A group of students and faculty members gathered on Monday (location: Lower Quad) to discuss their motivations to end white supremacy at Wake Forest University. I was going to use the localization of the New Zealand attack that was carried out (or any thing related because there is  A LOT) and relate it to this movement on campus (and in America)  that has been growing and leading to the need for intense coversations.

I remember my friend saying that there was a student who held a sign at the talk that read “Tradition is the answer” and wore a make-americas-great-again hat He was also mentioned in an article (un-identified though).

I believe parallels can be drawn between the increase in polarization that leads to many  injustices (terrorist acts, admission privilege, and a president who embodies getting away with anti-racist remarks) and the way these students/faculty of color feel about the polarization on campus that keeps building up tensions.

With presidential  elections coming up and this movement on campus that aims to eradicate white supremacy I feel like a lot can be said about the mentality shift that we’re seeing ever day in the news.

I read the Winston Salem Journal covering this talk as well as the Old Gold and Black and it’s interesting the different perspectives brought forth. I also am planning on interviewing some of the sources mentioned as well as members of this group (students and faculty) to see why exactly they feel so divided in a university that claims to promote diversity and inclusion.

For story 3 I was thinking of two possible stories:

one would be learning more about Wake’s efforts to promote a plant-rich diet and reduce meat consumption. Personally, I feel as if I had never really noticed that the vegan station and meatless alternatives were an action taken to promote less meat consumption. I just thought of it as a dietary preference like getting rid of peanut butter at the pit. Therefore, I feel like perhaps advertising the benefits of this plant rich diet could probably help make many students more aware of their decisions when pitting or eating in general.

A second idea was how  Wake Forest reduces plastic use on campus and how it could reduce plastic use even more by using silicon/pasta straws instead of paper that gets soggy which people really complain about. In addition, I know the Starbucks off-campus now has the lids that are straw-less so maybe investigate that action coming to campus. Maybe also looking into the having re-usable bags instead of plastic at the pod. 

Sources: Jessica Wallace, Kathleen Hurley, Campus Garden, Jim Ross, Student Environmental Action Coalition, Beth Fey, Deacon Dining Connection

+ Saw this page on faculty members pledging to reduce use of plastic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sustainablewfu/sets/72157702808978254

My idea is to focus on Bernie Sanders second run for presidency from an economic perspective. When he announced he was running he managed to raise 6 million dollars already which means a lot of people must still view him as a potential president-to-be. I remember all the economic debates that went on last year about how his views were very “idealistic” and just wouldn’t flow in the world we live in today. He’s a democratic socialist which means he probably can’t get any “blue-er” in terms of what policies he wants to implement. One of his biggest claims is that he wants to try to reverse “economic inequality” which is VERY hard to do since wealth/income distribution is rooted in a lot of historically-constructed caste systems. I think this topic is also interesting to study since wealth taxes have been a common debate in recent economic news and I wonder how people would feel about Sanders now after Trump has been in the White House.  

My potential sources: Economics Professors (especially one’s with political interest), Economics-major students who I can find in my classes, College Democrats group on campus, I also looked up “Faculty Experts on 2016 Election” and found Professor Sandeep Mazumder who’s also listed as an expert in economics and more specifically monetary policy. He also has a media appearance in a NYT article on a topic regarding inflation.  

Neil Irwin really gets technical with his economic analysis of what’s going on in the news. I’ve realized that he does not post as frequently as other writers, but that he posts much lengthier articles. What I really like about his writing is that he uses bolded titles for every new section in order to help the reader understand what he’s discussing in a more straightforward manner. He also is very creative with the titles and they usually are very fun and creative like “The Clinton Surpluses to Bush Deficits” which I thought was a fun pun to utilize in order to spice up the economic jargon. The bolded titles also help me see where this article is headed and notice the beginning, middle, and end more clearly. I also noticed that he uses a lot of rhetorical questions within his writing in order to make his point clearer to the readers. It’s also funny because it’s easy to locate the nutgraf when he asks questions like “so why should we care?” Sometimes they would even be questions I had while reading that he later poses and answers. This Q and A format really helps keep me attentive since he doesn’t get just too deep into one answer, but still manages to get his points across. His use of playing devil’s advocate in his articles seems to strengthen his credibility since it eliminates any sense of bias he had. In addition, it allows me to see that he has done a lot of research from different perspectives in order to end up with the final product and that reminds me of the “show don’t tell” where his effort speaks for itself. He also makes the reading relatable when it gets too “heavy” by adding some fun metaphors. For example, in his article about deficits he uses a metaphor to compare Mrs. Warren’s wealth tax proposal to how Democrats and Republicans act like divorced parents that share custody, Republican being the parent that spoils, while Democrats are the parent that cares about being healthy. This use of the metaphor helps put things in perspective more sharply and allows his audience scope to expand since he uses common situations to compare to economic movements/proposals. He’s an interesting writer and makes economics, to many a dull subject, more relatable!  

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/upshot/how-america-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-deficits-and-debt.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fneil-irwin&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection 

I will be covering the event “A talk with Dean Franco on his upcoming book The Border and the Line: Race, Literature, and Los Angeles.” Dean Franco, is a former professor of mine, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot about his style of writing and how, as is stated, he uses space to negotiate all those racial barriers that can be present implicitly within society. Furthermore, being an international student myself, I feel like I would have more experience asking questions that can capture the audience’s own feelings regarding racial identity on campus. This will probably be a fantastic way for me to relate to the community and learn about the different ways people encounter racial barriers in everyday student life.   

Neil Irwin Is a senior Economics correspondent who analyzes economics, politics, etc. on The Upshot, which is a New York Times site dedicated to such analyses. He wrote a book entitled The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire where he studied the effects of the global financial crisis on the World’s Central Bank efforts of combatting it.

Since I am an Economics major with a specific blooming interest in the study of Behavioral Economics, I thought this could be a great opportunity to learn more about the different economic effects that can change the way we live our every day lives. For example, in the article Irwin recently published on January 17th entitled Climate Change’s Giant Impact on the Economy: 4 Key Issues, he discusses in intricate detail how taxing carbon emissions and altering the way we spend our money we can start helping the environment in a more counter-productive way. I like his approach of using historical data in order to make inferences about the future. I also admire that he stepped out of Wall Street to write about something most economists wouldn’t consider… Global warming! which is a topic of heated discussion these days as we watch temperatures drop tremendously around the U.S. By bringing ideas such as “social cost” into writing, Irwin seems to bring forth a level of humanity to economics, a humanity that I could enjoy relating to and learning from. 

2 Stories:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/upshot/how-to-think-about-the-costs-of-climate-change.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fneil-irwin&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/upshot/world-economy-low-growth-low-interest-deflation.html