Fired U of I official claimed unfairly singled out

The Des Moines Register on Tuesday printed an article regarding two top University of Iowa staff members being fired.  Sally Mason, the president at U of I, fired these two top officials after an independent report came out critically analyzing their actions after a sexual assault last year involving athletes.  One of the staff members fired, Marc Mills, vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, said he was unfairly singled out by the report by Stolar Partnership.  He thought that the U of I board should have got more than just one highly critical view of the situation.  

Regardless of if the two should be fired or not, the fact that the University of Iowa fired them after the report was written less than a week ago just seemed like they took the information without thinking of who wrote it and their biases.  The report was very critical of the two's actions.  I just wonder if the report wasn't as critical, if these two people would still have their jobs.  The report writers had a lot to do with the outcome for these U of I staff.  

In general, writers hold a lot of power with their words.  If they are bias or raise a certain issue, and the other side isn't there to fight back, a writer, like of the Stolar report, could potentially affect the lives of those they are reporting.  I think reader/consumers need to be aware of the context of every text.  I don't know if reading the report for Sally Mason affected her decision to fire the two or not, but it seems like, from the reading, she was persuaded a little.  But by me deciding this, it means that the newspaper article swayed me into thinking that.  It seems like a never-ending cycle.

There doesn't seem to be any way to not be influenced by the media.  

rumor sent city scrambling

I seem to think that all means of communication are slowly moving to the internet.  Yet, it was refreshing to read that gas pumps had ran dry Friday in Nashville all because of a rumor.  Word of mouth caused the city's citizens to go into panic mode; filling up their cars and even gas cans and other containers.  There is no hint at who was the originator of the rumor, but it's pleasing to know that our society can still communicate on a more personal level to one another.  

Yet, internet still had some to do with this rumor's rapid spread across the city.  Many consumers went online after hearing the rumor to see if it was true; to see if it was worth running and getting gas immediately.  The immediacy of the internet sometimes makes things like a gas shortage rumor seem real.  If you read it online, it must be true, right?  

hill now mountain

Last week three hikers turned a hill in Whales into a mountain.  The Mynydd Craig Goch Hill was noted to be 2,000 feet short of mountain status for over 200 years.  But John Barnard, Myrddyn Phillips, and Graham Jackson, with borrowed equipment, surveyed the land and discovered that the hill was in fact a mountain, with 6 inches to spare.  This is now Whales' first mountain, with hope of boosting tourism.

 

The act of labeling affects much in this case of renaming an area formerly another identity.  The thought that it will boost tourism isn't an incorrect statement, because it definitely has the potential to do so.  The ideas that are associated with a mountain are definitely powerful and will be a good tool for advertising.  Yet, even though the area hasn't physically changed much in the past years, it's new name of "mountain" changes its identity and way others view it.  The way we label and call things affects the ways we react to them, sometimes unknowingly.  It's unfortunate that tourism will grow now that something is labeled differently, yet it wasn't able to hold itself as an interesting tourist spot until it got that mountain status.

 

This raises more questions.  What in our society has a label that isn't correct with it's identity, or is it's identity defined by strictly a name that someone gave it?  Could there be multiple uses for certain things but labeling causes us to only see them a certain way, therefore missing out on their full potential?  

gas prices on the rise

It is painfully clear every time we fill up our gas tanks that gas prices have continued to increase.  Latest news say that the average price per gallon in the U.S. has reached over $4.00.  Crude oil and fuel costs have increased in 2008 because of many reasons.  One reason that interested me most was because of the decrease in the U.S. dollar.  We buy oil from other countries with U.S. dollars; so when the dollar is worth less, gas prices are more costly.  This reason seems quite obvious, yet since I failed to notice this reason, it has become even more shocking.  When living in Europe last year, I quickly became aware of the value of the U.S. dollar.  I figured that it would only affect me when I was in another country, trying to live off my money in their economy.  But I've overlooked that every product that is connected outside the country affects me greatly here.  The media usually doesn't speak of the numerous reasons that add up to the increase in fuel, but rather focuses on the more controversial reasons.

  

Another reason I thought interesting for gas price increase is within it's distribution. Operators, truckers, and station owners all affect the price in gasoline.  There is even a level of competition within stations.  I was in a grocery store the other day waiting in line to check-out, when I read a sign that stated if you spend more than $100 at the store, you get $0.10 off per gallon of gas at their station.  If you spend anything between $1-$99.99 you get $0.03 off per gallon.  This seemed like a very good deal until I walked out to realize that their prices per gallon are about $0.04 higher than the gas stations down the street not affiliated with a grocery store.  So, unless you spend over $100, you are actually paying more than the average.  In reading the notice in the store, the text seemed so great and promising.  

 

What I failed to do as a reader was take into account the context of the text.  The distribution context of the text was in a good place for success.  While waiting in a check-out line a customer is more likely to read something, rather than stop while in an aisle searching for food to read it.  It is also the last thing that the customer is thinking about as they leave and get into their car.  This text targets and catches an audience that is often in a hurry and enjoys finding savings.  

 

No help from the constant reminder of driving a car, gas price increases continue to annoy and anger us as consumers.  This is extremely understandable in todays economy, yet, why isn't it newsworthy the fact that deaths in American oil fields has risen sharply in the past 6 years?  Perhaps by ignoring this, it seems that we are saying it's almost necessary for death tolls to increase in order to have a potential for lower gas prices in the U.S.   After all, if we could get more oil from within the county, then it wouldn't matter much in this case that the value of the dollar has decreased.

gas prices

U.S. oilfield deaths rise sharply