ENGL 1102 - Blog Assignment: The Sentinel

While reading through The Sentinel I was able to notice a few similarities throughout the years. I skimmed through a 2007, 2011 and 2015 issue. I noticed that security, tuition and parking have been a problem for a long time, and that many of these issues were also mentioned on many posts on last week's assignment. One example is “The Beat” section, which is a report of crimes that happened on campus. The section includes reports of a variety of infractions, from something as simple as a scratch on car while parked and unoccupied to a major report about the death of a 19 year-old found in one of the dorms.

Another section that caught my attention was the “Opinions.” Most of those articles are written by KSU students who have something to say (or rant) about a particular subject. On this article from 2011, a student was disillusioned with the fact that most students voted ‘yes’ for a KSU football team (then inexistent) that would not be put together for a few years. Her concern was that a tuition fee was to be charged specifically for the football team but many students would not get to see it as they would've had graduated already.

An article from the last issue also related to security, addressed the evacuation of the Social Science building that happened on October 22, 2015. Students were asked to leave the building and were not informed of the reason. Later, students learned that the police was performing a “routine bomb sweep . . . because an Israeli consulate was speaking in the building later that day” (2015).

Illustration 1. Source: The Sentinel 2007

One last thing that caught my attention was a survey at the bottom of one of the pages (Illustration 1). It wasn’t about anything meaningful but I thought it was very convenient that we are currently learning about surveys & interviews and there it was! I can definitely use it as an example of how to integrate a graph (or a pie chart) on my report.