Tag: 2015
Fair Trade movement no help to Saint Lucian farmers
The Fair Trade movement can work in many areas with different crops, but it does not work in Saint Lucia, said Dr. Caela O’Connell, a visiting lecturer from North Carolina State University.
O’Connell pondered the sustainability of alternative food sources as part of an annual anthropology lecture series on Tuesday afternoon.
Fair Trade refers to the idea that fair prices are paid to producers of goods in developing countries. The entire island of Saint Lucia farms Fair Trade bananas for export to the United Kingdom.
“As an anthropologist, I worked in these banana farming communities for 20 months,” O’Connell said. “I learned how they worked with bananas, I learned how they work with Fair Trade…to see for myself what kinds of issues are going on in their farms.”
O’Connell said the people of Saint Lucia got involved with Fair Trade in the early 2000s because they saw it as their best opportunity for more profitable trade. The farmers have since found that they are dependent on meeting Faire Trade requirements, which many resent.
According to O’Connell, Fair Trade uses a certification and audit system to determine whether a country is producing “good food.” This system includes 158 standards that farmers must meet.
“Most of the Fair Trade decisions are made by 26 people representing a number of countries, but mostly European and North American countries,” O’Connell said. “There are not a lot of farmers sitting around that table.”
O’Connell said one of the standards requires that farmers do not use herbicides and pesticides, which is a problem in areas like Saint Lucia that are home to highly invasive species. Saint Lucian water grass sucks nutrients from the soil and must either be cut with a weed wacker or by hand with a machete.
“The theory of Fair Trade versus the practice, in terms of decision making, is really an unfair one in many ways in the Saint Lucian context,” O’Connell said.
According to O’Connell most of the money earned from Fair Trade does not go to the farmers, but instead goes to those at the top of the economic pyramid.
Gamma Sigma Sigma Package
- Edited using iMovie for University of Tennessee’s cable show Vol Talk
Political science professor discusses partisan politics at Baker Café
Partisan politics is nothing new in Congress, but it has been increasing since the 1970s, said Dr. Brandon Prins, a political science professor and Baker Fellow at the University of Tennessee.
Prins presented his speech “The Changing Face of U.S. Foreign Policy: Partisan Opposition to Presidential Diplomacy” as part of the Howard Baker Center’s Baker Café on Tuesday morning.
A 2013 study from the Pew Research Center found that the average difference between opinions and values of Republicans and Democrats was 18 percentage points. This nearly doubles from data collected from 1987 until 2002.
“I do think the extent of partisan support for a president of your own party and members of the opposing party is a bit surprising,” Prins said. “It’s really extreme. Everyone who’s a Democrat votes 90 percent of the time in the direction that President Obama wants or favors, and five percent of the time members of the Republican Party do.”
According to Prins, this shift in partisan politics is partly because of Sunshine Laws, which require certain government information be made available to the public.
“Members of Congress are concerned about how their constituents will react to a vote they take,” Prins said. “I think that, in the past, members have enjoyed a bit more discretion and compromise was perhaps more successful, or it was more easily reached, when not everyone knew how everyone else voted.”
These open records have affected the way Americans view the work of Congress, Prins said.
“What Americans end up seeing is lots of this partisan opposition and they associate this opposition with gridlock and inability to solve or address problems,” Prins said. “But they do continually vote people into office who are partisan and who hold extreme partisan views, so they create the problem that frustrates them.”
According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 28 percent of Americans disapproved of Congress because of this lack of compromise. Nearly four in five Americans did not approve of Congress’ job performance.
Vol on the Street
- Worked as Production Crew Member for Vol Talk, a show for the University of Tennessee’s cable station.
- Filmed parts of the segment.
- Edited parts of the segment.
- Worked with Production Crew to come up with questions for interviews.
Club Week: VOLT introduces co-ed a cappella to campus
[Originally published on the Tennessee Journalist on Nov. 2, 2015]
Walk by room G025 of the Natalie Haslam Music Building on Monday and Wednesday afternoons and you’ll see a group of 13 students arranging music, perfecting choreography and singing music from a variety of genres. They come together to create music for VOLT, UT’s first co-ed a cappella group.
Senior at UT, McKinley Merritt, serves as President and Music Director for the group. She created VOLT this semester because she saw a need for a co-ed a cappella group at the university. She released general information about the group in June and audition information in August.
Unlike the other two a cappella groups on campus, ReVOLution and VOLume, VOLT does not require its members to be in a choral ensemble to be a part of their group.
“When you’re in a choral ensemble, it’s a huge commitment,” Merritt said. “Not having that specific commitment has made our options a lot wider and we had more of a sea of people to pick from.”
Freshman VOLT member Jared Sanchez was among those who made it to the audition.
“I was terrified because I was new to the school and it was the first thing that really caught my attention,” Sanchez said “I was really interested in joining.”
Sanchez and the other VOLT members said they discovered their love of music at a young age.
“I’ve been singing since the third grade and I started off because my teacher had connections to the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and we got to sing with them,” sophomore VOLT member Amber Hale said. “Ever since then I’ve been doing choral music, but this is my first time doing more pop songs.”
Because VOLT is student lead, they have the opportunity to take creative control of the process, including arranging the music and selecting the songs they want to perform.
“We’re trying to cover a big spectrum of music in the world and get a good variety,” Merritt said. “There’s so much good music in this world so it seems silly to me to focus all our time on the music that everyone does right now.”
So far, VOLT has used their time together to find their unique voice and to learn more about each other as a group.
“We actually do really value the community aspect of music,” senior VOLT member Brandon Cartagena said. “We like being friends with each other. We like connecting with other people through music.”
VOLT will be opening for Belmont a cappella group, the Beltones, at their fall concert on Nov. 14 at Belmont University and will perform at UT on a date to be determined at the end of the semester.
For more information about VOLT, visit their Facebook and Twitter pages.
Featured Image by Taylor Owens
Edited by Jessica Carr
Rachel Larson Feature
[Originally created for Journalism 230 Media Reporting Class, October 2015]
- Chose interview subject.
- Wrote questions and interviewed subject.
- Filmed interview and brol for project.
- Edited project using iMovie.
City of Knoxville’s primary elections show low early voting numbers
[Originally written for Journalism 230 Media Reporting Class, October 2015]
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.— “Everybody can tell you who’s running for president, some people can tell you at the state level and a lot fewer can tell you at the local level,” said Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero at a meeting of the Knoxville City Council on Tuesday evening. “Really, at the local level, it’s where the day in and day out quality of your life is decided in a lot of ways.”
As of Tuesday morning, only 951 votes had been cast for four of the Knoxville City Council seats. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the city of Knoxville was 183,270 people as of 2013.
George C. Wallace’s At Large Seat A term, Marshall Stair’s At Large Seat B term, Finbarr Saunders’s At Large Seat C term and Mark Campen’s Fifth District term all end in December 2015.
City Councilman Marshall Stair said that a lack of voting has become a trend in the country, especially during the past several years.
“Maybe something can change,” Stair said. “Maybe if you had a more robust campaign with greater opposition there would be more interest, but even when there’s contested races just at the council level turnout usually doesn’t exceed six or seven thousand.”
Knoxville’s decline in voter turnout reflects recent trends on the national level. Only 36.4 percent on eligible voters cast ballots in the 2014 midterm elections, according to the United States Election Project. The group says this is the smallest voter turnout in any election cycle since World War II.
Rogero said she is surprised that more people do not pay attention to local government because it provides citizens with many of the services they value and addresses local problems.
“We deal with issues about bringing jobs to town, helping businesses get started, whether you have sidewalks and bike lanes and open streets,” Rogero said. “All of those things either add jobs or create safe neighborhoods or add to the quality of life and the vibrancy of our city. That all comes down to decisions being made right here.”
According to a 2014 poll from the Census Bureau, 28 percent Americans do not vote because they are too busy to find the time. Sixteen percent said they were not interested in voting.
Stair said that this lack of participation can create a government that is not a real reflection of what the people want.
“If you have a really low turnout, whether it be a certain group [voting], they can really have a huge impact on the election,” Stair said.
Early voting ends on Thursday, Oct. 29 and Election Day is on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
University of Tennessee students and staff discuss racial tension
[Originally written for Journalism 230 Media Reporting Class, October 2015]
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — “You can be an ambassador for change,” said Alice Wirth, lecturer at the University of Tennessee and director for the Diversity Student Leaders Society. “You have to have a dialogue.”
A panel of staff and students from different cultural, political and economic backgrounds attempted to educate students about the different upbringings and lifestyles of people around campus in the Diversity and Inclusion Week panel “Diversity and Inclusion: Lessons Learned from Home.” Race was an important topic for the panel because of recent tension presented in the media.
“I had a complete culture shock when I got here from Germany,” said sophomore Jakob Johnson. “People don’t look at race as much there as they do here.”
Johnson plays football for the University of Tennessee and moved to the United States for his senior year of high school. He said football was not a popular sport in Europe and he knew he would have to leave Germany if he was going to have the opportunity to play professionally.
Johnson said that it was rare to be mixed race in his home country, but people were relatively inclusive of everyone.
“I’m coming from a country where race doesn’t play much of a role to a place where I actually kind of get followed around in stores,” Johnson said.
Like Johnson, diversity student leader, Carrie Sengchanthavong, understands the struggles of growing up in a mixed race household. Sengchanthavong is Laotian, but was adopted by a Korean woman and a German man. She said race was still a difficult subject in her home.
Sengchanthavong said she witnessed the discrimination when she brought a male of another race to her home.
“I come from a very diverse community,” Sengchanthavong said. “I guess my mom didn’t really understand that I was surrounded by all of that.”
Though Johnson and Sengchanthavong come from diverse racial backgrounds, only 23 percent of the students enrolled at the University during the 2014-2015 academic year described themselves as non-white. Of the 27,410 students enrolled full-time, 21,046 were white, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.
Racism is seen differently in today’s generation than it was during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. During this time period, 52 percent of all Americans saw racism as the most important issue in the country, compared to 13 percent today, according to a Gallup poll. A Music Television poll found that 72 percent of the younger generation feel they are less racist than their elders.
Courtney Boykin is also a diversity student leader. She said that something changes within a person that causes them to become an adult who discriminates against others.
“My high school was majority white and we had racist things,” Boykin said. “Sometimes people are just scared and that’s why they feel like they need to be abrasive.”
“My German grandmother is one of the most loving people I know, but she had to accept my mothering marrying a black man and having a baby with him,” Johnson added. “I feel like it’s just something you have to experience.”
Montana Knell, an administrative assistant, said that though she is not personally affected by racism, she has witnessed it in her family.
“I think it mainly comes from a place of ignorance,” Knell said. “I think in certain cases it’s at a point where it’s just too far gone.”
Nearly six in ten Americans think that race relations are generally bad, according to a New York Times and CBS News Poll.
The panelists said that people must care about others and listen to their opinions to fight this discrimination.
“A lot of us only want to hear ourselves,” Sengchanthavong said. “We don’t want to hear other points of view.”
Athletics creates new opportunities for Venezuelan coaches
[Originally written for Journalism 230 Media Reporting Class, August 2015]
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.— In America, sports are a business. Brands sponsor athletes, major corporations advertise at sporting events and players are often worshipped as celebrities. In Venezuela, athletics are a gateway to new opportunities.
“Because of God and baseball, I was able to come to school in America,” said Ernis Arias, a baseball coach from Caracas.
Arias, along with five other Venezuelan coaches, came to the University of Tennessee as a part of the International Sports Programming Initiative: Sport for Social Change. The coaches toured athletic facilities around the university and learned about the role of sports in American culture and how it differs from their own customs.
“The support sports in America get from private companies, foundations and even the government is the biggest difference,” Arias said. “We don’t get that kind of support.”
The financial backing is not the only difference the coaches recognized in their travels. They all joined sports to better their lives and help the children they coach do the same.
“Alberto became a Mixed Martial Arts fighter because he was bullied his whole life,” Arias translated for Alberto Ramón Yaguare Morales. “He decided to become a coach because he doesn’t want those children to go through what he went through.”
Morales also said that he can teach others about self control, healthy living and self-esteem through his sport.
Arias decided to become a baseball player because it was a family sport, but found that it created opportunities for an education and career in America.
“All the men in my family practiced baseball,” Arias said. “For me, it has been the tool that has opened all the doors possible.”
According to a statistic from Major League Baseball, 59 Venezuelans played on an American major league team in 2014. They ranked second behind the Dominican Republic.
The task of coaching children and teenagers is predictably challenging.
“We understand the changes that teenagers go through, so, because we know it, we try to give them the tools to guide them,” said Arias. “For us, it’s a privilege.”
The coaches agreed the hardest part of the exchange is being so far away from their loved ones, but they look forward to sharing their knowledge and experiences.
Taylor Owens 