A2|September 27, 2018
News Advance-Titan
Christina Basken - News Editor Nikki Brahm - Asst. News Editor
advancetitan.com/news
COURTESY OF EVERYDAY AFRICA INSTAGRAM
TOP: Rangers fight to protect Africa’s elephants from ivory poachers in Garamba National Park, Congo. Rangers deploy into the park by helicopter and barge. BOTTOM: Children race broken bicycle rims on the beach in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
COURTESY OF EVERYDAY AFRICA INSTAGRAM
TOP: Pictured above is Kezia C., surrounded by her juniors. Kezia is the senior midwife at Ross Road Public Health Clinic in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Social media tells real life stories: Africa by Megan Behnke behnkm48@uwosh.edu
A lecture series, “Instagramming Everyday Africa” aimed to use technology in a way that changes stereotypes of underdeveloped countries. On Sept. 24, the geography department held the first of three GeoQuest Lecture Series, led by professor Angela Subulwa. The series was centered around social media and the misrepresentation of Africa. “The premise of the lecture series in general is to kind of tackle those signature questions from gen. ed. or USP, so this one’s kind of drilling down on intercultural knowledge,” Subulwa said.
According to Subulwa, Africa was a specific topic in the presentation because of how people typically frame Africa and due to the enormous amount of geographic literature about the specific region. “It all feeds into media and news representation of the continent in a singular way,” Subulwa said. UW Oshkosh student Julia Steffes said social media is influencing the representations of other countries. “It’s helped and end stereotypes on other parts of the world,” Steffes said. Another UWO student, Joshua Mennen, said although he doesn’t use social media too much, he does want to know more about representation and influences that so-
cial media can bring. “I’m hoping to learn about it and how it influences other countries’ culture,” Mennen said. During the presentation, Subulwa said there are numerous studies on how to build narrative about that particular region of a continent. “Part of the problem of social media and these tools and technology is maybe they can overcome this sort of stuff,” Subulwa said. “That they can bridge differences or create new conversations or new representations.” Subulwa used an example from Curtis A. Kleim’s book “Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind” during the presentation, ways that Africa
has been represented including being a dark continent, troubled, helpless, unchanging, exotic, sexualized, wise and superior. Steffes said she wants to learn more about the social media representation. “I want to get a new perspective on how social media has influenced other parts of the world,” Steffes said. Subulwa said she hopes students will learn more about Africa and more about representation through social media after the presentation. “There is no single real representation of a particular place, especially a continent of a billion people,” Subulwa said. Subulwa showed pictures of Africa to students and had
them draw or write what they think when they hear about the continent. Most of them were very similar. Including the words “poverty” and “violence”, or having pictures of elephants or another wild animals. Steffes said social media can, at times, be used to help people, whether it is trying to get a representation of something or someone or whether it’s for charity. “I have a friend who does social media for a nonprofit organization,” Steffes said. “I help out by sharing posts and getting the word out.” Subulwa presented an example of representation and misinterpretation in Africa by showing a news broadcast where the president of Kenya,
Uhuru Kenyatta, was headlined as the president of Africa, showing that some people think of Africa as a whole and not 54 countries. Even though the presentation was part of the GeoQuest lecture series, Subulwa said the target audience was for anyone who was still in University Studies Program, specifically in Quest one, two and three. Anyone who was interested in that particular region or social media was invited to attend. There will be two more GeoQuest Lecture Series presentations, one next month and another one in November. To find out more information, contact the UWO Department of Geography.
“Against All Odds” hosts refugee simulation by Holly Gilvary
gilvah18@uwosh.edu The Winnebago County Literacy Council and UW Oshkosh professor Michael Fonkem collaborated to host “Against All Odds,” a refugee simulation workshop, at the Oshkosh Public Library on Saturday, Sept. 22. The simulation was created by Fonkem, who has also held the simulation for students at Oshkosh North High School and in specific classes at the University. The simulation workshop provided members of the Oshkosh community a chance to gain an understanding of refugees and what they go through. Literacy Council tutor Dana Koch began the workshop by giving a brief presentation on refugees, explaining who they are, what kinds of countries they are coming from and who of these refugees have come to Oshkosh. Koch said the Literacy Council decided to do a type of refugee-awareness program because many of the students at the Literacy Council are refugees. He said there had been
a lot of questions regarding where these refugees come from, what they’ve been through and what trauma they had faced. “I learned that Dr. Fonkem had done a simulation like this at North High School, and he’s done a couple at the University, and I thought it would be a perfect collaboration,” Koch said. Fonkem engaged the attendees in the simulation, which was specific to refugees from Syria. Attendees were asked to come up in various group sizes and were then assigned identities as Syrian refugees. (This included identities such as husband and wife, mother and children, etc.). Attendees, such as Syrian refugees, would then roll a dice to determine what happened to them next. There were a multitude of outcomes that each attendee could get, including drowning at sea, getting caught by Syrian rebels, finding a safe zone or successfully escaping to Turkey. Fonkem set up a tarp with bubble wrap underneath to simulate the landmines in Syria. If attendees stepped on and popped any bubble wrap, it would simulate them stepping on a bomb. This could result in “injuries” or “death” among the participants. Fonkem noted the importance of the attend-
ees not knowing where the bubble wrap was, as in Syria many people do not know where the land mines are located. Most attendees in the simulation “died” with only four attendees remaining. None of the four made it to the United States. This showed attendees just how rarely Syrian refugees actually escape to safety. Oshkosh West High School student Ashlyn Jones said she had the option to attend the event for a class. “I decided to come here because it’s a topic I’m really interested in, and I just thought it would be pretty fun,” Jones said. Jones said she was surprised by how few refugees actually make it to safety. “I really didn’t realize how many people don’t make it to the U.S. or don’t even get to the refugee camps,” Jones said. “So many people just don’t make it.” Fonkem discussed the “push/pull theory,” which explains there are conditions in the home countries of refugees that push them out, while there are conditions in other, more stabilized countries that pull refugees in.
REFUGEE, PAGE A3
College of Business charges Students Technology Fees by Christina Basken baskec94@uwosh.edu
The UW Oshkosh College of Business has implemented a new Student Technology Fee of $8 per course to offset the cost of replacing student computers in its labs. According to the Student Technology Fee website, the $8 will cover the use of student computer labs and the replacement of computers every four years, totaling $78,000 per year. The fee applies to all College of Business undergraduate courses except online classes, which are exempt to the $8-percourse fee due to online fees already attached. The Student Technology Fee
was approved by UWO Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor John Koker. According to Wisconsin Statute 36.27(1), the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System may establish special course fees as deemed necessary by the institution. The College of Business delivers approximately 12,500 undergraduate enrollments per year. The fee would raise approximately $100,000 per year. The plan was proposed in March, 2018 and put into effect for the first time this semester. In the past, the technology fees were supported by the Lab Modification program, a program that allowed colleges to apply for money as part of UW System allocations.
According to UWO professor of information systems Jakob Iverson, the Lab Modification program was discontinued three years ago to not only the College of Business but to all colleges within UWO. “We had no funding mechanism to replace computers or technology that was used by students,” Iverson said. “Rather than get rid of all the computers and technology, we looked around for ways we could fund this technology and realized this course fee was a way forward.” Iverson said the College of Business didn’t have to come up with money to cover the fees until now. “Some of it we were covering out of the college budget; we had some foundation gifts from
donors,” Iverson said. “The fortunate part, a lot of these expenses are cyclical so when we replace computers in our lab, it’s a big expense in one year and then we don’t replace that for another four years. We were fortunate that we didn’t have to replace anything major in that time frame.” Iverson also said other colleges are looking into solutions for the same problem. “Every other college has the same issue that we have and departments as well,” Iverson said. “I know the Department of Journalism is struggling with what they are going to do, but I don’t know how they are planning on moving forward with a solution.” Department chair and asso-
ciate journalism professor Sara Steffes Hansen said faculty are discussing adding a course technology fee, but they would prefer not to charge their students for lab fees. “Departments like journalism need to update our labs, especially with our focus on multimedia,” Steffes Hansen said. “With the funding and budget situation, the University approach to updating the lab has not been addressed, so we are caught between trying to update the labs and not having funding options.” “That remains to be seen,” Koker said. “In other classes, fees have stayed the same for a long time, they have increased and they have even decreased. Any proposed change will be
carefully reviewed.” Iverson said the new fee is in addition to the existing Student Technology Fee all UWO students are currently paying for. “Students are being charged a Student Technology Fee, about 2 percent of their tuition,” Iverson said. “We were unable to use that money for our purposes because that’s set aside for University-wide initiatives such as Wi-Fi on campus and printing.” UWO College of Business student Shane Mann said he didn’t know about the $8 fee. “I don’t think there was much transparency at all,” Mann said. “I don’t remember receiving an email about the fee; I mean it would have been nice to have gotten one.”