10/27/2011

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Are you MAN enough?

The

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Study Abroad: Exploring Prague’s history

Husky Soccer’s final game this Friday

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Michigan Tech Lode

October 27, 2011

Serving the Michigan Tech Community Since 1921

STC Student Chapter gets national recognition KRYSTEN COOPER Lode Writer The Scientific and Technical Communication (STC) student chapter at Michigan Tech has become a powerful student force. As a result of this, they have turned the scientific and technical communications major from obscure, to recognized across campus. This recognition, however, reaches much farther than Houghton. The Society for Technical Communication (STC), the national organization the student chapter is under, is considering Tech’s student chapter to host a webinar for other student chapters across the country to watch and learn how to become a successful group. In addition, Liz Pohland, the editor of the STC journal intercom, wants some of the advisors of the STC program here to write an article for the publication about what the student chapter is doing. That being said, what is the student chapter at Tech doing to earn this recognition? Our student chapter sponsored Eric Johnson on his journey to becoming homecoming king. In addition, they are in charge of scheduling STC speaker series presentations where professionals in the STC field come to the university and speak to students about what they do. The chapter also runs the “I am STC” campaign, which uses

posters to spread recognition for the major across campus. They also have a member of the organization sit on the STC steering committee, which decides important things for the major, such as curriculum and class content. Throughout the year they hold fundraising activities. The student chapter allows its members to travel as well. The STC Summit, a conference held in various locations across the U.S., is where the Society for Technical Communication presents what is new in the field. This conference not only keeps current STC students well informed, but it also provides them with an opportunity to network and find jobs. After attending the conference, they make a video documentary where those who attended talk about what they learned to inform those who did not attend. Jess Banda, former president of the STC student chapter said that when she joined in 2009, there were only three members. At that point, the chapter had to change the way they were doing things or dissolve. Banda became president later that year and helped re-structure the organization. Since then it has grown to new heights, as there are now 20 regular members. The current president of the chapter, Maggie Day, said “The chapter has grown leaps and bounds in the past few years….

Photo courtesy of STC Student Chapter

This semester we have increased attendance almost threefold! It’s great to see our small major get together and put on some great

events. We’ve had…STC majors win Homecoming the past two years, and we always say STC majors will take over the world. I’m

looking forward to the STC Summit this year and hope it will help me find a job I love!”

“Occupy Wall Street” protest grows in size JESSICA KENNEDY Lode Writer What started as a small group of disenchanted young protesters occupying a city park near the nation’s financial center in New York City, has rapidly spread to more than seventy major cities

in the US apparently becoming effectively linked with ongoing protests against many features of the existing social order in several nations around the world and a host of “Occupy-type” protests springing up in foreign capitols. The inspiration for the Wall Street protest is claimed to come from a group called the Adbusters

Media Foundation. On their website, Adbusters’ stated purpose is to, “topple existing power structures and force a major shift in the way we live in the 21st century.” In mid-2011, Adbusters proposed to its 120,000 readers a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest what it saw as the excessive influence of corpo-

rations in governmental affairs, a growing divide between rich and poor, and the failure of the judicial system to assign guilt to countless acts of financial chicanery of bankers and leaders of public lending agencies involved in the near collapse of the US financial system in 2008. Television and print news agencies have struggled to succinctly characterize the demands of the protesters put off by the fact that there are, apparently, no officially-designated spokespersons for the protesters. It was reported on Salon.com, that the desirability of drafting of a list of focused demands is being debated through various online discussion forums. One particular Saturday during the protests, nearly 100 people were arrested while policemen bombarded Wall Street and pepper-sprayed several women who were thrown to the ground, jumped on demonstrators, injured several men, and handcuffed protestors who stood on the sides and acted in non-violent ways. The actions of these New York policemen as well as the incident itself also did not receive any media coverage by the Mass Media’s major news Photo courtesy of David Shankbone via Wikipedia corporations or newspapers.

So what’s driving the protests? In a Washington Post piece, Adbusters’ Kalle Lasn suggested that many young people in America see only a dismal future. Lasn said, “They look at the future and see just one big black hole. They look at a world with climate change that will be much hotter when they get older, at a political crisis and corruption in Washington, at the American democracy not working any more at a time when America is in decline, and at a financial crisis in which the Dow Jones could plummet tomorrow. If we don’t stand up and fight for a different kind of future, they realize, we won’t get one.” So is there likely to be an “Occupy Houghton/Hancock” in our future? Residents of nearby Marquette, woke on Saturday, October 14th to discover that a group identifying itself as “Occupy the UP” would march through downtown Marquette and later distribute literature in front of the post office. What will come of the “Occupy” protests remains to be seen. Despite the Mass Media’s neglected efforts to broadcast about the protests, the people of “Occupy Wall Street” have gotten a great deal of attention, which is already quite evident.

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