in any of the major magazines or news outlets (at least not as far as I’m aware of)–how Trump’s election affected college campuses.

For this article, I would center on the effects of a Trump presidency on Baruch. The college has held an event in the Bearcat Den on Wednesday, Nov. 9 and is planning to hold another one this week to give students a safe space where they can discuss how they were affected. Students have received emails from the school advertising our counseling center and the fact that in Baruch, all political views should be respected.

However, there were incidents. Several people reported being harassed to security and the Office of Student Life. The counseling center is packed, showing that people see a need to talk about this event in a safe space.

This feature would be largely based on interviews with students and members of the administration to get both sides of the story. In the end, it would be an in-depth feature about how Baruch was affected by the Trump elections. Seeing the events that took place in The New School and protests in college campuses across the nation, I think that this is a story that goes beyond Baruch.

TKTK I need a better intro here.

United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union was more than a choice to leave a politico-economic union. The decision, supported by 52 percent of the people who cast their votes, sparked a larger movement that gave rise to xenophobic behavior carried out by the British people, from anti-immigrant graffiti to derogatory comments made toward foreign-born residents.

This behavior shows a dangerous shift in the attitude of British citizens. With the refugee crisis plaguing Europe and right-wing parties gaining support throughout the continent, a rise in anti-immigrant behavior in the United Kingdom could harm the country in the long run.

The results of such behavior can already be seen. In a recent video made by the BBC, Polish immigrants spoke about their post-Brexit experiences.

TKTK talk about the video, which I need to find.

The trend is not specific to England. Bernard Agrest spent the past academic year in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he earning a master’s degree in educational policy. Even though Scotland’s citizens were largely pro-European Union, Agrest noted that there was a clear shift in attitudes following the vote.

TKTK an interview with Agrest

TKTK Elaborate on my opinion.

This is an official report that talks in-depth about the rise of intolerance in the United Kingdom and the groups that are most affected by it.: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Country-by-country/United_Kingdom/GBR-CbC-V-2016-038-ENG.pdf

A relevant article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-vote-has-led-to-noticeable-rise-in-uk-xenophobia-watchdog-warns-a7343646.html

“You know, I did not want to be a journalist when I was growing up,” Rebecca Simon said. “I originally went to college with the intent of graduating with a psychology degree. But then I thought, why not? And here I am.”

“At this point, I’m pretty sure Baruch will use the slow WiFi as an excuse to raise tuition. Why else would it be so slow?” Simon added.

Simon went on to say that, “As much as I complain, Baruch is a pretty good school. I couldn’t find a better journalism department for this price in the East Coast.”

As an opinions editor of The Ticker, Baruch College’s independent student-run newspaper, Yelena Dzhanova’s job is to guide the students in expressing their opinions in a concise, logical and organized manner.

The job is not always easy. The writers who contribute have varying writing skills and editing a single article can take up to an hour. The issues vary from case to case, from lack of citations or improper grammar to AP Style errors. As exhausting as her job may be, at the end of the day she is still full of energy and eager to speak to her writers about the issues she comes across.

“I have a very diverse group of writers and I try not to shut anyone down,” Dzhanova said. “[The writers have] an opinion that is represented in the newspaper that otherwise we would not have had and it makes [the newspaper] more relatable to students.”

Dzhanova began training for her position as the current presidential election cycle gained pace, making her job as an Opinions Editor much more difficult. A Hillary Clinton supporter, the most important element of her job is to constantly monitor her actions to make sure that every political belief is represented in her section, even it differs from her own.

Dzhanova’s interest in writing grew when she was still a student in Townsend Harris High School, Queens, where she worked as the Editor in Chief of her school newspaper, The Classic. Upon entering college, she joined Encounters, Baruch’s literary publication, and The Ticker, where she contributed to the opinions section on a weekly basis. After consistently contributing to the section for a semester, she was picked out by Gabriel Marrero, her predecessor, to become the next Opinions Editor. She has held the position since May 2016.

During a typical production week, her first task is to come up with a list of topics to send to her writers. This process, Dzhanova explains, has a major influence on what opinions get published in the paper.

“Sometimes I try to target certain people whose values differ from the traditional values that we get,” Dzhanova said. “When we do topic emails, I try to suggest to a certain writer to pick up a certain article just because I feel like they would be interested in it or just because it would bring a new perspective to it.”

While writers can pitch ideas for stories, only one writer reached out to her with the intent to write about the elections this semester. She explained that this is because of a ban that the previous editor set when she was still training, which prohibited writers from writing about the presidential elections. Prior to the ban, Marrero got at least one request per week.

However, writers can still share their political views in Politicker, a column dedicated to expressing one’s political views on a topic recently covered in news.

Despite her efforts, Dzhanova acknowledges that there is a clear political preference among her writers.

“Of course the Opinions section seems to lean more toward the liberal side, but I do attribute that to the fact that we do live in this metropolis of an area where different views are tolerated,” Dzhanova said. “We do try to get more traditional perspectives and more conservative perspectives, but it doesn’t really work out too evenly split.”

After Dzhanova receives the articles from her writers, she has to edit them before they get passed on to copy editors. This is Dzhanova’s most difficult job, as she has to make sure that the writer’s opinion is preserved and not influenced by her own views while making sure that the reader will be able to follow the writer’s argument.

“I abide by a personal rule in which I try not to touch the opinion at all. I just edit for fact-checking and copy editing. If I do see an opinion that I particularly don’t agree with, I kind of grumble to myself and say, ‘grrrr.’ So I’m one of those people. It’s a very internal thought, I would never express that out loud, I’d never say who I said that about or I’d never tell that to the writer if I’m in a meeting,” Dzhanova said.

Learning how much she could edit before the writer’s voice was lost was the most difficult part of Dzhanova’s training as a section editor. Her training was even more difficult for her because, at the time, she was preparing for her summer internship with the Democratic National Committee, where she helped raise funds for the Hillary Clinton’s campaign. While she did not receive any emails written by supporters of Donald Trump, she did receive emails from people who wrote about Gary Johnson and Rand Paul. In the end, she likes to thinks that the election had a major influence on her as an editor.

“I’ve become more cognizant of the different sides of the election. I’ve become more hesitant to include content regarding the political nature of elections since many people seem to have the same complaints when it comes to representing their views and qualms with the system. I’ve become more sensitive to opinions that are not similar to mine,” Dzhanova said.

As an opinions editor of The Ticker, Baruch College’s independent student-run newspaper, Yelena Dzhanova’s job is to guide the students in expressing their opinions in a concise, logical and organized manner.

The job is not always easy. The writers who contribute have varying writing skills and editing a single article can take up to an hour. The issues vary from case to case, from lack of citations or improper grammar to AP Style errors. As exhausting as her job is, at the end of the day she is still full of energy and eager to speak to their writers about any issues she comes across.

TKTK an amazing quote.

Dzhanova began training for her position as the current presidential election cycle gained pace, making the job of an opinions editor much more difficult. A Hillary Clinton supporter, she has to constantly monitor her actions to make sure that her political beliefs do not carry over into the articles she edit, especially when the writer’s views are different from her own.

Dzhanova’s interest in writing started when she was still a student in Townsend Harris High School, Queens, where she edited her school newspaper, TKTK. Upon entering college, she decided to join Encounters, Baruch’s literary publication, and The Ticker, where she contributed to the opinions section on a weekly basis. After a semester, she was picked out by Gabriel Marrero, her predecessor, to become the next opinions editor. She has held the position since May 2016.

 

*** I am yet to transcribe the interview, which was conducted yesterday, which is why the draft is a bit short.

(Is the underlined part a strong lede?)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/06/steven-woolfe-profile-who-is-the-ukip-mep/

The Telegraph article profiled Steven Woolfe, the presumptive leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, which lost its former reader after she abdicated her position after 18 days on the job.

The story’s angle seems to be Woolfe’s position in UKIP, especially now that the previous leader abdicated her position. The parts that were the most effective were the ones which identified his current position within the party and his conflicts with other party members, including an instance in which he was punched in the face in public by one of his co-workers.

Bianca Monteiro is a sophomore at Baruch College. She has short hair and enjoys wearing loose-fitting clothes. In her spare time, Bianca enjoys exploring New York and taking photographs of the lesser-known spots.

Monteiro identifies as gender fluid. Though she uses the female pronoun and frequents the female bathroom, there are days when she wishes that she did not have to choose between using the male and the female bathroom.

“Gendered bathrooms enforce binaries because a lot of people equate sex and gender.” Monteiro said in an interview. “I feel like a lot of people who don’t fit into what the typical gender binaries look like are forced to ‘pick’ what gender they are—or rather what gender they ‘look’ most like—when using the bathroom. Otherwise they may feel vulnerable to having to explain their identities when other people see and/or question them being there.”

The campaign to create a gender neutral bathroom at Baruch truly kicked off in the spring Semester with the LGBT community spreading information about the purpose of such bathroom and raising awareness about the issue. However, the Baruch administration was slow to make progress toward appeasing the group.

According to Gabe Roman, current president of The Gender, Love and Sexuality Spectrum, the idea to create a gender neutral bathroom was nonexistent when she entered Baruch as a freshman three years ago. After reaching out to the College Advancement Board, the LGBT community was told to get donations, collect signatures on a petition and create a committee to push the movement forward.

“What really helped us is that people besides people at the LGBT Resource Room, people besides people in G.L.A.S.S. were taking it seriously,” Roman said. “That was like the hardest part. Just letting people know what the bathroom was. They wouldn’t sign the petition because they were like, ‘I don’t want to sign this hippie thing’ or they were like ‘this is too liberal, I want put my name on it.’ But once they were educated, they started to want to get more involved.”

This prompted the club to create educational pamphlets and the petition. G.L.A.S.S. followed up with a YouTube video, titled Case for Gender Neutral Bathrooms at Baruch College, which aimed to answer some of the most common questions about the creation of a gender neutral bathroom. As of press time, the video collected 440 views. The LGBT community’s initiative on the second floor lobby collected roughly 200 signatures the petition, along with some donations to strengthen the cause.

“The students behind the campaign know that not everyone in the world is tolerant,” Roman said. “We want to figure out if there is a way for us to protect the genderless bathroom, whether through training security to be sensitive to the issue, or having an educational video about what the bathroom is.”

The campaign also has to deal with a lack of a clear line of communication with Baruch’s administration. There is no single person that the LGBT community could reach out to with questions, nor is there a website to find out about the progress of the project or a place to express one’s opinion about the project.

Roman assured that the gender neutral bathroom is in plans, although she received no clear date from Office of Student Life as to when the bathroom will be built. The biggest difficulties that the project is facing are space and funding, as the project is rumored to be costly due to high costs of converting a room into a bathroom that will meet all the safety codes while being in an easily accessible area.

However, a member of the administration said that the project was already in the works and the administration was looking for other possible locations for the bathroom.

“Baruch … successfully lobbied $1 million from City Council Speaker [Melissa] Mark-Viverito to fund the ADA and Single Occupancy ADA restrooms this fiscal year,” said Lisa Edwards, the vice president of campus facilities. “The funding allowed the universal restrooms to be added at the tail end of design to an existing ADA capital project. The design with the universal restrooms is now 100 percent complete and expected to go out to bid for construction in late fall.”

In the future, Roman hopes to get more people to support the campaign.

“We need more voices. There’s a very small but a very passionate group of people who are always on these campaigns, who are always pushing for more. But people don’t take groups seriously unless there’s a big number, unless they have dozens of students,” Roman said. “It’s hard for a lot of people to come out and speak on these issues because they don’t want to either out themselves or they don’t want to align themselves with a marginalized group.”