FRO13 LC15

But no seriously, we really do need your money. This world runs on money. Although the United States’ dollar bill is completely backed by faith alone and is literally a piece of “paper” or blend of linen and cotton, our society thrives on money. Our group chose money as the central theme, simply because it is omnipresent. No matter what age, the effect of a financial crisis or massive inflation will affect you. You can run, but you can’t hide.

One of the reasons that most of the students are in that room every Tuesday from 12:50 – 2:05 PM is the scholarship money. The price of the freedom after graduation debt free is simply priceless – no wait, it should be about $2,865 per semester. But it’s not for Dean Scholars and my classmates and I are extremely grateful for this aspect of Baruch.

In $$, we trust.

Change. It’s word that we are all too familiar with, and it seems to lurk around every dark corner waiting to pounce and obnoxiously flaunt itself in front of your face. However, “change” may be one of the most exploited and under appreciated words. It is the only word in the English lexicon that accurately captures the state of our society’s activities. This realization led our group to choose the overhaul of established systems (or simply, change) as our theme for our edition of a New York Times front page.

Matters like the government shutdown, Syrian revolution, APEC meeting, iOS system changes, restaurant renovations, and fiscal policies that may effect Baruch, are all connect by the thread of change. Each of these events will effect us whether we notice it or not. As intelligent members of society it’s our duty to be aware of global events. More importantly, as students of Baruch we should be alert to the changes that may be coming towards our way. Our Bearcat article addresses Obama’s new education plan that may positively effect financial aid for Baruch students. Financial aid is always an issue on the forefront and it is in our best interest to be knowledgeable on the topic. With this air of change comes new responsibility: we must stay informed and ready to make a difference.

Our group chose the articles we did because we felt that they were relevant to students our age. We ourselves are concerned with both the upcoming election as well as the possibility that tuition policies may change. we focused on issues concerning the election and economy so we could get a better understanding of what was going on around us. Even the international article served to highlight the benefits of our own political system and put our country into perspective. Our central article about Baruch brought this concept home, illustrating on a much more personal scale what happens when a political system fails its constituents and a plan backfires.

I enjoyed the enrichment workshop we attended a few weeks ago, to see the documentary “Changing Minds at Concord High School”. It was a very interesting concept, that meditation can, over time, change the minds of teenagers and make it easier for them to focus in class. Personally, I enjoy doing yoga, and it was an option for us in gym class in high school, which definitely made an impact on me. I noticed that it was a source of stress relief in my day, and especially during the end of the first half of the year, this reprieve was greatly appreciated. The chance to de-stress for an hour, or even 5 minutes, is something we take for granted, especially in a fast paced city like New York. The documentary definitely made me want to try meditation out and see how it impacts the way that I study, and hopefully, I will be one of the many that see good results.

My NYT group chose change as our main theme for our project, and we had a variety of world and local issues that we wrote about. Change is something that we are experiencing at every single point in time, no matter how that may occur, and it’s a theme that particularly resonates with issues that affect us on a personal level. For instance, this can be an issue such as the new system potentially being implemented by the President that would allow us to receive more federal aid as a school, which is the topic we chose as our Bearcat article. Or something as small as the new iOS update for the iPhone, which has had many people talking and discussing whether they like it or not, causing a certain amount of controversy. Change is also apparent as we have made the transition from high school into college, which has been a huge one on a personal level. Whether you like it or not, change is a constant entity, and something that must be dealt with all throughout life, and it is especially prevalent for us to get in the habit of accepting it, in a sense, by seeing how different issues are also affected, as well as the outcome. This way, the earlier we learn to cope with change, the easier it will be to move forward.

My group chose to base our NY Times project on the overhaul of established systems because it is something that we frequently see in many aspects of today’s society, whether it is in politics, food, or technology. Some of our articles covered local and national news about a change in ownership at a popular restaurant and the recent government shutdown, while others went international by talking about an update in an attempt to overturn the Syrian government and a shift in power at an APEC meeting due to Obama’s absence. My article was about the new iOS 7 and its drastic change in design. It focused on the overhaul of the old look that Apple had kept for so long for one that is more practical and minimalistic. We tried to incorporate as many aspects into our project as we could to show the reader a wide range of articles.

Our bearcat article was about President Obama’s new education plan that will affect Baruch greatly as it could possibly result in more financial aid for our college. This will benefit the many students that are already attending Baruch and provide more low-income students with a higher education. Being college students in a city that is so diverse and politically involved, Baruch students are all affected by the change that is happening around us. It is hard not to get involved in these issues in one way or another. Some people might be directly affected or have friends that are, while others might have just heard about it on the news or around campus. No matter what the change is, big or small, students at Baruch know to come together when the time is right.

For the NYTimes Project, our group chose the topic of “change.” Everything around us constantly changes, so we must be able to adapt these changes whether for good or bad. While our blog only covers a few examples of change, we have been able to cover various levels and to tie up all these different articles, we created a Bearcat article. This Bearcat article not only impacts current students but also prospective future students who are unable to attend college because of their financial status.

As for myself, I chose to write about the APEC. The Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation demonstrates that the change of the power controller is a very important matter. The article talks about how America lost its right to control the meeting and how China was able to use the meeting to their advantage.  Although we are unable to stop the power change, we must be able to embrace it and deal with its consequences.

My group chose our theme for the NYT project to be “politics.”  Whether you like it or not, it’s something that surrounds us everyday on a local level, a national level, an international one and even a school level.  This wide spectrum can be seen in our collection of articles, including our Bearcat article which covered the last-minute date change for the recent club fair.  What’s the connection between a club fair and politics? Well, we saw the club fair  to be an example of school politics.  Though you may or may not have been affected by this incident, it gives us an idea of how we may be affected by school politics in the future as we continue our time at Baruch.

Covering international politics, I personally chose to write about the possible default (I believe another group has covered how this has been dealt with) as it shows just how important politics are and how many people are actually affected by it.  The article discussed how the threat of a default wasn’t only worrisome for the States but nations around the world.   At one point, the author writes that foreigners have begun to feel as though Obama was their President too as many of his decisions played such large roles in their own nation’s politics.  The only catch is they don’t have a vote.  But we do, and we should take advantage of it.

My group decided to look at money in society, not in the “New car, caviar, four star daydream, think I’ll buy me a football team” fashion, but in the necessity of it. When choosing our individual articles, we each saw money in different parts of society, in sports, in countries, in international exchange, hidden money, money as a style. We couldn’t help but draw our own conclusions about the role money plays. Some of us saw money as evil, some as a God-given right for citizens of a democratic society, but we all could conclude that as much as our opinions differed on the subject of the United States’ fiat currency, we couldn’t escape the green tinted faces of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

As college students in a business school in New York City (quite a cliché, if I don’t say so myself) we’re brought up along these words, “money” “economy” “debt” “loans”. Whether your vision of utopia fits some egalitarian-socialist mold, or a laissez-faire capitalist model, we cannot deny the fact of the matter that we live in a society where money and an individual’s pursuit of happiness are assumed to be one in the same. My group chose money because our country is swimming in it, in surplus and deficit, in supply and demand, in rich and poor, and in greed and altruism.