WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW THIS?!?!

     Our class is studying citizen journalism. So my assignment today was to identify and publish a community story of what was currently happening using text, images, and video and upload it to this site, thus creating a campus newspaper. With around 40 students at my lab today and probably around 100 other students doing the same thing, I wonder to myself: Is there really 150 notable stories in my community that people actually care about? Is there even 150 notable news stories in our campus right now? Is there 150 things that will make our community better by knowing or learning about? Probably not. Because of that, there will be some stories that aren’t quite meaningful for the community but instead, it will be a waste of time, a waste of bandwidth, a waste of my life.

     The stories that I’ve read so far are so trivial that it makes me wonder… WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW THIS?!?! Does anyone need to know about the quality of our washrooms at SFU? Does anyone need pictures about the quality of our washrooms at SFU? Guess what? Someone needed say out loud to the world that our washrooms are well… lets just say it don‘t smell like roses. It could've even been the user's own feces and wanted to make a crappy story out of it. If they wanted some change, they could've gone to a janitor or even the front desk to get the problem resolved. If worse came to worse, there's probably 25 other washrooms that they could've gone to in the mall alone.

     How about the story about the Curry Express. There is actually someone out there that is trying to promote a fast food booth inside the food court. Do they have any idea how long the food has been sitting in that insert? Are you sure that’s not yesterday’s meal? The writer says, “This express is providing original, chef made curry that comes directly out of the pot behind the scene.” Have you ever worked at a fast food restaurant? Let me tell you, there’s no chef, there’s no original curry recipe, there’s nothing “fresh” about it. There’s a reason they make they curry “behind the scenes” and let me tell you, it comes from a vacuum-sealed bag, not a pot.

     I thought there would only be one story on the food court. Was I wrong or what. Food court this, food court that, our food court is too expensive, this food court is too close to our school. IT’S A FOOD COURT!!! There’s a reason they put it there: TO GET YOUR MONEY!!! The reason the prices are so high is because we are stupid enough to eat there and they’re smart enough to say, “Hey, we can con these students by putting our prices higher.” The food court is a business, what are you going to expect, give you a meal for free? Staying on the topic about businesses, why are there so many stories about parking at the school? The best things in life are free, and parking isn’t that great so that’s why we have to pay for it.

     But there is hope, a lady named Jiwansanghera demonstrated the true purpose of a website of this nature and the true purpose of this assignment. Her article about homelessness and today’s society really shed some light on things that we usually overlook. Another article that caught my eye is about student safety on the walk to and on the sky train itself. It’s great to bring this up to make our community safer and a better place.

     At first, I thought this assignment would just be a waste of time. Just writing a story about something, somewhere, some time ago. But I was wrong, it was more than that, it displayed how everyone had a story, no matter how worthless it was, or inspirational it can be. This assignment showed me how people can just waste public web space like it was a toilet, but then again it also showed me that there are good people in the world that want to make a difference and this is the perfect medium to do it in. I’ll leave you with some of the best and some of the worst articles that I’ve stumbled upon and show the world what we think you need to know.

Have a good one.

JBullaoit

Best:

http://www.nowpublic.com/life/sfu-students-endangered-sky-train

http://www.nowpublic.com/life/homeless-life-surrey

Worst:

http://www.nowpublic.com/health/sfu-quality-mens-washrooms

http://www.nowpublic.com/opinions/sfu-surrey-s-local-kfc-tacobell-branch-questionable-quality

http://www.nowpublic.com/life/unsanitary-male-washrooms-sfu