UC Irvine hosted a budget write-in this week and I can’t imagine why we’re still putting pen to paper.
While delivering letters in bulk to our state legislators is much more civil and respectful than the protests and disobedience that have been observed around UC campuses this past month, aren’t there more innovative, collaborative and effective ways in which to communicate our dismay with the state of the State and University?
After all, isn’t the University of California the top public institution in the world? Don’t we produce Nobel Prize winners and Fulbright Scholars, life-saving research and game-changing technology?
Advice to UC students. Take what you know best — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — and turn it into a campaign that legislators can’t ignore, toss aside, or hand to an aide to craft a scripted response.
The write-in would have been a good opportunity for student leaders to flip out their mobile phones and interview each other about the personal impact the fee hike will have on them come the new academic year. It was a chance for students to plead their hardships, share their personal stories, and talk about their needs… and to tell their stories through a new medium to legislators and public citizens alike.
If just a 1,000 students from each campus joined a Facebook fan page or custom website that integrates Facebook Connect (or the like) and allow students to voice their concerns online – that would be a collective power of 10,000 voices telling their story to the public. The public and media can then help pay it forward and tell tens of thousands of other people how devastating the fee hikes are.
A letter only goes to one person, and your voice may or may not ever be heard. But new media content can be shared, redistributed, repackaged, emailed, linked, tweeted… The same effort put into a letter can be put into a message that has the potential to be heard across the world.
And all it takes it the one story that becomes viral. The one story that tugs at the hearts of the voters of California, the philanthropist across the globe, and the legislator who votes on the UC budget.
How about a video profile of how much it costs to be a bio major: How much are your textbooks? What additional lab fees do you pay? And how are you able to afford the expensive rent around Westwood, Irvine, Santa Barbara?
Letter-writing campaigns didn’t even work in my time as a UCSA Legislative Affairs member or ASUCD External Affairs Chair. What worked were the face-to-face meetings with the educational committee members, staffers for the legislators or better yet the legislators themselves.
Today, students have the best tools at their fingertips: new media and social networks. Whether it’s a student, parent, professor or staff member speaking, why aren’t we using these innovative communication mediums, which are either no-cost or low-cost, to effectively lobby the State and its citizens?
A collective voice is a powerful thing when used the right way.
Protesting and rioting may have worked in the 1970s. But times are different. Technology is different.
The UC’s budget is an obvious mess, and I have strong personal opinions about it. What it boils down to though, is there’s plenty of blame to spread. But I don’t think it’s too late to make a new media move — the right move — to influence change from the ground up.
Picket signs, the wood sticks and magic markers to poster board is so last millennium, and so un-ecofriendly. If you want to be heard, to be green, to be innovative with your message, take a lesson from the 2008 Presidential elections. That wasn’t that long ago…
Read moreI was lying in bed looking at my iPhone when I saw a tweet from @jakrose about President Obama in Prague live on CNN.
As I watch it, I can’t help but be nostalgic for this week last year when I was experiencing Prague in person. The feeling towards Americans then was, I bet, far different than it is today:
STOP PRASATUM, POLICE NICH UNIFORMACH!
YANKEES & RADAR GO HOME!
I don’t know why I feel so connected to Prague. All I know is I really want to go back, and hopefully even live there one day.
Read moreRumors abound at SXSW via @kevinrose of Digg that iPhone 3.0 will finally have “cut and paste”. Also rumored is “mutli-tasking”, which allows a user to run multiple applications and “alt-tab” between them.
Sadly, no confirmation of MMS. And definitely no video capture ability either according to the interview.
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Some protests are taken to the streets, others through petition or boycotts. Today, an issue a half a world away is gaining momentum online through social networks and new media platforms.
The New Zealand Internet Blackout – which I first read about on Read Write Web (@rww) – is an online social media movement that asks Kiwi’s and non-Kiwi’s alike to protest against the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A‘ :
…that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party.
Find out how exactly to update your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Web site profiles at the Creative Freedom Blackout page.
Here are some images you can use for your profiles. Just right-click to save to your desktop and upload to your profile pictures:
I’ve blacked out Twitter, Facebook and this blog.
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I did my obligatory post on the randomness of me:
OK – I’ll end there. 25 Random Things is the only fad I’ll succumb to… Until the next one from a friend – who I may or may not be friends with in real life – tags me in Facebook and inspires me all over again.
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