Mirror - Vol. 38, No. 07 - October 24, 2012

              THE B^MIRROR
Week of October 24,2012 • Vol. 38, Iss. 7 • The Reflection ofFair field • Independent Student Newspaper of Fairfield University
Bridgeport students study at Fairfield
Ambitious outreach is the vision of an international education hero
BY LUIGI DIMEGLIO
CHIEF COPY EDITOR
The future of an old Fairfield
mission rests on three Bridgeport
high school students.
In January, part of the Con-necticut's
response to the critical
condition of the Bridgeport Pub-lic
Schools came into effect with
the appointment - not election -
of a new superintendent.
Enter Paul Vallas, the urban
schools rejuvenator of Chicago,
Philadelphia, Haiti, Argentina
and post-Katrina New Orleans."
The school system Vallas in-herited
is one riddled with very
low standardized test scores and
a high percentage of econpmi-cally
disadvantaged students.
The same month he began
working for Bridgeport, he con-tacted
Fairfield University with
a proposal featuring the enroll-ment
of worthy high school stu-dents
in core classes.
Vishnu Nair, a senior at
Bassick High School in Bridge-port,
is one of those students who
made the cut. He is taking MU
Nicholas DiFazio/ Vie Mirror
Dr. Laura Nash instructs a class including one of three high school students studying at Fairfield this Fall.
120 "History of American Song,"
instructed by Dr. Laura Nash.
"The hardest thing is step-ping
up ... I definitely feel differ-ent
here," Nair said. "There's a big
gap I jump up."
Every Tuesday and Friday
morning, Nair takes a bus provid-ed
by Bridgeport Public Schools
from Bassick to Fairfield. After
class, he returns to high school
and his tuition here (at a reduced
rate) is covered by Bridgeport.
"The learning itself here im-presses
me. It keeps going for-ward,"
he said. "Some classes in
high school are like this, others
are just repetitive."
Associate Dean of the Grad-uate
School of Education and
Allied Professions Dr. Christine
Siegel has been toggling the lo-gistics
of the program to perfect
everything from transportation
to campus resource access.
She helped determine a list
of 12 courses that would suit the
high school students in terms
of course style and workload.
Though the list created 12 open-ings,
only three students from
Bassick could be admitted to the
program - a number that Siegel
said Fairfield hopes to improve
as the program develops.
"Fairfield University is com-mitted
to social justice and has
always had a long-standing com-mitment
to Bridgeport Public
Schools," Siegel said. She also
added that, "Bridgeport is a
school system that has all the
problems urban school systems
in the U.S. have."
Admittance to the Duel En-rollment
Program requires that
applicants have a cumulative
DUAL ENROLLMENT I PAGE 2
Expert speaks on
social mediaperks
BY JULI BASSETT
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Twitter. Facebook. Insta-gram.
These prominent social
media applications are just three
of many that are affecting and
changing the ways in which col-lege
students can market them-selves
today.
Kate Brodock, executive di-rector
of social media at Syra-cuse
University, spoke to Fair-field
students about how the
increase in social media usage
can actually help individuals
market themselves as products
in a positive way. Today, people
can promote themselves by
blogging, engaging in Facebook
and Twitter conversations and
connecting with professionals
on websites such as Linkedln,
according to Brodock.
In just one minute an aver-age
of 175,000 users sign into a
Twitter account, according to
Brodock. Since the use of social
media is growing at such a fast
pace, it is important to know
how to brand yourself online.
"People can use Twitter for
strictly professional purposes,
social purposes or both," said
Brodock. "The website is known
as a 'glorified sentence' that can
range from T had a burrito for
lunch' to 'I'm here to talk about
People can use
Twitter for strictly
professional pur-poses,
social pur-poses
or both. The
website is known
as a 'glorified sen-tence.
- Kate Brodock
Buddhism."'
So how can students focus
on positive personal branding?
Brodock stressed the impor-tance
of knowing how to brand
yourself before you engage in
EXPERT | PAGE 3
Martin O'SuUivan/lhe Mirror
Students gathered in the LLBCC to view a screening of the final debate in the 2012 Presidential race.
University promotes political awareness
BY MARTIN O'SULLIVAN
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
You could have cracked open
a few beers with some friends and
tuned into the Lions vs. Bears
game.
You could have stayed home
in your pajamas and absorbed
the latest happenings of "Gossip
Girl."
Or you could have come to
the BCC to discuss the future of
your country as you watched two
men verbally battie for the chance
to be in charge.
On Monday night, students
gathered in the Lower Level BCC
to watch a communal screening
fairfieldmirror.com
of the third presidential debate
and fourth overall debate in the
2012 presidential race. This view-ing
event was just one of many
programs in an election series
arranged by the office of Student
Programs and Leadership Devel-opment.
"I think the civic engagement,
or potential'for civic engagement,
is really important," said Elissa
Carroll, associate director of Stu-dent
Programs and Leadership
Development. "Students seeing
other students engaging in it is
helpful to get others excited or in-terested
in what is going on."
According to Carroll, approx-imately
35 to 45 students were in
attendance for the duration of
each debate viewings. Though
many students left before the con-clusion
of each debate, discus-sions
were still prevalent through-out
the course of each viewing.
"I never really watched presi-dential
debates or anything like
that before this so definitely hav-ing
it accessible," said Kaitlin Ma-ciejewski
'15. "Since now we're at
a voting age, it's definitely good."
Other students seemed to
agree that the communal location
was positive. "I think it's helpful,
because I have a TV in my room,
but it's a good location to come
VOTER INITIATIVE I PAGE 2
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