Get involved

by Monica Vigil

Extracurriculars are not just for high school. They make the difference between just getting through community college and actually enjoying the experience.

Whether you’re trying to transfer to a four-year university or get an associate’s degree, being involved on campus will make your time at Pierce memorable.

Everyone has something that they’re interested in. Whether it’s theater, music, volleyball, tabletop gaming, political science, comic books, or anything in between, odds are that you can find a way to enjoy your interests with other people on campus.

Joining a club is a great way to meet like-minded people who share the same interests as you. Suddenly, your Biology class on Monday mornings doesn’t seem so hard to go to when you know you’re meeting with your book club later that day.

Being part of something is a great way to meet people and make friends. It’s hard enough to make friends at a community college. There’s a reason they’re called commuter schools. People go to class and then go straight home. This makes it hard to build meaningful relationships with other students.

For the full story vist theroundupnews.com mvigil.roundupnews@gmail.com levels.

College students can have incredibly taxing lives filled with academic, financial and social strains. Having an easy way to reduce stress on campus would be beneficial to Pierce’s students.

According to a research paper published in the Journal of Health Psychology titled “Gardening Promotes Neuroendocrine and Affective Restoration from Stress”, gardening has been proven to relieve acute stress.

Sciencedaily.com reports that there was a correlation between college students’ use of their campus’ green spaces, such as community gardens, and how they

ZOE PARKER Reporter @zparker3594

Proctorio, a software program designed to help instructors proctor online tests, is making the world of online education a much more honest and proactive place.

If you are a student who frequently takes online courses with Pierce, you are most likely going to run into Proctorio sooner rather than later. If that’s something which makes you uncomfortable, maybe online learning isn’t the best option for you.

Using tools such as webcam and desktop monitoring, Proctorio alerts instructors if their students are engaging in academic dishonesty. For example, checking notes and looking up answers would alert professors of the suspicious behavior.

While the main concern regarding Proctorio’s methods has been claims of privacy invasion, students don’t have to take online classes. I know, I know - as a Pierce student myself, I understand that getting into classes can be difficult. You can always crash a class, take it another semester or just pay closer attention to registration dates. There are always options.

In addition, online courses have a syllabus, all of which will be forthcoming about the use of Proctorio. It will never be used against your knowledge perceived the quality of their lives to be. The more frequently they used these green spaces, the more positive they felt their lives were.

And these are only the the benefits associated with tending to the garden. We haven’t even touched on the advantages that come after the food is grown.

Once the garden is flourishing with fruits and vegetables, there are different things the school could do with the produce.

The school could open its garden on a certain day of the week and invite the public to come and buy food for a reasonable price. Students and local families would have access to organic food or by anyone who isn’t a trusted instructor. zparker.roundupnews@gmail.com at a fraction of the cost. This would promote healthy lives and would especially benefit those who normally have to choose between healthy food and saving their money because they are living on a low income.

Your instructor is the only person who would be given access to this footage and it’s not as though there’s a huge underground market for footage of students sitting in front of their computer screens, puzzling over statistics problems.

This whole paranoid notion that Proctorio footage is going to be used for ulterior motives is just a little bit ridiculous. The only thing students should be worried about is whether or not they need to break cheating habits, which brings me to my point about creating an honest AND proactive learning environment.

Students cheat because they want to do well; they may still care about their grades, but are just too lazy to study. And, as a rule, cheating habits are almost always caught and it’s better to break bad habits with a slap on the wrist rather than with a punishment of much greater magnitude. Proctorio will not only help instructors crack down on cheating, but also help students break bad habits.

Proctorio is a great tool that benefits both nosy teachers and paranoid students. That was a joke. But seriously, Proctorio here to stay and students are either going to have to put up with it or find another way to take courses.

Regardless, Proctorio is changing the world of online testtaking and changing it for the better at that.

According to a research paper published in Public Health Nutrition titled “Low income consumers’ attitude and behaviour towards access, availability and motivation to eat fruit and vegetables,” cost and availability are two common obstacles that prevent families from consuming fruits and vegetables. Those are two barriers that could easily be solved through the creation of a

VICTOR RODRIGUEZ Editor-in-Chief @vrodriguez2100

I don’t condone academic dishonesty, but it’s incredibly naive to think you can prevent it. Cheaters will always find a way to cheat; that’s just part of the human condition.

But when institutions of higher learning resort to “Big Brother” tactics, like Proctorio, for the sake of the illusion of security and a feeble attempt to retain their academic reputation, they are essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The beauty of online classes is the flexibility they provide, but there are many system requirements a student has to meet to take an online course that uses the proctoring software. Hardware-wise, you need a fairly new computer that has an optimum webcam resolution and a microphone. This disenfranchises low-income students who cannot afford to fix minor inconveniences, like a broken mic, or who use computer-alternatives, like tablets or mobile phones. If a student has to go out of their way to make sure all these requirements are met, is an online class still as convenient as they advertised? And we haven’t even talked about the extent of access Proctorio asks for! Upon downloading, it asks for the following permissions: to read and change all your data on the websites you visit, modify data you copy and paste, capture content of your screen, manage your downloads, community garden. newsroom.roundupnews@gmail.com manage your apps, extensions, and themes. In some cases, the system can even remotely control your system, essentially locking you out of your own computer. The most invasive part is that these programs can still run in the background, even when not in direct use.

Alternatively, the school could donate the food to its students by partnering with the Students Against Student Hunger (St.A.S.H) club and provide hungry fresh, healthy food with those in need.

It’s obvious that from start to finish, anyone participating in the organic community garden would benefit tremendously. It’s time for Pierce to plant the seeds for its future.

According to the Proctorio website, “The system can flag over 20 different suspicious behaviors, which are fully customizable by the professor. The results are displayed in the gradebook and sorted by suspicion level. Proctorio provides full video evidence for professor review, with only suspicious frames highlighted.” vrodriguez.roundupnews@gmail.com

However, there are some kinks in the system. At times, the software can detect false positives, that pick up completely normal actions, and flag them as suspicious, according to an article from wgu.edu. This forces a student into the philosophical burden of trying to prove a negative, if an instructor wishes to challenge the exam. This type of “you shouldn’t be worried if you have nothing to hide” attitude is not only childish, but inherently paradoxical.

If a cop pulled you over without reason and demanded to search your car, and says if you’re not doing anything wrong you shouldn’t object, would you let them?

At that point it’s not about what is or is not in your car, it’s the principle of the matter, and when you relinquish your rights so easily, it opens the floodgates to a more Orwellian future.

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