For Fall 2015, I will be enrolled in a Web Development course. Many of the upcoming posts this fall will focus on my various assignments in this field. My first assignment will involve “noting websites you find interesting or neutral,” as the syllabus states. Two of my favorite news sites include:
The Escapist, an online video game and entertainment publication. My personal favorite show on the site? Zero Punctuation, a weekly game review show by writer Yahtzee Croshaw with a focus on quick wit and cynical humor. Any video game fan who wants to laugh hysterically while learning about the newest games should definitely check this show out. You can visit The Escapist by clicking here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
The Atlantic, a physical and online news publication discussing current events from a moderate perspective. I tend to avoid most overly political websites, so seeing one from a centrist point of view helps inform me better. You can visit the website by clicking here http://www.theatlantic.com/
Bad news: it’s been years since I’ve updated. Good news: I’m still alive and doing better.
As of 2015, I have re-enrolled in college and currently working towards a degree in Computer Information Technology. This is a test post for CMIN 204-1HC. In the future, I plan to upload small programs I’ve designed for class.
As you can tell by the new name, this blog will be taking a new direction and subject matter. The old name was stolen/a poor homage to a friend’s blog, and not very professional-sounding. Freshman year, that would’ve been fine and dandy, but freshman year has gone and passed. Now I have to make more of an effort in presentation.
The name has two meanings. My initials spell out A.C.D., one letter short of AC/DC. As such, an electricity-based motif would’ve suited me well. But for this, I had to be careful to pick the right word to portray the main ideas of this blog. Volt sounds too threatening and lethal. Static implies disruption of communication, the polar opposite of my intentions. [Yes, that pun was intentional.] After all this deliberation, “spark” felt like the best choice.
Sparks ignite to light the way. Why shouldn’t this blog be the same?
Mass communication junior Aaren Gordon loved writing as a hobby so much that she joined the Maroon in spring 2012. But until a few months ago, she never thought that she would one day end up running it.
“This time last year, if you told me I was going to run for and win the election for Editor-in-Chief, I’d thought that you were joking with me,” Gordon said.
This wasn’t a joke. Starting May 3, 2013, Gordon will become the paper’s new editor-in-chief for the 2013 school year, advancing from her previous position as news and managing editor. Until recently, she never thought she had the potential to become editor-in-chief, but some “subtle encouragement” from her advisor gave her the motivation.
“Before then, I didn’t think I had what it took to be editor-in-chief. But a month ago I became really confident in myself, thought I could do this, and decided to run” Gordon said.
The Maroon handbook describes the duties and responsibilities that the Editor-in-Chief must uphold. In particular, the Editor-in-Chief serves as the paper’s student liason with the university and has the final say in editorial decisions.
The current editor-in-chief, Sam Winstrom, thinks that his new successor’s work ethic and personality made her a good candidate.
“She really has a passion for working with people. Everyone she’s worked with, photographer-wise, editor-wise and writer-wise, gets a lot of one-on-one attention from her and works things out together. Nobody’s ever left in the dark with Aaren,” Winstrom said.
For now, Gordon doesn’t want to change the paper’s content, but does think the staff needs to change how they interact and function with one another. She believes that writers don’t feel comfortable talking with their editors, a common problem that makes the paper function less efficiently.
“The big issue I see right now for us is definitely not the way we present material, it’s the way we work together. We haven’t been meeting deadlines, and that’s something I’m going to change,” she said.
For some of Gordon’s colleagues, working with her allowed them a preview of how the future editor-in-chief dealt with problems. Campus news editor Eric Knoepfler, whose coverage often overlapped with Gordon’s, said that fixing problems shouldn’t much of a struggle for her.
“A lot of problems we run into working at the Maroon are trial-and-error type things. You hit a bump the first week and the next week you fix that, so I think she’ll do fine after a week or two,” Knoepfler said.
The most important question: what should we call the new editor-in-chief? She says “Commissioner Gordon” sounds good.
Actor Harry Shearer is known for his roles in Springfield, but the Simpsons actor has become involved in a different city — New Orleans.
The actor was the guest of honor on April 8 as part of the school’s Monday Night Forum series of lectures and seminars. Music Industry teacher Jim Gabour ,the founder of the program, said that he chose Shearer because of his history and connection with New Orleans. “Harry has really adopted this city,” Gabour said. The two had previously worked together on Shearer’s web series “My Damn Channel” in 2008.
Besides being part of Fox’s The Simpsons since its primetime debut in 1989, Shearer has been a comic actor and musician for years.One of his most famous roles is musician Derek Smalls in This is Spinal Tap, a documentary about a fictional heavy metal band. Even though the film had been unsuccessful on its first release in 1984, its satirical portrayal of the music business and musicians has turned it into a cult classic, with fans ranging from Trent Reznor to Metallica.
Although he has homes in London and Santa Monica, Harry Shearer says he feels most at home in New Orleans because he loves the community and hospitality.
“I grew up in a very individualistic city, Los Angeles. When I came here, I saw the thing that was really missing in my life, which was community,” he said.
In the recovery period following Hurricane Katrina, Shearer devoted his time and money to helping rebuild New Orleans. In 2010, he produced and directed “The Big Uneasy,” a documentary about the events leading up to Hurricane Katrina and how the disaster could have been prevented. The film premiered worldwide on August 30, 2010.
Despite the struggles during the rebuilding period, Shearer still remains passionate in his love for the city. “Think of all the things people think about New Orleans — the food, the music, etc. Take them away and you still have the city.”
From editing labs to iPad textbook readers, technology is becoming more integrated with Loyola’s education.
Since fall 2010, full-time Loyola undergrads are charged a $225 Information Technology fee, compared to $112.50 for part-time students. This fee is included with paid tuition, so students won’t have to pay out of pocket for tech. Before the change, the fees had been $175 for full-time students.
Although every student has to pay a tech fee, most of the fees are paying for technology already on campus. IT Vice Provost Bret Jacobs said that software licenses and network repairs are included as part of the Information Technology budget.
“There are numerous other expenditures to keep our infrastructure up and running. For example, we spend almost $200,000 annually for our Internet bandwidth; it’s not a ‘new technology’ but an essential one,” Jacobs said.
Many other essential technologies take up most of the IT budget’s expenses. According to the Information Technology budget, Loyola invested $220,000 in network upgrades and approximately $170,000 on student computer labs around campus.
Dr. David Zemmels is an associate professor in the School of Mass Communication and a member of that school’s tech committee, which determines how the tech fee gets spent.
In the four-and-a-half years he has worked here, the associate mass communication professor says that most of the school’s money goes to software upgrades and licensing.
“Our technology doesn’t change that much. People still use a mouse & keyboard, and they still use a pen and paper,” Zemmels said.
For my first posted photograph, I’ve decided to start with one that had been picked up by a few news organizations. This was taken on an iPhone 3 in the afternoon of October 6, 2011 in front of Lafayette Square.
This is one of my crowning achievements in enterprise reporting. For the first time, I pitched the story idea to my editors rather than vice-versa, allowing me to get the best and most accurate details possible. If a newspaper were its own army, I’d be a paratrooper, jumping down from the sky into uncharted territory on a solo mission. (Not my own comparison, but a fitting one).
In s sense, I was going into “uncharted territory” for the paper. Although my editors were aware of the event, no one had been assigned to cover it; the story wasn’t directly Loyola-related.
From editing labs to iPad textbook readers, technology is becoming more integrated with Loyola’s education.
Since fall 2010, full-time Loyola undergrads are charged a $225 Information Technology fee, compared to $112.50 for part-time students. This fee is included with paid tuition, so students won’t have to pay out of pocket for tech. Before the change, the fees had been $175 for full-time students.
David Zemmels is a member of the School of Mass Comm’s tech committee and said that derp is spent on herp.
IT Vice Provost Bret Jacobs said that the IT budget
“There are numerous other expenditures to keep our infrastructure up and running. For example, we spend almost $200,000 annually for our Internet bandwidth; it’s not a ‘new technology’ but an essential one,” he said.
Many other essential technologies take up most of the IT budget’s expenses. According to the Information Technology budget, Loyola invested $220,000 in upgrades to the university’s wired and wireless networks.
Mass communication freshman Morgan Ballard knew that tuition prices played a major role in her ultimate college choice. Even with her scholarships and savings account, she said, she likely will have to take out student loans for her remaining three years.
“My family had set up a savings account just for my college tuition. We set up multiple accounts with different banks, but when the banks failed we lost a few of them,” she said.
Ballard isn’t alone in her financial concerns. Loyola’s website reports that for the 2012-13 school year, a full-time student will have to pay $16,923 for tuition alone, up from $16,133 last year. After calculating tech fees, meals plans, room and board, and other various on-campus services, one year at Loyola could ultimately cost $46,608.
However, tuition prices aren’t the only financial dilemma students have to deal with. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that in 2008, the average student at a private 4-year college graduated with approximately $21,100 worth of debt. As of 2013, the average amount of debt has increased to $24,898 nationwide, an increase of almost 18 percent.
Louisiana graduates come slightly below the national average with only $22,455 in debt.
The average Loyola graduate has a slightly smaller financial burden when graduating. The Institute for College Access and Success reported that out of all the Louisiana colleges with a four-year undergraduate program, the average Loyola graduate only had $22,713.56 in debt. For demonstrative purposes, a Loyola student’s debt cost as much as 2,754 lunches from the Orleans Room.
By comparison, the average graduate from Tulane University, Loyola’s next-door-neighbor, had $31,172 in debt. Dillard University had the highest average debt of $36,241 with 96% of students having some amount of debt.
But is all debt equally difficult to pay off for all students? For many students, paying off their debt is an afterthought to their college education, something that they can deal with when they graduate.
“Being a freshman, you’re more focused on school and getting grades. Student loans are currently something that everyone has to deal with, so no one’s really interested in paying them back right now,” Ballard said.
And for many undergrads, paying off student loans is as big a problem as finding a job after college. Many students opt to look for internships, which can serve as experience for working with other companies and organizations. But if jobs seem scarce and less obvious to find, some students end up working towards earning a higher degree in hopes of getting a better-paying job.
Ray Freire, music education graduate ’12, said that he plans to continue getting higher degrees to delay paying off his loans. “By the end of my senior year, I had about $33,000 in student loans. My after-college plan is to become a music teacher and find a good payment plan for my debt,” he said.
When Freire first attended Loyola in 2008, tuition for one semester was $13,584, not including room and board and other fees. Now that price has increased by approximately 25 percent. According to Freire, paying for just one year of college made his parents declare bankruptcy, leaving scholarships and loans as his only finance options.
But with the average student loan debt increasing along with tuition, how much money should a student take out for loans? According to student media advisor Mike Giusti, the total amount of loans a student takes out shouldn’t be more than their prospective first-year salary at an entry-level job. Determining the proper amount of money to take out
For this analysis, we researched the number of degrees given out at graduation and compared them with salary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to Loyola’s Common Data Set, the top 5 degrees for the 2012 graduation were:
1. Business Management and Administrative Services
2. Performing Arts
3. Psychology
4. Social Sciences
5. Mass Communication
With this information, we researched the Bureau of Labor Statistics data of all professions and their hourly wages. For fairness, we assumed that all professionals involved worked 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, then estimated how many hours someone in that field would have to work to pay off $22,713.56.
Business Mgmt — $33.05/hr, $65,007/yr
Social Sciences — $32.44/hr, $68,740/yr (includes Psych)
Performing Arts —$ 26.58/hr, $55,288/yr
Mass Comm–$25.96/hr, 53,998/yr
With these statistics in mind, the average business major would have to work for 678.25 hours, a social sciences major 700, a performing arts major 854.54 hr, and a mass communication major 875 hours to pay off their average debt in student loans. For comparison, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy clocks in at 9 hours, 18 minutes. In the time it takes to completely pay off $22,713.56, a business major could watch all three movies 74 times.
Tennis team has had trouble at the start of the season
New doubles’ pairings are taking a while to break in
Sunday, March 4 was not a good day for Loyola’s tennis team. In the team’s match with Shorter University, both the men’s and women’s teams lost 0-9 in both singles and doubles.
According to coach Zubin Engineer, Shorter’s experience was one reason for Loyola’s loss Sunday. The school, based in Rome, Ga., has one of the top-10 tennis teams in the country, he said. It was also the first time the two universities have ever played each other.
First-year law student Brian Pena, the men’s most senior player, said a team reorganization left him unprepared for the match. Normally, Pena’s partner is men’s captain and chemistry junior Josh Laviolette.
This was the first time he and economics junior Devon Belcher played as doubles partners, so they did not have a lot of time to practice and learn to complement each other’s strengths.
In men’s doubles, history junior Matthew Farnham and Laviolette had the best record, winning three games.
In men’s singles, Pena won two games in the first set and four in the second.
The women’s teams fared the same as the men did, losing to Shorter 0-9.
In women’s doubles, women’s captain and psychology junior Frances Bonnin and biology freshman MeghanDeBaroncelli won one game. In women’s singles, political science sophomore Chelsea Keene won four games in the first set and two games in the second set.
Loyola’s next match is at home against Xavier Univserity. After that, they are scheduled to play two conference matches — one against Spring Hill College and the other against William Carey Univesity.
The two conference matches will be vital for the team as it will try to be in position for a top seed in the SSAC tournament.
A.C. Davis's Works 