Elizabeth Gill

      Professor Jonathan Pope Evans took a group of California State University, Los Angeles Television and Film students and a handful of East Los Angeles teenagers and over the course of a 10-week semester, produced four successful short films. On December 5, Plaza de la Raza, a community cultural arts center, hosted "Through the Eyes of Eastside Youth: An Evening of Community Films" showcasing the result of a service learning course called "Community Filmmaking" at Cal State Los Angeles.

      It's hard to believe that the Tea Fire, burned 1,940 acres, destroyed 231 residences, and caused an estimated $6,100,000 to fight, was caused by a group of college students who didn't fully extinguish their bonfire.
     
      "It's carelessness, it's negligence, and it's illegal," says Captain Eli Iskow of the Santa Barbara Fire Department, the team that led the investigation of the Tea Fire. Iskow has seen people lose their lives and end up in critical condition as a result of unintentional fires. "We could have several of those a year. It's not uncommon. It's carelessness that does it."
     

      Before the celebration and crowds that erupted over the Bay Area on election evening, the atmosphere on election morning in San Francisco was quiet excitement. Polling stations were opened across the city, but the most crowded polling station was the basement of San Francisco City Hall. Although this polling station drew the most people, the lines never got a chance to develop because the number of volunteers that turned out seemed to equal the number of voters. The volunteers ranged from Senior Citizens to children as young as young as twelve years old who are shown handing out "I Voted" stickers as people entered and left the basement of City Hall.
            Upstairs in the ground level of City Hall, couples were getting married atop the large flight of steps while people passed by down below en route to the voting booths. Outside, people gathered in the community garden and cheered in front of City Hall holding signs supporting Obama, Nader, No on Proposition 8, and Yes on Proposition K.
      At another popular polling station off of Castro in San Francisco's Castro District, where a house with a sign reading "Heart of the Castro" was transformed into a voting station.
      At Northpoint Coffee Co. in Sausalito, people quietly read the morning paper while shadowed by portraits of political leaders lining the walls of the coffee shop.The graphite portraits are done by Amanda Pirot as part of her collection "Politicals, Leaders, and Cultural Icons."

The second presidential debate came and went, and my hopes for a real debate were once again dashed. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, (OED) a debate equals "Contention in argument; dispute, controversy; discussion; esp. the discussion of questions of public interest in Parliament or in any assembly."

 As I started looking at different sources of media coverage after Friday's debate between Obama and McCain, I started thinking about the role of the media in determining what is "newsworthy."  After watching the debate, I looked at some of the coverage today on the websites of various news organizations including Fox News, MSNBC, and The Washington Post. These articles have titles such as "No knockouts in debate: Economic jabs, then punches on world affairs" (The Washington Post)  or "Temperature of debate? Lukewarm" (also from The Washington Post). These articles seemed fairly objective in presenting both positives and negatives from each candidate while also acknowledging that nothing especially amazing happened during the debate. This was also my impression after watching the debate. The debate was significant in that it was the first official debate between Obama and McCain in the 2008 run for President, but at the same time nothing new or out of the ordinary seemed to happen. Both McCain and Obama articulated aspects of their campaign or positions on events that the general public had already heard before.

[Full Debate Seen Below]