Woodstock 1969. Nicky and Bobby. A young couple who attended the seemingly popular music festival held in the Catskill Mountains of Bethel, New York. This photograph resembles the peace that some find at festivals, but most importantly love. Love with music, love with one another, and in most cases, love with drugs. Music festivals across the world have a strong drug-related stigma attached to them. Growing up as the daughter of two extreme Dead-Head’s, I have overheard thousands of stories of festivals in the late 1900’s. Not only were drugs a large part of the festival go-er’s experience, but also the musicians. A well-known example of this was when lead singer and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, died from accidental overdose in 1995.  His fan base was deeply rooted within the drug scene and that is what made their music so “special and experimental” as they might say.

I chose to focus on this picture because it stood out to me as a shot with hidden significance or a subliminal meaning. Especially now, with the influx of drugs flooding my generation, when someone sees this photo, they think of drugs. I chose to manipulate this image to show the true colors of so many generations perspectives of this image. The ground is covered in tabs of hallucinogens and bags of cocaine, while the sky is what one might consider a “trippy” image, all representing what the people laying down are feeling. I chose to put an aura around Nicky and Bobby symbolizing the high they are feeling, that from music, love, and drugs. It is as though you are entering an alternate universe, which signifies the feeling of the experience Woodstock might give.

Photos used:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-woodstock-moment-40-years-later-33569550/

After living in Baltimore City for the majority of my life, I am sad to say that police brutality has become very familiar to me. I moved to California months before the beating and death of Freddie Gray, which happened just miles from my home. My city was deeply affected by the riots that followed the incident. This assignment sparked my interest to take on police brutality as my topic, as I would like to inform people of the severity of the issue.

In my infographic, I introduced the topic with 3 of the most important statistics my opinion. These included the cost of the damage law enforcement officers have done, which implies the affect it had on families and personal lives, the idea that majority of people are innocent in these stories, and the racial bias that comes along with police brutality. I chose to lay out a storyline of incidents that have occurred in the past 30 years because it is imperative for people to know this is not a recent problem, but it has been going on for many years. I gave a quick background on each scenario, but not without the important, gruesome details of the events at hand. For the next section, I led with the top 10 states with highest brutality ratesby coloring in states with the use of Adobe Photoshop. This gives the reader a visual of who is being affected most and where. I chose the color scheme red, white, and blue to signify law enforcement colors as well as red blood drops on the timeline to incorporate a sense of pathos to the reader. I did this to show that this is an extremely difficult topic that has much more meaning than a set of numbers.

Additional sources used:

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/01/11/police-views-public-views/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12111-013-9246-5

Since the most recent presidential election, our right to freedom of speech has been exhausted by the variety of opinions people in America hold. The discrepancy in opinions are most common regarding equality, religion, race, gun control, women’s rights, political agendas and so much more. Through the acts of peaceful protests, rallies, and even violent riots, American citizens attempt to advance their positions using their first amendment right. For my DIY #3, I chose to explore freedom of speech within the boundaries of the USC community in order to acquire opinions and subsequently raise awareness on how we, as Trojans, can use productive and respectful speech to change the course of today’s society.

I found it necessary to introduce my vox pop with an attention grabbing, emotional recording of a protest chant I found in a youtube clip. In doing so, free speech and democracy, two of America’s most defining traits, are immediately engrained into the listener’s mind. The young girl fighting for her beliefs evokes emotion in the listener, and pushes one to exercise their own freedom of speech. Prior to my interviews, I researched freedom of speech on college campuses across the United States and gained an understanding of student’s opinions of this topic, and what universities are doing to stop the negative spread of information. For example, I found that over 350 colleges are taking action against hate speech on their campuses, as mentioned in an article from the Freedom Forum Institute. Fortunately, as received from a nationwide pollon student free speech on campus, 87% of students state that they approve of their campus’s job of promoting free speech in the classroom and around the school. While these are favorable statistics, I felt it was necessary to interview students and staff in order to gauge sentiment on USC’s treatment and promotion of free speech. USC is a particularly interesting environment to interview students and staff because city-wide and student lead protests are common around campus; after the 2016 presidential election, students lead anti-Trump protests, and the Downtown Los Angeles marches ended up spilling onto campus.

As we know, our country is filled with varied beliefs on freedom of speech. Furthermore, the University of Southern California has an extremely diverse student population thus leading me to believe that I would be exposed to these different beliefs while interviewing. Throughout my interview process, I spoke to a wide variety of people in the Trojan Family from different walks of life. I spoke to one business major student, one accounting major student, one communications major student, one security guard, and one member of the Greek community. Their differing backgrounds set up the framework for their supported and educated opinions. The different responses I received proved my preconceived notion of varying opinions. Nevertheless, my greatest takeaway from studying this topic is that in order for one to protect their freedom of speech and expression, people must become tolerant and respectful of other opinions. Without this open mindedness, people will become unwilling to voice their opinions or rather revert to hate speech or violence in order to get their point across.

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2RlIwpq7co

https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/free-speech-on-public-college-campuses-overview/hate-speech-campus-speech-codes/

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfmpoeytvqc3cl2/NATL%20College%2010-25-15%20Presentation.pdf?dl=0

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/12/missouri-yale-campus-speech-first-amendment/75600646/