BLOOD PHONE

1)

As I sit in the zombie lounge studying for my chemistry exam I glance around the room to see if anything out of the ordinary is going on. What I see is the usual texting, Facebook up on laptop screens and people confined to their own world listening to their ipods. I would never have thought that acts of injustce were being funded by those studying among me on the in this silent study room (hence the name zombie lounge) where the slight creeking of a chair brings malicious glares.

Columbite-Tantalite or coltan for short can store high amounts of electric charge and is used in almost all of our portable electronic. It is a murky mineral with greatest deposits in the failed state of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The DRC may be on another continent but the mineral is an intergral component in our devices that we can not live without. Imagine walking down the neverending pathways of Penn State, counting all the students/professors who are chatting on the cell phones, jamming to Kanye and techno on their mp3 players or just writing an essay on their laptop. One thing in common between ALL students at PSU is their love for Colton.

The limits of mineral far exceed just these devices. It is in Nuclear Reactors, ABS breaking systems, air bags, F-16s and much more. Infact the list is nearly endless.

The method of extraction is by forced labor and often leads to early death and slavery. The extinction of the massive apes to feed the workers is a byproduct. Coltan is mined by panning the ore with water. A small group can mine up to a kilo per day. Imagine the gold rush of California almost 2 centuries ago! This is sold for $300 in the final market. But the miners barely make $1-3 per weel if they are lucky to not lose it to the rebel forces or stolen by others. Civil war in these countries exacerbates the situation leading to wholesale slaughter of innocent humans. Even the United Nation reports that Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda are involved in smuggling Coltan, though all three nations deny this.

To feed all these miners, many of the mighty apes of Congo National parks have already been killed and fed as bush meat. The rivers have been polluted, the people have been savaged. Most of us who use this product, unfortunately have no idea that Coltan powder is in our batteries and how it came into the battery. We are a very pragmatic bunch of and rarely do we allow discrimination to exist once we come to know about it. So next time you text your friend or log on Facebook, remember those in the Congo who live in abominable conditions. Maybe in the next few years we can start to use “gorilla-safe” cell phones.

2)

“I just spent over $2,000 on my laptop. And I got a new phone for 150 bucks” 

-Matt Freshman 2014

“Blood diamonds all over again”

                               -Pranoy PSU 2014

“That is some sick stuff. I am surprised a lot of people don’t know about this yet. I had no clue these acts against humanity were being perpetrated for my iphone." 

Thadeous Freshman 14

“That’s why I don’t have a cell phone. This is a very important issue that needs to be brought up in international trade organizations and such. Very few people know about this and that needs to change.”

Miss Hoftman High School English Teacher

3)

The “colton rush” led to:

“violent expulsion of many farmers and their families, from their land, at the hands of rebel groups and ruthless businessmen.[28] These forced displacements particularly affected those properties where coltan could be found in abundance and in certain cases, slave labor was used in the exploitation of these coltan-rich areas.”

-Gonzaga Journal of International Law

Eighty Percent of the World colton reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

- American University report

On average Students change cellphones every 12 months.

-MSNBC

College Students annually spend over $10.5 billion on electronics. 

-Pittsburgh Post Gazette

4)

I feel that there is an abundance of inforamtion on the topics of colton. What I would like is to research more on the connection to PSU students. I feel like by promoting awareness about the subject more students would to give more in depth interviews. Talking to computer science or engineering professors could provide me with technical data. 

PROFESSIONAL PARTIERS ONLY

"We cannot rank Penn State University against other schools in the party category because we feel it is unfair to rank professionals against amateurs"

-Playboy

This institution will be my home for the next four years. The Pennsylvania State University is a solid academic environment with a work-hard-party hard atmosphere. Compounded with top notch engineering, business, liberal arts programs and the best party scene in the nation, we as Nittany Lions have much to be proud of. This American Life chose to investigate what it took to be the #1 party school in the nation. And so the journalists from this nationally acclaimed radio program descended upon the doorsteps of our college, fraternities and homes.

These journalists arrived in our pristine valley to expose the reality behind the #1 party school. A school where even Playboy states that partying that goes on here is incomparable to any other institution. Setting up their base of operations in a small local house situated in the midst of Frat Row, they wait for the brouhaha to commence. It is a football weekend night. The reporter within the first 30 min witness multiple acts of public drunkardness, urination and general anarchy. Through interactions with these intoxicated students many serious issues were brought forth. Underage drinking and high blood alcohol concentrations are the issues that plague Happy Valley. Ironically State College was bestowed the title of the safest place to live in the country. The reporters follow a cop for a night. The crimes of the night are all centered around drinking. 

Reporters from The American Life highlight what it takes to be the number one party school. From mucky fraternity floors to pissing on bushes, listeners begin to feel that weekends at Penn State are exclusively crazy. It is true that drinking is rampant here. It is true that President Spanier and the University have exhausted almost all options to decrease underage consumption of alcohol. This article holds a mirror up to the students who desecrate the name of this prestigious university. The callous attitude of these students end up in date rape cases, violence and property damage. These are very real problems in our society, in our utopia.

Let it be known to all, that these topics are common practice in most public colleges. Problems of this ilk are faced in most public universities. It is just the magnitude of students, over 38,000 students from every state of the country that can seem overwhelming. 5% of students is 1,900 students!! All of this within a mile of the University. I personally do not agree how they define Greek life at Penn State. As a pledge at a fraternity, I partake in parties. However the most important aspect of Greek Life is the concept of brotherhood and service. Fraternities that have sold morals such as Sigma Nu, Beta Theta Pi and Phi Gamma Delta are completely misjudged and overlooked. Depicting Greek Life as a place to have rampant sex and getting drunk is simply not the case at all. 

Interestingly this article does highlight serious issues that plague our university today. Backed with solid observations and quotes this radio program holds up a mirror to our puerile actions.

First Draft?

“this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated.”

-Anne Lemont

My perception of prolific writers like Hemmingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald was that, some sort of divine inspiration guided their pens. Lemont in her essay states that society tends to believe authors first drafts end up becoming their masterpieces. That heavy tomes in the library which I could barely pick up, were written with ease. That works like Grapes of Wrath, The Color Purple and Atlas Shrugged were produced out of an excellent first draft. Through my experiences as well as Lemont’s this is quite the contrary. 

Writing literature of any kind takes more then a first draft. The notion of hundreds of iterations of a work is simply unfathomable to many who are not accustomed to writing. Many in society are under the impression that writers just stretch there fingers and type away creating a Pulitzer Prize winning novel just from their first draft. Though I many wish the process to be this simple in real life, it rarely is. For me, I write everything that comes to me. I view the first draft as a source to find raw ideas and phrases that are jumbled up together. Writing my raw thoughts on paper allow me to rearrange them as well as cut and add details that enhance the story. Then I take these changes and start my 2nd draft that is more focused and organize my sentiments.

First drafts serve as a starting point. It many times will be incoherent, ungrammatical and disorganized; however all your ideas are on paper. Similarly imagine a garden with beautiful flowers amidst a jungle of weeds. A gardener simply has to eliminate the undesirable weeds, rearrange and add a few new vibrant flowers. Almost everything in the garden was originally present. The gardener just edited the region to look nice. This represents the transition of the first to the second draft. A “shitty first draft” allows for the writer to freely express their thoughts, not having grammar etc to concentrate on. This shitty first draft is the raw material that over a period of time will become a piece of art. This is a process that takes time and perseverance. This is the process that even epic writers must go through.