Debate and Communication Club Meetings

Touro Communication Club Notes #26

With the end of semester in sight, the pace of everything at Touro picks up dramatically. Our eyes turn toward the academic tasks at hand. Students have final projects and finals to complete. Teachers have meetings and the grading of projects and exams on their agendas. Everyone is juggling the impact of the economy on our lives.

Even though our peripheral vision about the outside world is somewhat diminished, we still are aware of the headlines – the subject of our Club meeting today. The Democratic Presidential campaign seems to have turned a corner with Barack Obama as the apparent winner and Hillary Clinton fighting for her political life. As she says, “It ain’t over until the lady in the pants suit sings, “ she says. The Myanmar cyclone has reminded us once again of how Mother Nature can cause extensive devastation. Both the local and national events continue to create surprising or unsettling news that is worth examining in our session today.

This is the time to test our juggling ability! How many things can we juggle without dropping any or getting sick? School, work, family, finances? Playtime? All I hope!

Here’s the upcoming schedule of the Communication Club:

Wednesday, May 14 – 1 pm -Debate Team

The team has set Wednesday, May 28 as the date for our public debate on Gun Control. That’s 2 weeks away. It’s during Finals period. We have much to do as we finalize the affirmative and negative cases and practice presenting them and enduring cross-examination. We will now add the Rebuttal segment of the debate cycle.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 – 1 pm – Club – “Awareness” with Jason Carvell

Jason will explore the concept of “awareness” and how it affects so many aspects of our daily living. He speaks of “being present” conscious of our thoughts, our surroundings and the people with whom we interact.

What happened on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 “Bully Pulpit II – Media and the News” ?

Debate team members Drani Gabu, James Millner, Amina Bibi and Olushile Atkintade participated. Poet and English instructor, Jan de Castro joined Richard Green and David Nussbaum. Jason Carvell came late. Hal Wicke led the session.

This session was “Bully Pulpit II – The Media and the News,” a continuation of the first session which focused on the Presidential campaign. Hal asked everyone for the stories the group had heard a lot about on the “news” on the “blackboard.” The group mentioned these stories:

• Presidential Campaign – Barack vs. Hillary
• Sean Bell trial decision
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright
• Myanmar Cyclone
• Texas polygamy
• Housing Foreclosures
• Gasoline prices

All of the stories are very different, but what are their similarities. This was a tough one, but the group came up with several similarities:

• There are controversial aspects of every story.
• All the stories are highly emotional.
• Almost all stories affect a lot of people.
• People have an opinion about all of these stories
• Most of the stories affect everyone’s daily lives or their beliefs.
• Many stories question the fairness of the outcome.
• Many disagreements are part of each story.
• Many stories concern money.
• There are sensational (eye/ear-catching) qualities of each of these stories.

We all agreed that no one in the room had first hand knowledge of these issues. That means that we learned about all these stories through the media. We made a List of Media from which we heard these stories:

• TV
• Internet
• Newspapers
• Radio
• The courts
• Places of worship (churches, synagogues and mosques)
• School (teachers, classes)
• Gossip (overheard and directly told)

Every media source has a Media Tool Box with which it transmits these stories. We arrived at these general categories:

• Every media uses Language(words) to tell these stories
• In the media where people tell or write these stories, they use Non-Verbal behaviors (space, time, touch, eye gaze, facial expressions, body language, the voice, and dress) to support the meaning of their language.
• In order for the audience to make sense of these stories, the people who tell or write these stories use a director or hidden Logic which may or may not include Logical Fallacies which the audience may or may not recognize.
• Since we agreed that no one is without Bias, the audience needs to be aware of a variety of Strategies to understand, neutralize & defeat bias.
• As we hear, read or watch these stories being told to us, we also need to sharpen our Critical Thinking abilities to analyze these news stories.

We were running out of time by the time we got to the list of Filters through which all information is delivered. Filters are part of our Media Tool Box. Consciously or unconsciously, these filters change or “color” the stories we tell, hear watch or read. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to go into any detail to demonstrate how these filters can change the receipt of the information in the story. Here’s the list (to be discussed later).

• Self- Concept
• Perception
• Beliefs and values
• Emotions
• Gender
• Power
• Economics
• Culture

As the session was coming to an end, Amina told the group of her encounter with a senior Touro administrator regarding her campaign to get a student lounge at the Midtown site. She felt the meeting went well and they planned to meet again. Amina is interested in politics and plans to return to her native Pakistan to participate in politics. In a very small way, she gained a little experience in local politics by proposing an improvement for her constituency – the students.

Jason commented that to become more conscious of all the elements that occur simultaneously, we needed to become very aware of what is happening around us. The discussion that followed led to Jason volunteering to lead the next Club session in two weeks on “Awareness” strategies. In addition to teaching Communication at Touro, Jason is a professional actor, director, voice-over specialist and a sculptor.

Join us as we try to promote more light than heat! See you next time. Bring a friend!

Hal Wicke

Hal Wicke
Deputy Chair/SGS
Department of Speech and Communication
Touro College
50 West 23rd Street - Suite 621
New York, NY 10010
212-242-4668 ext 6040