Practicing what they teach

After taking a class called “Communicating about Violence and Children” last term, eight students decided to practice what the class taught through an independent study course, “Communication in Action: Addressing the Violence in Children’s Lives.”

On Friday, Feb. 25, three students from the independent study went to Salem to speak with lawmakers about legislation mandating the use of video cameras in daycares to prevent caregivers from abusing children.

One of the students who went to Salem, Benjamin Shannon, a senior majoring in communication, said he joined the independent study “to have a hand in helping these children.”

According to Shannon, he and the other students who went to Salem met with the Oregon Commission for Child Care, whose board members included Sen. Rod Monroe. The senator encouraged them to write letters and to have friends, family and classmates write letters to members of the Oregon Commission for Child Care, senators and congressmen, because “that’ll have a big effect as well.”

“It was interesting to see how a commission like that works,” Shannon said.

Gisele Tierney, senior instructor in the Department of Communication, taught “COMM 317U: Communicating about Violence” last fall and led the independent study this term.

According to Tierney, Detective Mace Winter of the Portland Police Bureau spoke to her class last fall about the legislation he had been working on to mandate the use of video cameras in daycares. When he learned about what students did this term, he invited them to join him in Salem.

Tierney said the original course “look[ed] at how the media talks about violence and children,” because there is a “tendency for the public to be protected” from the realities of the violence that some children face.

“Language and messages in general have a way of deactivating us as a public. There tends to be an emotional triggering, followed by horror, followed by a desire to make change, followed by a lethargy [at the difficulty of making change],” Tierney said.

According to Tierney, students of this term’s independent study “really wanted to affect change in some tangible way.”

“The legislation is our main task,” she said, but the group will also place collages in Smith Memorial Student Union and may form a student group on campus.

According to Tierney, “the idea of the student group is to keep the issue of violence in children’s lives in the consciousness of PSU.”

The aim in hanging collages is to raise awareness, but Tierney and her students “want to move away from squeamishness into action.”

Of the class itself, Tierney said, “I’m very pleased with the work and the enthusiasm has remained up all term.”

According to Tierney, she is not usually so active in independent study courses, “it’s just something that has been very rewarding.”

While the idea of the student group is still under debate, Tierney said, “In some capacity the special project will continue into next quarter.” Students have agreed to speak about the project in COMM 317U next term and they were invited to come back to the April session for the Oregon Commission for Child Care.

In part, the class served to remind the students that, “We can’t just barrel through and make these decisions…we have to do the research, the investigation, properly,” Tierney said.

To this end, the students conducted an informal survey via e-mail and Facebook to gauge public opinion on video cameras in daycares.

Although the survey was not rigorous, Tierney said they revealed that, “as a general public we’re appalled by child abuse [and] we want it stopped,” but “we’re terrified of implementing anything that might invade our privacy.”
According to Tierney, children age two and under are murdered more than any other age group, but “we are generally under-informed about the violence in children’s lives,” in part, because “we want to not know the specifics.”

“Its not that people want to be in the dark, but it’s comfortable in the dark,” Tierney said.

According to Tierney, she and her students want to promote awareness of the violence children experience “without horrifying [people] so much that they turn away.”

The collages will be up in SMSU during finals week and will “hopefully prompt people to want to get involved” in addressing and curbing the violence in children’s lives, Tierney said.

*[Editors note: A member of the Vanguard staff is enrolled in this class.]