Quote:
Originally Posted by tld221
I took a journalism course focusing on minorities in the media, and all of the required events to attend were community meetings, protests or demonstration-type events. Similarily, this was on the syllabus for students to "further understand" the lifestyle. A lot of students got low grades/failed because it was a huge portion of the grade, and many students said they "didnt feel comfortable" attending those types of events. Reasons I heard ranged from "i felt unsafe/unwelcome in the neighborhood" to "i don't need to physically be present to understand the issues."
Professor didn't buy any of it, though he did empathize with students feeling uncomfortable with events that leaned with religious undertones. His point, after lots of complaints from students (and parents, i bet) was that if this makes students uncomfortable, that it's a. a good thing, to be challenged as such and b. they probably didnt have the wearwithall to cut it as a journalist.
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I could see a large part of the point of the professor in this setting, because as a journalist you do have to cover events that arent always pleasant being in thought or may be physically dangerous (warzones for example).
In my class, the drag show event was not stated in the syllabus. It wasnt mentioned at all until probably the 4th week of the class, almost as if the instructor just decided on a whim to make the assignment.