Down the wire

The project is really starting to wrap up. I have all the components almost completed. I did run into a problem with my photo slide show. I was planning on attending the ROTC workout last Wednesday, but did not attend because campus was closed due to the snow storm. I figured they would continue this week, but found out Monday that they did not actually do these three times a week during finals week. So I had to improvise with some materials I had collected throughout the semester in ROTC related events. 

Story - UNI administration's response to discrimination and bias related incident claims

Video - Students, staff and faculty protest racial discrimination

Slide show - An unknown bias against the ROTC

Data Visualization - Reported crimes at UNI 

Map - locations of bias related incidents in Iowa

Getting close!

So far I've gathered or completed several different aspects for my overall project. I have run into a few bumps on the way however. I have tried to set up an interview with the Office of Compliance and Equity management for a quick run through of what happens when a person reports an incident of discrimination. The administrative assistant penciled me in for an appointment a, but I received a call today (the day of the scheduled interview) informing me that it had been a mistake and that I in fact could do not an interview today. I would regard this as a common office mistake, but the exact same thing actually happened to me with this same office and these same employees a year ago when I was working on a big story about UNI's slow progress to update their polices to match Iowa law. At this point, I'm not sure whether I will be able to get an interview with them for my main story, but I will try to find a way. If that doesn't happen I have interviews from Dave Zarifis and the Provost, so the story will still be fine. 

Change in direction

Due to some technical difficulties and running into a wall with my investigation I decided to change my course. In many of the stories I was interested in working on, many things were coming up dealing with different types of blatant and almost hidden types of discrimination on campus. I found that while one of the most basic types of discrimination still occurs here at UNI, there are also many different forms that people may not often think about.

Additionally, how these incidents were dealt with continued to gather my interest. Before I knew it I even became involved in some of the controversy when I was removed from a forum to discuss discrimination on campus and reprimanded by a member of administration for publishing my experience. I found my story, and Jewelette's interesting because it was almost like certain people were putting a lot of time and effort into keeping the truth of these kinds of incidents on the down low.

I have reorganized my project to investigate these types of discrimination on campus, and how the administration deals with each of these separate incidents. I think it will be very interesting to take a closer look at the different types of actions they take.

I have already done a considerable amount of work for this project. Last night I completed my video, which includes the Silent Protest by Maucker Union before Thanksgiving break and interviews with both the student that was assaulted and another student who attended the rally.

I have conducted an interview with Kate Klocke, a personal wellness student who was a victim of agriculture discrimination when her professor taught her class that all large farms practiced animal cruelty and were negative ways to get food.

I have also conducted an interview with the director of the ROTC who informed me about the discrimination many veterans experience when returning from war. He said often people will treat them as a loose cannon, especially in the aftermath of the Fort Hood incident. I will be attending one of their early morning training and possibly a class to get pictures and make this story into a slide show.

For my article I will interview members of the administration about how they deal with incidents of this nature, and how they would respond to allegations that they have attempted to sweep recent incidents under the rug.