School Budget Cuts
In Other Words wants to hear how budget cuts are affecting your school. Leave us a comment or send us your pictures and videos.
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In Other Words is part of the Digital Natives project, a CPB funded partnership between Youth Radio and KQED Public Media.
Teens Talk About Their Health
Last night’s Health Dialogues focused on teen health. The on-air pieces included a round table discussion with students from Burton High School in San Francisco, a look at an anti-bullying program in Lake County, and a visit to a group in Fresno that focuses on healthy decision making. Personally, I’m thrilled to see a show about teenagers that actually included teens themselves. And you can be part of the conversation too. Visit the Health Dialogues site, listen to what other teens had to say, and then tell us what you have to say. Come on. You know you want a chance to vent.
Waiting for the Thick Envelope: Part Two
The California Report continued their look at the current admissions squeeze at the University of California. Today’s story features a senior at Miramonte High School in Orinda, who had this to say about applying to colleges: “I don’t know what else they want me to be. I’m trying my best.”
The series will also air as part of Health Dialogue’s Coming of Age: Teen Health episode, which airs tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. The Health Dialogues website will feature an online discussion about the stress of college admissions– so tune in, logon, and tell us what’s hard about waiting.
Waiting for the Thick Envelope
The California Report aired the first in its two-part series looking at high school seniors waiting to hear whether or not they were accepted into the University of California system. The system received a record number of applications this year despite a tuition increase of about 30% and cutting the number of spots available in the incoming class. Officials say cutting those spots will make maintaining diversity at UC even harder.
The Art of Sign Spinning
By David Cruz
Sign spinning, the job of holding a sign two feet by six on a street corner for hours at a time, has developed into a display of dance and wit. A display that, luckily for advertisers, is hard to ignore. There’s even a national competition where spinners are judged on technique, style and execution. The California Report caught up with a local advertising company at a spin-off to decide which of its sign spinners would move on to the national event.
Watch a video of the competition and listen to the audio report below:
Word of the Week: Marriage and Proposition 8
By Emmanuel Hapsis and Amanda Stupi
In Other Words is back with another Word of the Week–the series that explains the news behind the buzz.
This week we decided to give you the basics of the Proposition 8 trial.
To follow KQED’s ongoing coverage of the trial, visit:
The California Report’s special coverage of Same-Sex Marriage in California
Scott Shafer’s Proposition 8 Trial blog
NPR’s State by State: The Legal Battle Over Same-Sex Marriage map
Proposition 8 in Federal Court
By Emmanuel Hapsis
The gay marriage debate in California is back in the spotlight. After the passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008, which revoked the right granted by the California Supreme Court in June 2008 for same-sex couples to legally marry, civil rights activists vowed to bring the issue back to the courts and they’ve made good on their promise. Today marks the beginning of Perry v. Schwarzenegger and the first time a federal court has ever debated same-sex marriage. Here’s what you need to know:
Many expect Perry v. Schwarzenegger to be a landmark case that will ultimately end up at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. Some gay rights activists, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), tried to prevent the lawsuit because they believe that taking the issue to federal courts, specifically what many view as a right-leaning Supreme Court, is too risky.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson and trial lawyer David Boies, a Republican and Democrat respectively, are set to represent the same-sex couples who have been denied the right to marry. What’s interesting about their collaboration is that, in 2000, they were on opposing sides of Bush v. Gore, the highly-controversial court case that resolved the 2000 presidential election in George Bush’s favor. The two high-profile lawyers plan to make the case that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution by denying the equal protection promised in the Fourteenth Amendment.
The defendants include a number of religious and conservative groups led by Charles Cooper, a lawyer who worked for the Justice Department under former President Ronald Reagan. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown are also listed as defendants, although both refuse to defend Prop 8 in court. Schwarzenegger has refused to officially pick a side on the issue, while Brown shares the Olson-Boies team’s belief that gays have the constitutional right to marriage.
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Planning for College Amidst a Crisis
By Jessica Lipsky
“If you’re a high school student at Mission right now, the possibility of going to college is going away. You’re not going to City College, you’re not going to a UC, anywhere,” Andy Lipson yells among a throng of protesters in front of San Francisco’s City College. The Mission High School teacher’s veins bulge in his skinny neck as he screams infuriating truths into a megaphone. “The little bit of hope [our students] had about advancing in this…country has been extinguished!”
The college-age crowd roars, waving signs with mildly clever phrases urging action to end budget cuts and fee increases. “Don’t let us down,” shouts a curly-haired co-ed, her voice several octaves higher than the low roar of her protesting peers.
But many students are being let down. The University of California Regents recently approved a 32 percent fee hike and the California State University system plans to slash enrollment by more than 40,000 students for the fall 2010 semester, the same semester that has seen applications increase by 32 percent from last year. The resulting crunch has high school seniors more anxious and competitive than ever, with many considering alternatives to the traditional four-year state school path.
For Evan McCann, a Berkeley High School senior whose top schools are UC Berkley and San Francisco State, the budget cuts represent a swift kick in the pants and the potential destruction of his collegiate plans. On the Thursday of the UC Regents’ decision, Evan walks into the pizza shop where he works with slumped shoulders and sorrowful black eyes. The restaurant only has a few customers and with nothing to do, Evan skulks about the restaurant, shuffling his feet between the pizza delivery and dishwashing stations.
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Another Look at San Francisco Panorama
By Linnaea Weld
When I think of preservation of the news media in written form, 300 plus gigantic pages of stories which seem (from what I have read so far) to be mainly in first person, is not the first thing that comes to mind. But never the less, San Francisco Panorama still appeals to this teenager who wakes up every morning and reads the paper.
The overall artsy style of San Francisco Panorama appealed to me. Articles about independent radio stations, two art sections, and handwritten reviews with foreign guitarists are all things that swayed me to pay sixteen dollars for a pound of paper. Other than the prominence of first person writing, the few problems I found were that some articles were simply too long, and after a week, I am still having trouble navigating my way through the paper. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there is an article about how to make the perfect bowl of ramen, but so far the most interesting thing I’ve found is a story about someone’s personal witch, Dori Midnight.
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Students Fight For Human Rights at COP15
By Molly Samuel
While hundreds of protesters were arrested in Copenhagen last weekend, thousands of other people representing countries, research institutions, businesses, and non-government organizations (NGOs) went on talking and negotiating at the
United Nations climate conference. Delegates to the fifteenth Conference of Parties, or COP15 (it’s not an abbreviation for Copenhagen even though it looks like it could be) are trying to work out an international agreement on reducing and adapting to climate change. Balance is tough to find: many nations have not been able to meet the goals they signed on for with the Kyoto Protocol, which was the previous treaty signed in 1997.
So the negotiators are inside negotiating and the protesters are outside protesting, and there’s a lot of room in between for everyone else to get together and talk about tech innovations, new scientific findings, human rights, animal life, and just about anything else you can imagine. There are side events, kiosks, tents, panels, discussions, debates, and press conferences. And in the midst of Nobel laureates and seasoned professionals, there are young people presenting their views and their research.
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A Youth Take on San Francisco Panorama
By Eric Gneckow
If you have ever tried to fit your Volkswagen into the refrigerator, then you know what it is like to carry home a copy of San Francisco Panorama. Many newborns weigh less than this newspaper, and finding a space for it in my backpack made me want to trade my journalism degree for an engineering one.
In fact, the act of portaging a newspaper has become decreasingly common for me since graduating this May. Amid the disordered and time-consuming lifestyle change from scholastic newsman to 23-year-old retail stooge, I visit my bank’s website more frequently than I peruse SF Gate.
Yet here was this nuclear bomb of a thing, San Francisco Panorama, the latest edition of Dave Eggers’ quarterly journal McSweeney’s. . . with two magazines spilling out of it and a wingspan to match its epic heaviness. But my awe quickly resolved into an urge to protect it. I would soon learn about its massive mix of graphics, investigative features and subtle humor, but right now I only knew that it was something very special. Only on the safe real estate of my living room floor would it again see the light of day.
What I uncovered after peeling back the first enormous page was a love story for knowledge and a call to arms for those who want to know. San Francisco Panorama is a celebration of news that plays out like a choose-your-own adventure, each path rich with the merits of print. It is the punch line to a long joke that reveals the reality of our modern media landscape: that podcasts, Twitter and YouTube are, as far as most news is concerned, profoundly annoying. Long live print.
“This,” I thought before pausing at a two-page color spread depicting the electromagnetic interactions of the Earth and Sun, “is the dangerous, heroic thing that can move a nation. This. . . is news!”
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