The VanCougar is Hiring

Will you be a student at WSUV in the 2007-2008 school year?

Do you love writing, photography, graphic design, or marketing?

Apply for a job at The VanCougar!

We are seeking people for the following jobs:

Freelance Writer
Photographer
Layout Assistant
Advertising Manager

All of these jobs are paid except for the position of layout assistant, for which you can earn academic credit.

It's easy to apply! Just stop by our office in VCLS 212 and get an application from the envelope on the window. Fill it out and attach a sample of your work, and then turn it in.

If you are applying to be a freelance writer, attach a sample of any writing you've recently done. If you are applying to be a photographer, attach a photo. For the other positions, attach relevant material if you have some available, like a graphic design you have done or a sample of business or marketing work. (If you don't have relevant material for these two positions, attach a writing sample.)

No experience is required--just an interest in learning and a willingness to try something new.

New VanCougar Website

On the weekend of March 10, I and other people from The VanCougar attended a college journalism convention in Portland. One of the speakers was Dan Savage, who writes Savage Love, a sex and relationship advice column, and also edits The Stranger, an alternative newspaper in Seattle.

Unsurprisingly for anyone who has read one of his columns, Savage's lecture was filled with profanities, references to sex, and gibes at the current national government. This definitely made his lecture interesting. But what I really took away from the lecture is this: While print newspapers will probably always be around, they will be online more and more. Twice as many people read The New York Times online than subscribe to it in print. More and more people get their news from blogs and websites and of course, podcasts and social networking sites are getting increasingly popular. Savage's newspaper, The Stranger, has a popular blog as well as video, podcasts, and RSS feeds.

With this advice in mind, which we've heard from lots of people in the newspaper industry, we are working on a new website, which will be unveiled within the next few weeks. We plan that it will be at www.vancougar.com. We'll still have stories available in PDF format, as we do now, but we'll also have them in regular HTML format. We are hoping to have comments enabled on all stories so that you can let us know what you think. And we'll have an easy form that you can fill out to send us a letter.

If you have suggestions for us as we put more content online, let us know. And we are wondering: Where do you get most of your news each day? Is it in print, online, on the radio, on TV, or from other sources?

Human Rights in the U.S.

In my last post, I said that Seymour Hersh will be coming to speak at Skyview High School in April, sponsored by the university. It turns out that as part of the same lecture series, William Schulz will be speaking on campus earlier in the day.

Schulz used to be the head of Amnesty International USA, a human rights group. What seems really compelling about his speech is that he will speaking on the following topic: "How Amnesty International Has Exposed Human Rights Violations by the United States."

Wow. This seems bound to stir up some controversy, but, I think, in a good way. Since 9/11 and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we in America have been rethinking some of our ideas about how relate to the rest of the world. We are asking ourselves--How should we act towards other countries? What do other countries think about us? What should we do about suspected terrorists? And are people in the U.S. who are marginal in some way being treated as they should be?

Different Americans are all going to have different answers to these questions. Schulz's perspective, as a person who has worked for a long time for the concepts of human rights and international law, is one that I think is bound to be thought-provoking. As an activist, rather than a journalist, he's going to give a complementary perspective to Seymour Hersh's. While they are coming from different perspectives, both seem to have strong ideals and wish to expose the things that they feel are wrong.

For full disclosure, I was heavily involved in Amnesty International while at Clark College, and I still support the group's work. However, the reason that The VanCougar is covering this event is not because I am an Amnesty member. Schulz is a well-known speaker, and seems like a pretty high-profile event.

We'd be interested in knowing if you are planning to hear Schulz speak, and why or why not.
By the way, if you want to go to Schulz's speech, you have to register online before March 21. The event is free.

Investigative journalist will speak at WSUV

Seymour Hersh is coming to WSUV in April to give a speech as part of the Public Affairs Lecture Series.

We at The VanCougar are pretty excited about Hersh's visit, because he's a journalist. He is probably best known for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. He's still going strong, writing about Iraq, Iran and other hot-button issues.

As you might know, the Public Affairs Lecture Series alternates viewpoints every year--last year the lecturer was John Ashcroft and the year before it was Howard Dean. They usually generate both support and controversy, in varying proportions.

Watch for an in-depth article about the upcoming lecture in Issue #13 of The VanCougar, due to be published on March 26.

In the meantime, we are thinking about what for us is the most exciting part of the event: We get 15 minutes with Hersh and can ask him whatever we want. Because we are representing WSUV students, we'd like you to tell us what you would like to ask him, and from the list of submissions we will choose several questions to ask Hersh.

You can submit a question by posting to this blog or by contacting us using the info listed to the write of this post.

Elson Floyd; Diversity

What do you think about Elson Floyd's plans for WSU? Are they going to affect WSU Vancouver?
There have been quite a few events happening on campus that focus on diversity--for example, Black History Month events, and David Cole, who will be speaking on February 27. Is WSUV a diverse campus, however that is defined?