Students discuss fears, excitement for Study Abroad experience

by Mina Corpuz and Sarah Kirkpatrick

With more than 1,150 Boston University students set to depart for Study Abroad programs in early January, several students expressed excitement for the opportunity to learn in and explore different parts of the world.

In fact, one was so excited for the shot at studying abroad that she only applied for a single program.

“In hindsight, it felt a little reckless [applying to one program], but I knew I just really wanted to go to Israel,” said Katelyn Pilley, a junior in BU’s College of Communication and College of Arts and Sciences, double majoring in advertising and history. She will study at the University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel in the spring. 

“I’m just really excited to experience a bunch of things first hand,” she continued. “I’ve been studying Israel for two years now and I’ve never been there, so I’m excited to have concrete experiences to add to my education. I really feel like my education isn’t complete without it. I’m excited to hear first hand what it’s like to live there and the environment. Also, to explore, listen and try to learn as much possible and just come out with a better view on things because it is such a chaotic environment.”

Mike DeSocio, a junior in COM studying photojournalism and minoring in visual arts in BU’s College of Fine Arts, will participate in a studio arts program in Venice, Italy. He shared a similar passion to Pilley for the educational opportunities the abroad program will provide.

“I look forward to being able to speak the language in a more casual environment,” DeSocio said. Although a lot of my family is Italian, I don’t really speak it to them, so it will be nice to actually start speaking it outside of the classroom. I’m excited to get back into design courses because it’s been about a year and it’s going to be nice to spend a whole semester immersed in that.”

BU offers programs in more than 30 nations; however, some students choose to stay closer to home, for domestic internship programs in Los Angeles or Washington. Julia Metjian, a junior studying journalism in COM, will stay in the United States and participate in the internship program in Washington during the spring semester.

“The original thing that attracted me to the D.C. program was really how concentrated it is, so of course there are many things you can do in the city, but mainly what I was interested in was politics and reporting,” Metjian said. “I thought that that would be a great place to go and explore those two opportunities and to combine them.”

Among some BU students, simply being accepted to the study abroad program is a rite of passage in itself. It's almost become a joke among BU students that once you're accepted to a program, it's required to post the acceptance email on social media: 

Attendance at BU sporting events: Why don't fans come to games, and how is BU Athletics trying to change that?

The Boston University men's hockey team reigns supreme for attendance among all of BU's athletic teams — but Agganis Arena still rarely fills up for home games. Agganis, with a capacity of 6,300 for hockey games, isn't nearly among the largest rinks in college hockey, but BU still only ranks seventh of 12 Hockey East schools in regards to attendance this season.

To begin the 2015-16 season, BU has filled to 72.7 percent capacity with an average of 4,580 fans at every home game. That percentage is down so far from last year's 75.98 percent.

But, as for other sports, the numbers are even smaller.

This season, BU Athletics ended a two-year experiment of hosting in-conference men's basketball games at Agganis, which can hold up to 7,200 fans for basketball. In 2013-14, Agganis filled to just 12.47 percent capacity for basketball games, and that number dropped to 8.32 percent in 2014-15.

In fact, BU men's basketball has reached more than 50 percent capacity just twice over the past three seasons. The 2015-16 season opener drew 1,256 fans to the 1,800-seat Case Gymnasium for a game between BU and Northeastern University. The only other time Case Gym has seen nearly that many people in the past three years was for a game against Harvard on Dec. 7, 2013, which drew 1,233 fans.

"I think especially if we continue to have games in Case, it helps us because it's more intimate, more of your high-energy basketball venue," said Dan Mercurio, director of marketing and strategic planning for BU Athletics. "Agganis is a fantastic facility, but it's huge ... and it's not realistic in the Northeast. You don't even see [Boston College], who's in the ACC, one of the top conferences in the country, drawing big for their men's basketball team right now."

The women's hockey team, despite four consecutive conference titles and six straight NCAA Tournament appearances, hosts small crowds as well. At Walter Brown Arena, which seats 3,806, BU has averaged just 283 fans a game in 11 home contests in 2015. During the 2014-15 season, an average of just 268 BU fans came to games.

So why the discrepancy? It's due partially to the tradition of men's hockey on campus.

"Hockey's always going to be the king," Mercurio said. "But I think a reason for that is tradition. They've been national champions ... whereas a good year for men's basketball would be getting to the NCAA Tournament. I think we're quite a ways away from being a Top 25 team in the country. It's a different caliber program.

"Men's hockey, they're consistently a Top 10-caliber team, and that has to do with the tradition that's been built here since Jack Parker first got here. So we're talking 40, 50 years ago that they became an elite program. ... [men's basketball] will always be playing second fiddle, but that's okay. We need a marquee program."

 

NewsTrack: Interactivity on Slate

I think it would be a bit of an exaggeration to say that interactivity is a focus of Slate, but it does feature some interactive elements. For the most part, Slate's stories feature a basic text/picture format with a few links thrown in, and sometimes some videos. I couldn't think of any examples of interactivity off the top of my head besides the weekly news quiz — which I use to help prepare for our in-class news quiz! — which offers multiple choices and also shows you how you compare to the scores of different Slate writers and other readers. Some of the questions are obscure, but for someone who reads Slate regularly, they shouldn't be too difficult to answer. It's a good way to accumulate all of the news of the week but also to pique readers' interest for stories they might not have seen on the site previously and encourage them to seek out those stories. Upon further digging/searching, Slate has created some interactive and animated features, including this graphic showing a map of the slave trade. It's not particularly interactive in terms of readers actually being able to click and move things, but it adds an interesting element nonetheless. More recently, Slate also annotated one of Herman Melville's texts, and allowed readers to choose which tags and annotations they were most interested in and it filtered those annotations for them. While Melville isn't exactly my cup of tea, I think it's an interesting concept that allows readers to consume the information most interesting to them more quickly. It's something that I think could be used for more longform articles, in terms of highlighting the most important people or concepts in a story. It's basically a more advanced form of command-F, which is pretty cool. I'd definitely like to see it used on more sites. Andrew Kahn creates many interactive graphics for Slate, and they're shown on his author page. It appears as if Slate is making a shift to using as many interactives for its political coverage as possible, including weekly Twitter "power rankings" to see which candidates are receiving the most social media traffic. It's an interesting idea and it's something unique to Slate — it's useful to have that visual and interactive representation of just how popular political candidates are, and to see the most absurd things these people are tweeting.

Boston University students mourn, increase awareness following attacks in Paris

by Sarah Kirkpatrick and Mina Corpuz


After the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 129 and injured more than 300, Boston University students, faculty and administrators showed solidarity for the immediate BU community and all impacted by the tragedy.

BU Today reported that all BU students known to be in Paris are safe, and while evaluation of security is ongoing, there are no plans to end the study abroad program in Paris early.

According to BU Today, the University knows of 15 students in the Paris study abroad program, in addition to four law students and 11 students visiting Paris at the time from other study abroad programs in Europe.

BU President Robert A. Brown released a statement on Saturday regarding the attacks:

“Boston University staff have been hard at work reaching out to, and accounting for, all those members of our community in Paris or likely to have been in Paris ... We are also reaching out to those on our campus who because of personal ties to France may in some way be affected. We are deeply saddened that once again terror has claimed innocent lives and reminded us that hate and violence are abiding realities. Our thoughts and prayers are with the citizens of Paris and France.”

Study Abroad executive director Gareth McFeely sent a letter to BU students in the Paris program and their parents, via BU Today:

“BU staff based both in Paris and in Boston are monitoring the news closely ... We would like to assure you and your student that we have extensive emergency and communication plans in place. We anticipate significant delays and interruptions in local transportation, as well as an increased police and military presence, and searches at certain locations in the coming hours and days.”

Members of the BU community reached out to express their sympathy. BU students held a vigil on Marsh Plaza on Saturday to honor the people affected not only in Paris, but also in recent terrorist attacks in Beirut and Baghdad.

The Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center at BU held open office hours Monday morning to counsel students, and Marsh Chapel will have counselors and chaplains available for support Monday evening.

Some BU professors will additionally use the attacks as a learning opportunity. The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at BU will host a town hall meeting at 5 p.m. Monday to discuss the attacks.

Video assignment: How to Make the Perfect Turkey Skin

NewsTrack blog: Slate's use of video reporting

As a whole, Slate uses some video reporting, but not as much as it possibly could be. The first example that jumps to mind is the Dear Prudence column, which includes a weekly video of Emily Yoffe answering a particularly interesting or controversial question.

 In terms of the mobile social videos that we discussed in class, I haven't seen too many of them despite liking Slate's Facebook page. They have a few playlists, and one in particular I recently remember seeing is one of the site's editors explaining how to cut a butternut squash. I found this video particularly helpful, mostly because I love butternut squash and always find it a pain to cut. But the advantage to videos like this is that they're consistently helpful for years to come — every fall, squash comes back into style and Slate can roll out that video and get a lot of views on it.

 I know Slate has a lot of other video features, including "Ask a Homo" and "The Shortcut." In general, Slate approaches video more as viral, feature-like and advice-giving content rather than in a news sense. But I would say that speaks to Slate's site and mission as a whole — it's centered less around hard news and more as a magazine, opinion and analysis-type site.

Photo Slideshow: CGSA turns 7

On Oct. 23, Boston University's Center for Gender, Sexuality and Activism celebrated its seventh year of operation.

NewsTrack blog: Slate's photo reporting

As far as I can tell, Slate doesn't make much use of photos for its reporting, especially in terms of original photography. For their regular content, they tend to use Getty Images and Flickr/Creative Commons. This is understandable, given that a lot of photo staffs are getting laid off from major publications (Example 1, Example 2), and Slate is relatively small. It doesn't particularly rely on visuals to tell its stories; rather, it focuses more on strong prose and analysis to distinguish it from other sites.

Slate does, however, have a blog specifically dedicated to photography, called Behold. But it's more of a blog that features photo projects from other photographers not affiliated with Slate itself. That makes some sense given that Slate is technically more of a magazine and not a newspaper, so it makes sense that its content would be more feature-like.

On this blog, instead of using a slideshow format, Slate just places all of the photos in a single post, so you scroll down the page to view all of the photos. I'm not sure how I feel about this format — it's personally easier for me, as I prefer scrolling to clicking, but I know that in some content management systems you can have slideshows bring more page views, which in turn boosts advertising revenue. Maybe Slate's platform doesn't use that.

In-Class Assignment: Slideshow

Infographic: Brain damage in football players

City of Boston officials address overcrowding in student housing

by Sarah Kirkpatrick and Mina Corpuz

Boston City Council met Thursday to address proposed city ordinances that prevent more than four undergraduate students from living in a single apartment.

NewsTrack: Analyzing "Richard Dawkins on social media" from Slate

This piece on Richard Dawkins caught my eye this week because I figured it would be a good piece that incorporates social media with analytical writing. I anticipated embedded tweets, responses to his tweets, and the like — but none of that appeared.

My initial reaction was that maybe it's the site's style policy to avoid embedding tweets, but I've certainly seen pieces on Slate before with embedded tweets, such as this analysis a few weeks ago of people's tendency to tweet in memory of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

So why did they not include the tweets directly embedded in the story, as opposed to linking them? I think the piece could have been much more efficient that way. Slate doesn't get any advertising money (as far as I'm aware) by linking back to Twitter, and I'd be surprised if people actually want to click on tweets to see the full context of them. I think it complicates the piece by forcing readers to physically exert effort into looking at the tweets referenced.

I think it could have also made the piece less dry to read if it had the physical boxes of embedded tweets breaking up the story. The piece isn't overly long as a whole, but some of the paragraphs are a bit long, so it would be nice if it was broken up a bit.

Also, I think it would be nice to have the visual context of the numbers of retweets and favorites Dawkins' tweets were getting, just for the sake of adding another dimension as to how popular these (arguably outrageous) tweets are.

NewsTrack: Slate's 'Dear Prudence' column, what works, what doesn't

One of my personal favorite aspects of Slate — which happens to be my favorite online publication — is the "Dear Prudence" column written by Emily Yoffe. It's a spin on the traditional "Dear Abby" advice column in that it's more of a contemporary, high-tech, PG-13 spin on proper courtesy.

It can touch on modern, current events: What do you do if your name is Hillary and people automatically associate you with Hillary Clinton? In that same column, should you allow your child to attend a party with an unvaccinated child? What is proper etiquette for Uber ratings? What happens if you found your husband in the hacked Ashley Madison database?

But her advice is very much evergreen content. When Yoffe is on vacation, Slate likes to recycle old columns and almost "highlights" of her best advice. Recently, they created a "greatest hits" of her wedding-related advice and vacation-related advice. This is a good way to continue to draw in page views (and advertising money) despite not having any new content.

Prudie's column, much like any other advice column, relies on user-generated questions. It's quite an interactive, accessible model — every week, Yoffe hosts a live chat where users can submit questions about anything for her to use in her column that week. It doesn't require quite the effort that a traditional advice column format does.

Occasionally Yoffe will post videos of her giving advice instead of giving written advice, to give some variation in the way people can consume her content.

The column, in all, is a pretty straightforward format that has been modernized to make it younger and more user-friendly.

New construction detracts from COM building, students say

The new Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering at Boston University promises to "bring together life scientists, engineers, and physicians from the Medical and Charles River Campuses" by spring of 2017, but some College of Communication students said they view the project as an "eyesore" and inconvenience.

The new nine-story, 170,000-square-foot project — costing $150 million — will "include neuroscience research (animal & human subjects), systems/synthetic biology research, a satellite vivarium, and a cognitive neuroimaging center," according to the release on BU's website.

The structure, which started undergoing construction in May at 610 Commonwealth Ave., is being built on top of a parking lot next to Morse Auditorium. But construction has expanded into parts of the lawn in front of the COM, and has cut off a main sidewalk entrance to the building, including the entryway to the main stairwell in COM.




Some COM students expressed displeasure with the prominent construction and lack of accessibility, particularly the removal of parts of the "COM Lawn," where students of all schools at BU relax or work when there is nice weather.

"I miss the little park-like thing, the benches, and the tree they took down," said Isis Evens, a second-year advertising graduate student in COM, who also completed her undergraduate degree at BU.

"I think it's a bit of eyesore, because during construction, they have those faux-buildings, and it kind of looks tacky," she added.

Blue window coverings on COM classroom and office windows. (Photo by Sarah Kirkpatrick)

One student said the construction takes away from the visibility of BU's COM program.

"It kind of looks like they're putting down COM a bit, just because they're building something right in front of it," said Dan Behar, a senior studying film and television in COM.

Construction of the new building expands partially in front of the sign on the College of Communication building. (Photo by Sarah Kirkpatrick)

Behar said he enters and exits COM approximately three or four times a day, and frequently relaxes on the COM lawn.

"I just don't like it because it took away so much of the green space that I sit on," he said. "My favorite bench was over there. They took away my favorite bench. It makes it look not as nice. They're gonna block this entire entryway. "

The location of Behar's favorite bench on the COM lawn is now blocked by construction. (Photo by Sarah Kirkpatrick)

However, one student not in COM expressed pleasure with the project. Katherine Ilia, a freshman studying biomedical engineering, said the construction shows promise.

"I like it because there's something new coming," Ilia said. "We pay a lot of money for tuition, and it's getting put to good use. It's something that I'll be able to use, or in the future someone else will be able to use. Because that's what science is about. I contribute something, and then someone else gets to contribute something else."