Rhetorical Strategies, Group Project

We are planning on appealing to the pathos of our audience with our tag line of "hook up." This plays on the emotions of college students because there are things that college students associate with this phrase. We are not referring to that with our use of the phrase but it is a way of drawing in an audience and creating interest in our issue. The website will have links to all of the organizations that we think would be good places to volunteer, which is an argument of logos. We will be including organizations that we are involved in, establishing ethos.

Group roles

In a group I prefer to complete tasks, no matter how minute and make sure that things are finished. I am not as much of an ideas person as I am a "doer." I prefer to be told what needs to be done, do it and let the other group members do the creative thinking and actual presentation. I am good at delegating tasks and organizing people as well. I can separate tasks and make sure that everyone does their part and has an equal amount of work to do. I don't mind presenting but I would prefer to not be responsible for creating the presentation and thinking of the best means of presentation. If I have been given time to practice the presentation and know what needs to be said, I am capable of presenting.

Editorial Arguments Portfolio, Author's Note

This portfolio focuses on the greater issue of academic misconduct among university professors, and on the specific issue of the recent firing of professor Ward Churchill from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Each piece is geared for the newspaper reaching Denver and Boulder, The Denver Post. All three of the pieces that I have submitted express my opinion that students and administrators should be cautious in accepting the word of their professors and employees as truth. I believe there should be more strict standards for professors and a zero-tolerance policy for academic misconduct within the professorial community. I establish ethos in this portfolio by using personal experience as a college student. The stories that I use are also used to appeal to the pathos of readers. The logos comes from research of university policies and local newspaper articles. The assignments themselves have been posted on eCollege in the doc sharing section, selected to be shared with the professor only and the other assignments are located on this blog. I will be turning in the humorous piece for this portfolio separately, as it is a cartoon and is not in an electronic format. All that said, my portfolio includes three separate pieces: a letter to the editor, an op-ed piece, and a humorous piece, all of which revolve around the same topic.

Holly Buechner

Humorous Piece Author's Note

First of all, please excuse my lack of artistic ability. I hope this comic makes sense. There are some aspects that are pretty specific to the situation itself, but there are also some themes that work with the larger issue of dishonesty in academic communities. I'm open to any suggestions on how to make it funnier or more effective. Thanks!

Holly

Humorous Argument

I chose to draw a cartoon for my humorous piece. In the cartoon I use humor by quoting students listening to a lecture given by Ward Churchill on how the moon is made of cheese. One of the students is saying that the information can't be right and her friend says that since he is the professor it must be right. Then to further the mockery of Churchill I have another student on the end saying that the information came from a paper that he wrote in the 4th grade. This is making fun of the plagiarism charges against Churchill. Churchill is also wearing a feather headdress to mock his invalid claims to be of Native American descent. 

Humorous Example

When the issue with Professor Ward Churchill began, a couple of years ago, I saw a cartoon in a local newspaper portratying Churchill dressed in flamboyant Indian attire in front of a class, giving a lecture on plagiarism. This is funny because the fact that Churchill claimed his Native American ancestry when there are only traces of Indian heritage in his geneology. It is also funny because Churchill had recently been investigated for plagiarism, so he would never be allowed to give a lecture on how to avoid plagiarism. The artist of ths cartoon was exaggerating the issues at hand, making them funny. I think that I might go about writing my humor piece in this same way. I do not know what media I will choose, but exaggeration will most likely be the best way to make this situation humorous. There are a lot of possibilities for this, especially because Churchill recently filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado and won, 1 whole dollar.

Author's Note

This draft of my Op-ed piece is mostly complete in terms of length. I think that I might need a better conclusion to the piece, but for the most part it seems complete. I feel like I jump around a lot in this piece, so help on where I need to focus more specifically would be great. I would also like to know if you think that I took a strong enough stance within my paper. As always, help with grammar, wording, details, etc. would be very helpful. Thanks!
Holly Buechner