‘News’ stories starting to be replaced by soft news

ST. BONAVENTURE (May 10) – Brian Williams of NBC lands in Heathrow, London, and gets off the plane to cover the royal wedding. He checks his Blackberry after his flight for an update on the storms in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Williams sees the death toll hit 83 and continue rising. As he leaves the airport the number of deaths updated to 172. Before reaching central London he directs the driver to get off the highway. Williams got back on a plane and headed to Alabama to cover the tragedy that would soon dominate NBC’s newscast.

            The tornadoes that ripped through the Southeast on April 27 covered news channels from April 25 to May 1, accounting for 15 percent of news coverage, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism News Coverage Index.

            The earthquake in Japan and powerful tsunami on March 11, as reported by The New York Times, killed nearly 20,000 people according to PEJ. The story of the catastrophe in Japan accounted for more than three-quarters of airtime on broadcast and cable news channels

Children’s cell phone use affects skills, say professors, students.

ST. BONAVENTURE (April 19) - Gabriella Morales says she sees children these days in groups texting quickly on their cell phones. She sees children not talking to one another and focusing on texting while their hands grip tightly onto the phones that barely fit in their hands.
              According to C& R Researching, a consumer and market insights firm, more than 20 percent of children ages 6 to 9 have cell phones. College students, many of whom have texted for several years, argue that children’s texting will impact basic reading, writing and social skills. However, elementary school teachers disagree and say other social effects apply too, such as changes in parenting habits.

“I had my first cell phone when I was 13, but I did not start texting till I was 17,” says Morales, a junior St. Bonaventure University childhood studies major. “Today you see these 10-year-old kids with cell phones texting, and I definitely think these kids are too young to have phones.”

Children who focus on their cell phones do not go outside to play as much as those who don’t have them, education students say.

“When I do observations with children and I read their reports, I see that they are not well written,” says Morales.

Students say they have seen that kids have a hard time speaking to adults and socially have difficulty speaking face to face with others.

St. Bonaventure students and counselors dicuss causes, symptoms and treatments of college depression

 ST. BONAVENTURE (Mar. 27) – Ashley Bynum wipes away her tears as she calls her sister in New York City after feeling left out and abandoned by her peers at St. Bonaventure University campus.

             As students watch their families depart the college parking lot, they say that college is a new beginning and they realize they’re on their own for the first time.

            Students say going to college and being in a new environment can be the great experience they have hoped for. However, some students say it has become the opposite. Symptoms of depression can happen to students with the change in environment and social life around them, counselors say.

“One factor is if people come into this kind of environment from home and they do not connect with other people meaningfully, it can lead to depression,” says Michele Rodkey, a counselor at Bonaventure’s Counseling Center.

            “Back home I had a lot of friends, but after coming to Bonaventure I had a hard time coping with the change and making meaningful relationships with people,” says Bynum. “It’s not that I didn’t want to, but when I tried, I was turned off by people, my best friend and I were not invited out or I was isolated.”

The amount of snow left in front of sidewalk at Dev Hall near wheelchair ramp.

Students say Bonaventure's sidewalks, doors make lives of disabled difficult

ST.BONAVENTURE (Feb.16) - Sumi Crawford-Ramsahi pushes herself on her wheelchair to Plassmann Hall for class. She struggles to move her chair along the cracked, uneven concrete of the sidewalks.

While Bonaventure students swiftly walk to their classes chatting with friends, the temporarily disabled say they struggle with cracked sidewalks and the lack of wheelchair ramps.

Following summer orientation, Crawford and her mother were in a car accident that left her in a wheelchair. She hesitated about starting her freshman year in a wheelchair but decided to continue to her freshman year, said Crawford.

“My original thought from what I was told and what my mom told me was that Bonaventure’s Safety and Security officers were going to take me to classes every day, but I don’t know what happened to that. I had to rely on friends to take me to my classes who weren’t busy or I had to wheel myself to class,” said Crawford.

For Crawford, a biology major, and others who are temporarily disabled and use crutches or a wheelchair, getting back and forth to classes, dorms and the dining hall becomes difficult.  

“There are cracks in the sidewalks all over this campus and I can’t even tell you how many times I almost flew out of my wheelchair because of those them,” said Crawford.