Graduation!

I am now officially a college graduate!


I had a fantastic day, and tomorrow morning I am off to Peru. Hopefully I'll blog while I'm there! I'll be back on Tuesday the 27th.

Gospel Choir Concert

I wanted to let everyone know that I will be singing in the USF Gospel Choir concert this Sunday, May 4th at 6 p.m. in Xavier Chapel in Fromm Hall. You should come! It'll be fun, and we sound pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Here's a video from last spring's concert. The visual isn't great, but the sound is pretty good. You can find more videos if you poke around YouTube. (I'm not in this because I was abroad at the time.)

Immigration Facts

This afternoon, our Amnesty International group is doing an immigration thing in Harney during dead hour, in conjunction with SOA Watch's series of events (Not For Sale will have something too, so it will be a big ol' social justice party). I volunteered to make handouts, so I thought I'd share them here. They could be better, but they're all right (the info is mainly copied and pasted from a paper I wrote last semester).

Immigration Facts:

• There are over 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, over half of whom are from Mexico.(1)
• In 1993, at least 205 immigrants died crossing the border into the U.S., and in 2005 the number was over 460.(2) As more border fences go up and security increases (such as with the 1994 Operation Gatekeeper), immigrants must go through very dangerous places, like the desert, to reach the U.S.(3) People die from suffocation, dehydration, hypothermia, and hyperthermia, among other things.
• 94% of adult male undocumented immigrants work, in contrast with 86% of legal immigrants and 83% of natives. Undocumented immigrants made up about 4.9% of the workforce in 2005.(4)
• In the last five years, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. have sent over $90 billion to Mexico. Mexico receives more money from remittances than tourism, and remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income, after oil.(5) These remesas help sustain families suffering from poverty.
• Immigrants are HUMAN BEINGS.

1. Hoefer, Michael, Nancy Rytina, and Christopher Campbell. “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2006.” Immigration Statistics. Department of Homeland Security. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ill_pe_2006.pdf.
2. Hill, Jacob. “Free Trade and Immigration: Cause and Effect.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs. 18 July 2007. http://www.coha.org/2007/07/18/free-trade-and-immigration-cause-and-effect/.
3. Romellón, Jorge Santibáñez. “Migration and Borders: The Space for Contradiction, page 2.” Border Battles. 31 Aug. 2006. Social Science Research Council. http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Santibanez/index1.html.
4. Passel, Jeffrey S. “The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” Pew Hispanic Center. 7 Mar. 2006. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf.
5. "Finance And Economics: Counting the Cash; Remittances to Latin America." The Economist 6 Oct. 2007: 102.

A Series of [un]Fortunate Events at USF

This semester's School of the Americas Watch group at USF clearly has their act together, and they, in collaboration with some other organizations, have organized a week of outstanding-looking events which I highly recommend you attend. Here's the information:

April 28
SOLID(arity)
8:30 PM
McLaren Complex
All student teach-in. Awesome presentations, free bread-n-spread snacks, and the opportunity to discuss issues of immigration, fair trade, torture, and the upcoming election with your peers.
We'll be heading over to Ocean Beach afterward for a bonfire.

April 29
Harney Plaza
11:30 AM
Free airbrushed t-shirts! We have some shirts, but first come, first serve. If you'll be late, you can bring your own shirt to be graffitied, too.
There will also be hands on mural painting and an immigration display from USF's chapter of Amnesty International.

April 30
Xavier Chapel
7:00PM
Former Prisoner of Conscience and activist, Father Louie Vitale will give a speech entitled "A Nonviolent Response to Terrorism."
He was recently released from jail for civil disobedience in protest of Fort Huachuca.
Shortly after, he was again arrested at the March 19 anti-war rally in San Francisco.
Carlos Mauricio, founder of Stop Impunity, will speak about his experience as a victim and survivor of torture in El Salvador.
They are both probably 2 of the coolest people ever-- not to be biased or anything.

May 1
Harney Plaza
10:00 AM
Meet to go as a group to the Immigration Rally downtown. Wear your white t-shirt from Tuesday!

Crossroads
6:00 PM
CELEBRATION! Wooo.
*Free Food
*Music
*A short talk from Vietnam War Veteran and SOA Watch activist Charles Liteky.
*A panel on student activism featuring Mike Aguilar, Drea Hightower, Politics Professor James Taylor, and Mel Hackett. Moderated by former USF student Spencer Rangitsch.
*Voter Registration Drive by MEChA
*Information from city organizations like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, Grassroots Campaigns, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Service with POH and April Action

In the last couple weeks I've done a bit of enlightening volunteering. Along with other members of Amnesty International at USF, I delivered meals to homebound people with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses through Project Open Hand (one of my favorite organizations in SF). I've volunteered a couple times in their Grocery Center, but I had never delivered meals before. We got a couple insulated containers of hot and frozen meals, a map, and a list of clients to deliver to. All the people we delivered to lived in SROs within a few blocks of each other in the Tenderloin. I had never actually been inside an SRO before, and it was intense, horrifying, amazing... I don't know how to express it. The elevators were terrifying. The living conditions were horrible. Still, in one hotel I was waiting in the lobby while some of the other students went upstairs to deliver meals, and I was struck with the community people seemed to have within the building. My roommate, who spends a lot of time with Project Open Hand and is also an intern at St. Anthony Foundation (one of my other favorite organizations in SF), told me that SROs often cost $900-$1000 a month. That's for a single room. Bathrooms are shared with the rest of the floor. That's far more than I currently pay for my own room in an apartment in a pretty nice area of San Francisco.

The other volunteering I did recently was April Action, a service day organized by University Ministry at USF. April Action always has an environmental theme, and last Saturday a bunch of us went to an area of Golden Gate Park where we cleared out blackberry plants that were hurting the magnolias (or something - I wish they had spent a bit more time talking about the purpose of our work). It was going fine, and it was kind of fun except for my arms getting scratched up from all the thorns, until I heard one of the gardeners telling people to stop, saying something like "uh oh, we have a problem." It turned out someone had set up an encampment inside the blackberries. There were some bags of stuff sitting there; it was somebody's home. The gardener called over the woman who was in charge, and I saw her making a phone call, but we kept clearing away the plants. I think those of us who knew what was happening were pretty apprehensive, however. I was glad to hear other students saying they weren't comfortable destroying someone's home. I certainly wasn't. We had a little reflection afterwards, and I brought up the risks of unintended consequences of service. We can be completely well-meaning, thinking we're doing a good thing, but actually do more damage than good.

For anyone interested in social justice and social change, I highly recommend reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. If you're more interested in an 18-page article than a book, check out "Pedagogy for the Children of the Oppressors" by Andrew Christian van Gorder in the Journal of Transformative Education. I don't feel like breaking copyright laws and posting it, but if you're at USF, search for the journal in the library's Journal Finder, then search the article title, and you should find it. It was published in January 2007.

National Library Week

National Library Week is fast approaching! In our Digital Literacy class, we are doing a display in Gleeson Library to celebrate. Hooray!

We've each been charged with taking as much responsibility as we are willing, so here is what I will do.

Books!

I will collect the list of everyone's favorite books, and collect them from the stacks. I will make a list of them (with call numbers) to post on the back wall of the alcove, so patrons can see them even if they've been checked out.

Options: I can make something for patrons to write down their favorite books to recommend. We can talk to Gleeson Gleanings about posting our list and encouraging people to respond with their recommendations.

What will I need from the library? If they want to change the status of the books to "display" in the catalog, we'll need cooperation. If someone (e.g. Vicki Rosen) lets them know what I'm doing ahead of time, I can go to the circ. desk and ask them to do it.

If we want to do the book recommendations on Gleeson Gleanings, we'll need someone to do that post.

Fun!

Gleeson Library Display

Our Digital Literacy class has taken the responsibility to fill this space:

for National Library Week in April. Our display will be in response to the questions:

What do I love about the library?
What do I wish the library offered?

I spent five semesters working at the Gleeson Library, so it's interesting to think about these questions. What I love most about the library is the books. I like Prof. Silver's idea about each of us choosing a few of our favorite books to display. Some books I would like to include are: Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (though it's checked out right now), Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer (also checked out), Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.

Other things I love about the library: the 24-hour atrium, the Thacher Gallery, the old card catalog on the lower level, all the places you can hide in the stacks (especially in the lower level), the carrels (those individual study cubby things - I'm not sure how I know the name for them), and all the online resources (databases, e-books, online journals, etc.). In order to represent these things, I like the idea of taking photos. I see two main options for presenting the photos (and we could do both): 1) We can get photos printed and put them on the wall, 2) We can have a slideshow running on a laptop. My vote is for option 1, first because it will save us table/counter space for other things (like books), and second because most people are just going to glance at this exhibit as they walk by. They'll take in a lot more of the photos if they can see them all at once instead of waiting for them to cycle through on a computer screen.

What would I like the library to offer? Online study room reservation, clearly designated "quiet" and "okay to talk" areas, clocks throughout the library, a better access system than the terrible gates at the front, and more music and movies (also presented more accessibly than they currently are), and book discussion groups. Smarter and nicer patrons would be cool too, but I think that's beyond the library's control. I know I'm not dreaming big here (though I did like the in-class idea of hugs and head massages), but those are practical, doable things I would like to see.

These are harder to represent than what the library has already. I like the idea of a space where patrons can say what they would like the library to offer. That makes more sense to me than just the opinions of seven students and a professor. We could encourage people to draw as well as write. We could provide colored pencils, markers, and crayons. As a digital alternative (or addition), we could set up a computer with a blog (or something) where people could write their suggestions. That way, if people were writing inappropriate things, we could easily delete them.

A fun field trip for our class would be to go into the library storage space on Lone Mountain. You go through the Del Santo Reading Room, and there's a door in the back leading to the storage space. There are a few floors of books that used to be where they had closed stacks at the Lone Mountain College library. Now it's space for books that don't circulate very often. It's dark and hot and stuffy in there. Kind of scary when you're alone. If I were a ghost on Lone Mountain, I would definitely hang out in there.

Global Women's Rights Forum: Stop Firestone Campaign

Tuesday evening, as part of the Global Women's Rights Forum at USF, Emira Woods from the Institute for Policy Studies, spoke about Firestone's exploitation of workers and the environment in Liberia, and the movement stop it.


Firestone (the company that makes tires), is the largest foreign investor in Liberia. They have a quota system, and if their workers do not collect the required amount of rubber, they don't get paid. The amount is unachievable (and the pay tiny), so women and children come to help their husbands/fathers. This means that Firestone is getting free labor from women and children. They are also dumping lots of toxins and wreaking environmental havoc on the community. You can find a lot more information at StopFirestone.org.

The really cool thing is that there is that the workers and community members are organizing for change. The movement is a global collaborative effort, but fundamentally, it is coming from the people of Liberia who are most effected by Firestone's abuses. This is essential (read Pedagogy of the Oppressed), and I was happy to hear both the speaker and members of the audience emphasize the importance of this point.

I also loved her hopefulness. I've spent a lot of time studying all the things that are wrong in the world, and it can be really discouraging. I sometimes forget that by knowing everything I do, I am empowered to make the change I know needs to happen.

Bryan Alexander at USF

As usual, everything took longer than it was supposed to today, and I'm afraid I can hardly do justice to Bryan Alexander's talk last Thursday, but I'll write what I can now (before class starts) and write some more later.

Bryan Alexander works for NITLE, focusing on use of technology in education. This is completely interesting and awesome. He talked about some of the great collaborative tools in Web 2.0, including collaborative writing and collective research. He said that there is a shift in the model of learning from individual experts to learning through networks (connectivism). This reminded me of this article on categorization and tagging, which describes the limitations of structured, institutionalized categorization (as we have in libraries), and some of the ways that tagging can change this. I have more thoughts on this article, which I will talk about later, but it's the same concept of collective creation.

I think the use of these tools is really exciting, and the formats of collaboration could really transform our culture. If people begin to feel empowered in their education, it's a different dynamic than the "sit down and do as you're told" model.

Does Religion Cause War? Panel event

Another cool-looking event at USF:

"Does Religion Cause War?"

A panel discussion
March 6, 2008
Xavier Room, Fromm Hall, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

featuring

Stephen Zunes, Politics
Vincent Pizzuto, Theology and Religious Studies
Anne Bartlett, Sociology

moderated by John Nelson, Theology and Religious Studies

It is a sobering fact that a majority of students at USF and universities elsewhere have lived half their lives in the climate of war. This panel discussion will investigate whether it is credible to claim, as have bestselling authors like Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006), that religion is a direct cause of war and violence. Ways in which religious motivations can be steered into conflict, whether “fundamentalist” forms of religion are prone to violence, and whether teachings of peace within a religion can constrain the belligerent tendencies of its adherents will all be considered.

Sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Zunes is awesome, and I've heard great things about Pizzuto, including that he's attractive (extra bonus!). I don't know anything about Anne Bartlett.

Gcast: easy podcasting

I'm holding off on my entry about Bryan Alexander's excellent talk until I've uploaded my photos, but in the meantime I thought I would write about Gcast. Gcast is a tool which allows you to easily create and upload podcasts. I am taking Spanish Conversation this semester, so instead of weekly written assignments, our professor has us do "audio blogs" either about our weekly cultural/linguistic activity, or in response to a prompt she has given us. You can find my broken Spanish aquí. En la ultima entrada, hablé sobre Tacna, Peru, y lo que aprendí de Wikipedia en español.

The thing I really like about Gcast is that it's very accessible. Podcasting sounds intimidating, but Gcast allows you to call a toll-free phone number to record your podcast. You don't need to download special audio software or anything. This is especially useful when the recording needs to be done by 5:00, and it's 4:50 and I'm nowhere near my computer. Of course, if you want, you can also upload an audio file from your computer. One drawback with using the phone is the sound quality is pretty poor (making my Spanish especially hard to understand), but depending in how you're using it, it's good enough.

Human Rights Film Night

These films look great:

2008 Human Rights Film Night

March 10
Presentation Theatre
2350 Turk Blvd. at Masonic Ave.

5:00pm
Father G and the Homeboys

Father G and the Homeboys chronicles the lives of 4 Latino gangbangers as they redirect their lives in a wartorn area of Los Angeles known as Boyle Heights, at one time, the street gang capital of the world. For over 20 years, Father Gregory Boyle (Father G) and his non-profit organization, Homeboy Industries, have helped kids plan for their futures instead of their funerals.

7:00pm
For the Bible Tells Me So

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? Dan Karslake’s provocative, entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible.

This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Center for Latino/a Studies in the Americas, the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought, the Latin American Studies Program, the LGBTQ Caucus, and University Ministry.

Brewster Kahle at USF

Brewster Kahle gave an excellent talk at USF last Thursday as part of the Davies Forum. His mission is universal access to all knowledge: he wants to create a library like the (former) library of Alexandria, but digitized and online. He showed us, medium by medium, that this it is doable and not crazy to think we can digitize all texts (in the broad sense). The Internet Archive is that library, which stores hundreds of thousands of digitized books (and other written texts), audio files, moving images, web pages, and software. He successfully convinced me that it is possible, but I still don't know if open content (which the Internet Archive promotes) can beat Google (which uses proprietary formats).

I am excited about all the Old Time Radio files they have. I love OTR. It's engaging on an entertainment level and fascinating on a historical level. Lots of cigarettes and war and blatant sexism. The mysteries are the best.

But back to the talk, he answered the question I posed in an earlier blog post (about how easily digital media can be erased) without me even having to ask it. They back up all their stuff on servers far far away (in Alexandria!), so when a giant earthquake puts San Francisco underwater, the Internet Archive will still exist. Excellent.

St. Anthony Foundation visit to USF

On Friday I had the privilege of spending a bit of time with a group of staff and clients from the Employment Program/Learning Center at St. Anthony Foundation. The Office of Service-Learning and Community Action, where I work, invited them to come. So many USF students serve at St. Anthony's that my office wanted to give the people at St. Anthony's a chance to see where the students come from and hear why they do service. I gave them a tour of the USF campus and was part of a panel with two other ACEs, talking about what we've learned from our service experiences. One of our main focuses was the community as educator. They teach students just like professors do.

On the panel we were talking about how much we enjoy doing service, and one of the men from St. Anthony's said he eats in the dining room there regularly, and he's noticed that USF students always look like they're enjoying themselves. He said it's really nice just to see happy people, and that it's a blessing to have them there.

Remember to smile at people, no matter who they are or whether you're having a bad day, because you might be the only smiling person they see that day.

But I Love You

Sandpapered off graffiti: "BUT I LOVE YOU"
Originally uploaded by rosaamarilla

I took this photo a couple weeks(?) ago. Someone spray-painted "BUT I LOVE YOU" on the fence along the driveway onto the USF campus that goes by Malloy Hall. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, and the facilities guy sandpapered it off, but you could still see it faintly. I would love to know the story behind it. I have a proposal for my readers (all, uh, eight of you, if you're paying attention): Write a story that leads up to someone spray-painting "BUT I LOVE YOU" in big letters on this fence. Bonus points if you include the thoughts of the facilities guy as he sanded off the paint.

Another reason for this post is I am experimenting with blogging photos directly from Flickr. Does anyone know if it's possible to do it with more than one photo in a single post?

Ivan Chew, the liblogarian, comes to USF

Last Thursday, the Davies Forum was lucky enough to have Ivan Chew, a librarian from Singapore, as a guest lecturer. Ivan is a prolific blogger (with nine blogs!) and works for the Singapore National Library Board. He was a very interesting and engaging speaker. He focused on three topics in his presentation: his personal reasons for blogging, the Singapore Public Library's digital experiments, and senior citizens and blogging (follow the links for abbreviated sets of his presentation slides).

Instead of a general summary, I'm going to touch on a few points that stuck out for me.

First, I was mortified to discover that I did not know specifically where Singapore is. General area, yes, but specifically, no. I stand educated and appropriately embarrassed. In general I like to think of myself as more geographically aware than the average American (with the possible exception of U.S. geography, probably because I homeschooled). Anyway, thanks Ivan!

He talked about some of the history of blogging in Singapore, from early on when people were wary about the possibilities of inappropriate content and misinformation, to now, when the Prime Minister has encouraged people to use new media, and all National Library Board employees are required to take new media classes. They even did a call for citizen journalists to cover the closure of one of their libraries. This was interesting and very cool. They (Ivan especially) are recognizing the importance and potential of new media.

I especially like how the libraries are using the blogs to "publicize" and "engage." I love libraries and I love the internet, so I was glad to see the successes that they are having in meshing the two together. I asked him what he thought about the future of the (paper) book, and he asked whether it matters. Very interesting point, and one that's come up in a slightly different context in our class discussion - how important is the medium of the information? Aren't the content and the way we read it the most important? Of course, the medium is related to those, but maybe we shouldn't get caught up on whether a word is made of pigment and fiber or 1's and 0's.

Since Ivan works with young people, someone asked what age he thought kids should be introduced to the internet. He said "As soon as they have something to say." So cool! It's a shift from when I first began to use the internet, when I was 10. Back then, everything was about cybersafety, not getting "lost" on the information superhighway (that never made sense to me), and always asking a parent's permission. Cybersafety for kids is still really important, but his response is a shift from "old enough to know better than to give an ax-murderer her address" to "old enough to participate and create." I love it!

He talked about a conversation he had in which someone asked him if he thought there would ever be a point when there were no more wars. His response was no, but they could be a lot fewer and far-between if the memory of the horrors of war stayed in people's consciousness for longer. This, to me, is an excellent reason for people, especially senior citizens, to blog, and is an excellent reason for us to blog about the war in Iraq. And then when we're old (or probably before then), and the U.S. is trying to get into another ridiculous war, let's look back through our blog archives, remind ourselves what a bad idea war is, and do something to stop it.

And finally he closed his presentation with a cool music video that he made, Dolphins Galaxia.

Here's a nice picture of Ivan, Professor Silver, and a librarian from the USF Gleeson Library.

Mary Madden and my online presence

On Thursday evening, Mary Madden, a researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project came and spoke to my Digital Literacy class (and the many other people who showed up!). She give a very interesting talk, with a good question and answer session at the end. On Friday she was nice enough to make herself available and a few of us met in Crossroads Cafe to have a more informal conversation.

One thing she talked about which is really interesting to me is online identity management. Increasingly, we have more and more information about ourselves available online. That can be good or bad, depending on the level of visibility we want (some people want it to promote themselves), and depending on the quality and type of the information. I might be happy to put my name, my major, my interests, my activities, and a list of my friends online, but I don't want my phone number or address to be so readily available.

Professor Silver has mentioned a couple of times that by the end of this class, the number of Google hits with our name will go up dramatically. To see if this is true, I searched for "amber mcchesney-young" in quotation marks in Google, and got 10 hits.



All of them are about me - as far as I know there are only four other McChesney-Youngs in the world, and they are my immediate family. If you search for my dad's name you get 4,460 hits because he is a very active member on lots of archived email lists. My mom gets 46 hits, my older brother has 19, and my younger sister has 6 - I will always be the middle child. ;-) Anyway, there's kind of an interesting variety there. Most hits are relatively recent, since I've been at USF. One of the more obscure ones is results from a Bay Area Orienteering Coalition activity I did, I think with my Girl Scout troop, on the UC Berkeley campus. We had to navigate around the campus, and answer things like "Which direction is the bear statue facing?" (East, by the way.) Two others, which are fun and just a little embarrassing, are guestbook entries I wrote when I was ten years old (that's almost twelve years ago!). Remember back in the day when people had their Geocities and Angelfire pages with random information, animated GIFs, and guestbooks? They always said "Please sign my guestbook!" and sometimes I did. It's similar to the comments we now leave on blog entries. In these guestbook entries, I told the person that I was 10 years old and liked synchronized swimming. It's from 1996, the year my family first got the internet. Very magical and exciting. Check out Kate's Twenty Second Guest Book. It's fascinating - totally a blast from the past.

In addition to my Google hits, I have a MySpace page (which only includes my first name on the page, but does have pictures and says that I go to USF), and my Facebook page (which is only visible to people in the USFCA network and my friends in other networks). My MySpace page has very little on it, but Facebook has a fair amount of information (no address or phone number). I don't think there's anything I wouldn't be okay with an employer seeing, though. So to sum up, at this point, I'm pretty cool with my online presence. If someone wanted to find me in person, I'm sure they could, but it would take a bit of effort. They can find out a lot about me, but it's stuff I'm comfortable with. Yay.

Just a note for accuracy, the 10 hits that show up are with "very similar" results omitted. When those are included I get 19. Some are the same page over and over, but there are some distinct hits there. Let's see if Professor Silver's prediction is correct and my number of hits goes up.