Tag: Issue 25

Public Access offers students opportunity to produce television shows

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Students with an urge to try their hand at working in televi­sion can learn the ropes through U-public, the operators of Albuquerque’s Public Access channels.

The non-profit organization offers classes through meetup. com/upublicans which range in price from free to $10 and teach things like how to develop a show concept, how to use production and recording equipment and how to make money through programming, said U-public Director Toby Younis.

The program has offered 75 classes and trained 138 volunteers since July 2012, and has 35 more classes in the works, he said.

Since U-Public began operating chan­nels 17, 26 and 27 in the city, it has offered seven in-house productions and 18 independent productions. More than 30 more are in various stages of pro­duction, he said.

“We have been working on bringing in all types of content to public access, from shows such as an online web-series, to educa­tional and local based content, as well as sports broadcasts such as Women’s Liberal Basketball,” Younis said.

Theatre major Shelley Carney said U-public’s vision of training and support­ing budding TV pro­ducers has done a lot to bring public television back into the public forum in Albuquerque.

“U-Public has suc­ceeded in changing the face of public access television with educa­tional and local com­munity based program­ming, and U-Public’s main focus is to produce shows with quality content that add value to the com­munity,” she said.

Carney, who pro­duces a local talk show called “New Mexico Media Makers” on U-public, said the con­tent on U-public is education-driven and locally-based, which has made it valuable to the public.

“We have a show that educates on how to deal with the death of a loved one emotionally and financially, a show that gives legal advice on many common scenarios from legal experts and we have productions that show­case local community media,” Carney said.

For more infor­mation on U-public, visit upublic.tv.

Editorial: Preventing rape starts with education

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Editorial By: The CNM Chronicle Editorial Board

Rape culture needs to end and it must start with education.

Questioning what a victim wore or what the victim had to drink seems natural. Jokes about rape — such as the line sung by the men in “Summer Nights” from “Grease” — are so common in media that most people hardly notice.

Rape culture will not go away over­night. We need education on the subject, without judgment, spin or propaganda.

We need institutions like CNM to add rape culture to the list of cultural studies classes.

We need professionals to tell us how to handle situations where rape culture is happening. We need classes on preventing rape culture like the active shooter train­ing mentioned in “Active shooter training offered on Montoya, Westside Campuses” on the front page of this issue.

We need this because victims should not be afraid to come forward after a rape. We need this because teenagers think it is ok to video tape a rape, but do nothing to stop it.

The problem with rape culture is that it blurs the line. It can make people forget that we live in a world where actions have consequences.

Major news outlets like CNN have made comment about the recent guilty decision in the Stubenville rape case that lament the loss of promising careers – of the rapists, and of their lifelong labels as sex offenders.

What the national news media failed to acknowledge is the struggle the victim will have.

Images and video of her rape are on the internet forever. Her memory loss of the night will leave her with lifelong questions about how things got so out of control.

This case, from start to finish, is the product of a culture that embraces rape as funny or the victims fault or a common­place thing that happens all the time.

This is not ok.

Last spring, the CNM Chronicle wrote a special edition paper on sex and violence which included the story of a male rape victim.

He said his attackers were never brought to justice because the respond­ing officers did not believe a man could be raped.

His story can be read at thecnmchron­icle.wordpress.com/overcoming-stigma.

If the police can be taken in by rape culture, we must be educated in order to combat it.

So CNM, give us the option to learn.

There are so many instances where people tells us it is ok to think rape jokes are funny, that a person’s sexual history is relevant to a sexual assault and that a forceful or violent man is somehow sexy.

We need a place to that will help us examine the problem.