More Money Less Education

The start of the fall semester comes hard for the students of CSUN. Through out the summer the students have been receiving email updating us about the budget crises and the schools reaction to including the raise of fees. During the month of July students got a email informing them about the increase of tuition. Once you take all the increases of tuition the students of CSUN had to pay a additional of 30% since last spring semester. I remember last spring I paid around 1900.00 for over 6 units as a undergrad, this semester I had to pay $2400.00 for over 6 units as a undergrad. Looking at the increase I'm looking at how am I going to buy books?

However the tuition is not the only thing students had to deal with at the beginning. Another problem was the lack of classes and trying to add into a class. Usually if a professor has the seats they will add the students. However that was not the case this semester, professors could only add students if they had the openings in the computer. This lead to many students trying to fight for sports, crash number of classes, and hope that others would drop just so they could add the classes they needed. This was a big problem that I see growing for the next semester if things do not change, with the school having less classes for all the students. How do they expect us to graduate if we cant get into the classes we need??? That is a big question around campus.

One other big thing this semester is the so called furlough days and the teachers working 10% less. The Professors here got a 10% pay decrease and were told to do 10% less in their classes. That and the professors mandated to take a few furlough days where they just don't come in to class and teach. Not having class can be nice but at the same time this is not right making the professors miss days. This all seems wrong, we as students are paying 30% more for our education and were getting 10% less of a education because of what the state has done. This needs to be changed!!!! The problems of congress should NOT be taken out on the students and their education. We need to do something for things to change.

I Know CSUN is not the only school having this problem we the students and the public need to come together in order to see a change in what the government is doing to our states school system. GET THE WORD OUT WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Thinking about Disney Movies

So with this Journalism class we watch many different videos about media and so on. Another documentary that we watched last class session was Mickey Mouse Monopoly. This documentary made you really thing about what you see in those Disney movies and really make it hard to look at a Disney movie the same way. This documentary talked about some of the bad influences Disney movies have on children without most people even noticing.

There are many examples given like how most female characters look the same in their movies with a slim look and even large breasts. Other things were how they supported spouse abuse and inaccuracy historical events. Movies like Mulan and Pocahontas have some things that never happened in history like Pocahontas’s relationship with John Smith. They both existed but never had a romantic attraction or relationship; she later married another white man not John Smith. Or in the case of Mulan they Chinese coulter never had dress up nice and interviews to find a husband. Those are just two areas that historical events were false just to make the movie good and happy.

Another part is the promotion of abuse and staying with it in the movie Beauty and the Beast. In this movie the Beast is mean to Beauty, yells at her, treats her bad like no “food if she won’t eat with me”, tears her family apart. She stayed with him to try and find his inner good, this movie goes with spousal abuse or abusive husband beating on the wives and the wives staying with her husband.

Those are just some examples that this documentary talked about there were many other examples in the documentary. Now I just want to share this, I don’t want you to stop watching these movies or scare you about them. This documentary also made me want to go out and see a lot of these Disney movies that I have not seen in some time. It seams like the big point this documentary had was to make parents aware of what their children are watching and to give parents the tools to talk to their children with what they just saw in the movie they just watched. So I really recommend seeing this documentary to expand your thoughts and views of media with children. If anything else this will make you think more about what you see.

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Hip Hop in the Media

So for those that don’t know this semester I’m taking a Journalism of gender, race and sex in media ….or well that’s the title of the class or close to it. In this class we go through media and look at it deconstructing it and finding the deeper meaning of that media.  This last class session we were watching a documentary Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhythms by Byron Hurt.

Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhythms was talking about how all hip hop of recent time gives the message of being a man asserting dormancy by having lots of guns, lots of money, lots of girls, and killing others.  This documentary talked to people in the industry about what the music portrays even kids were spinning their own that would only mention guns killing people and other violent sides.  Yes I know that this type of violence is seen in other types of media like movies, TV, and video games but at the same time there is some difference in those types of media.  But at the same time the music all sounds the same with almost no difference between songs. 

One big question that was mentioned is why is all this music this way?  The response to this question was this is what the audience wants to hear.  If that’s the only reason then I think there is a big problem with society nowadays.  There was a movement with the woman community boycotting the hip hop music industry.  However most people in the industry didn’t care about the boycott because these people never bought their music to begin with so there was no lose of money.  So my one big question is if people that would normally buy the music, were to boycott the music they listen would the industry change what’s being said in this kind of music?

Now I know that most people that read this probably don’t listen to hip hop or rap much, but if the message out to those that do and make a point why it’s bad.  Maybe just maybe we could actually have them boycott the music to get a change in the industry……yeah this is just a thought or maybe a naïve wish but maybe one day it will happen.

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Ok so it has been a long time since I posted anything on this blog. I have just been supper busy with work, school and the summer away. A lot has happened to me over that time, still working at the same place but I am changing schools this spring semester to CSUN. I have had a lot of fun with friends and made some new ones along the way, gone road tripping over my break. I can go on but don’t really want to bore you so I will leave it all at that. Know that the New Year has started I’m going to try and do a better job to post more on here for all to read. So until then have fun!!!!

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