Oracle Online

Certificate more than just a minor

Interest in media studies and journalism has been growing steadily at Hamline for some years now, as is evidenced by the call in the Oracle’s last issue for a minor in journalism. We’re delighted that more people are getting serious about journalism, and we want to suggest a few of the reasons why we have chosen to focus on international journalism rather than offering a more generic minor.

The editorial suggests that “While the Certificate in International Journalism (CIJ) is a step in the right direction, it falls short in providing concrete technical skills on how to write with journalistic style.” In fact, training in “concrete technical skills” is a major component of the program. Students accepted into the CIJ take a minimum of six courses, three of which--Fundamentals of Journalism or Special Topics in Journalism, the Internship Seminar, and the Capstone Media Projectčprovide hands-on training and practice in news writing and reporting. But the core of the experiential component of the CIJ is two media internships, one with a Twin Cities print, online, radio, or television news outlet, and the other at a media organization overseas. For examples, check out some of student work posted at www.hamline.edu/world. This is the kind of hands-on experience you will not find in any other journalism program in Minnesota.

But technical skills without a conceptual background are not enough. When the CIJ was created some seven years ago, one of the underlying reasons was a sense that traditional minors (and majors for that matter) in journalism were inadequatečboth in theoretical foundations and practical training. American journalists were poorly prepared to cover a changing world in which even local stories were affected by global forces, where immigration, new communication technologies, and economic globalization were reaching into the lives of ordinary Americans as never before. The events of 9/11 and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq underscored these concerns, and imbued them with an urgency that we could not have foreseen in 1999. In the best tradition of Hamline, we sought to create a multidisciplinary, transnational program that would instill a sense of international awareness. And a key goal was that students gain the necessary practical skills to allow this awareness to inform and deepen their journalistic work.

Students from around the world know this. That is why they compete to come to Hamline for the CIJ. They recognize the value that this program offers. Would we like to do more? Absolutely. We are constantly looking for ways to enhance and extend our offerings, by inviting international scholars to teach and by seeking out new internship opportunities in a wider range of countries: our efforts to establish a connection in China, for example, are just now bearing fruit. Another possibility would be a closer connection between the journalism program and the Oracle, provided it respected the newspaper’s independence. As we grow we hope to be able to offer special courses, access to new production facilities, and other meaningful improvements to our students.

Hamline students are truly fortunate to have the CIJ in their own backyard. No, it is not a minor in journalism as it is traditionally defined; it is significantly more than that.

--Suda Ishida
Van Dusenbery
David Hudson
Terry Wolkerstorfer
Certificate in International
Journalism Faculty

Chronic hate incidents must end

On Tuesday, April 25, an unidentified individual scrawled a small message on the stall door in a men’s second floor bathroom in Drew Hall. April 25 is also Holocaust Remembrance Day and a day that featured an evening showing of “Paragraph 175,” a movie about persecution and genocide during the Holocaust. The movie’s theme was similar to that of a hate meesage left in a bathroom stall in Drew Hall--complete with a Swastika.

Shocking as it may be to learn that such a hateful act could take place at Hamline, what is more shocking to us, and hurtful, is knowing that this is only one in a string of incidents of bigotry.

This year, acts of intolerance have increased on college campuses on a national level, and Hamline is no exception. We cannot control the hatred in the hearts of the ignorant. What we can control, however, is our response as a student body.

As concerned students, we wish to see a united effort to prevent such actions from occurring in the future. Whatever suggestions and actions are prescribed, only a united effort can succeed. This time, only a handful of students were targeted. How far will we let this prejudice grow? At what point does our inability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes stop us from standing up against injustice? Will you remain silent for so long that there is no one left to stand up for you when we are the targets?

Speak out against injustice, even if your voice shakes.

--Katie Stollenwerk,
Spectrum President-Elect
Kyle Foley,
Mischpacha President
Alex Erickson,
HUSC President-Elect

A call for a new interdisciplinary program

The late and lamented Dr. Vine de Loria, Jr. admonished all of us to avoid narrow specialization. He went on to argue that our future will be based on generalists rather than specialists. We are to be Renaissance women and men.

With that beginning, I wish to share what can only be called an agenda with every member of the ACTC community. I take delicious delight in pleading guilty of trying to create a position involving the development of interdisciplinary curricula covering the waterfront from ecology to international relations. I am announcing my candidacy for such a position and thanking all of you in advance for your support and assistance in this effort.

Our universities and colleges are becoming more corporate, rigid and layered with bureaucracy. It is clear that “something’s gotta give,” as an old song reminds us. This is about the future of higher learning in this country and in this world. Our precious young people may be black belts in their area of specialization by the time they graduate, but we are a society in abject and expediential retreat from historic amnesia to ecological illiteracy. It is the role and the obligation of the ACTC schools and all the rest to aggressively reverse this sad process.

I am proposing the establishment in all five ACTC schools of an interdisciplinary program which will result in every student being ecologically, indigenously, internationally feminist and historically literate to the maximum. The schools should also pool their resources to create a broadcasting service in order to deepen and expand the educational effort in the community.

We give a lot of lip service to the concept of liberal arts and most of us have read Bishop John Henry Newman’s blue print for universities from the nineteenth century. What I am calling for is nothing short of the need to reinvent our institutions of higher learning. There will never be a good time to do anything. We will invariably be told that there are budget issues or that what I am calling for is already happening at some level.

But in a recent conversation with a couple of students at one of the member schools, I was sadly and sharply reminded that among other problems, way too many of us are indigenously illiterate. I was attempting to articulate the central importance of the role of native people in creating our democracy. The voices of my student listeners intoned absolute disconnectiveness from the subject. I’m sure both of them consider themselves the be very hip and progressive, good feminists and the like, but the indigenous imperative was no where to be found in their reality. This must change, and it will.

In these next weeks, it is my hope that it will be possible to sit down with all five Human Resources directors in order to discuss the development and implementation of this interdisciplinary project. We are insisting that if, for example, you’re a business major, you will be more than a little conversant with women’s history, labor history, ecology, native history and culture, international relations, the history of people of color, and all the gender identities and whatever else is on the table.

--Ray Tricomo
Educator, Founder and Director of Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity