By Julian Mendoza and Becky Wandel

April 19, 2019. The scent of gasoline and anticipation fills the air. Finals week is stealthily creeping up on students at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Time to give the people one last smile. The revving growl of a motorcycle engine swallows the cries of Canada geese fleeing the scene, mud flying through the air in hot pursuit. Red and blue lights dance upon the campus pond, the steady fingers of police officers gripped tight around their radios. The people’s champion surges forward, sure of himself and dauntless in his pursuit of adrenaline. Within a handful of seconds, “The Pond Killer” is on the other side, cloaked in mud and the adoration of four-hundred supporters.

That might have been the scene if everything went according to a plan devised by UMass Amherst undergraduate student Sean Quinn. The aspiring stuntman, who maintains the account “Sean Quinn Hops the Pond” on social media, managed to amass a following of over 300 people through Instagram and Facebook in support of his idea to jump over the campus pond using a makeshift ramp and motorcycle.

“Originally, it started out as a joke. But then I realized more and more as I went that people really rallied behind it. People enjoyed it,” Quinn said.

While daring, Quinn was careful in his preparation. His primary obstacle, he found, was getting the go-ahead from the university administration to perform his stunt. Unfortunately for Quinn and his supporters, university and law enforcement officials did not approve.

“I have been contacted by the administration and the police, and they have told me this pond jump is grounds for expulsion and likely cause me to be arrested,” Quinn wrote in a post on Facebook explaining the decision to cancel the stunt. Dean of Students Cara Appel-Silbaugh was contacted for this piece and declined to comment on the matter.

While the university wouldn’t speak publicly about this situation, there are likely several reasons why UMass frowns upon students not only jumping over the pond, but swimming in it, skating on top of it, and otherwise interacting with it.

In addition to obvious legal concerns, it turns out there are also several environmental and biological reasons why swimming or launching a bike into in the pond would be a bad idea.

“The campus pond is a little bit different in that it’s not a typical swimming area, so there’s probably no information about bacteria levels,” Scott Jackson, Extension Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation at UMass, said. “But you could guess that they’re probably extremely high. I think anybody in there would be at risk of gastrointestinal distress, skin problems, ear infections, so it would not be a healthy place to plunge.”

Jackson also detailed how human interaction with the pond may impact not only the human being taking a dip, but the health of the pond itself.

“I think the biggest concern would be that if you have a vehicle that’s in the water leaking fluids—hydraulic fluids, gasoline, oil—you would really have a concentrated source of contaminants that would be not good for life in the pond,” Jackson said.

He also outlined the risks of an increased erosion rate with people entering and exiting the pond or lodging large machinery into its floor or banks.

“I know there’s been efforts to stabilize the banks so that you’re not getting the sediment washing into the water every time it rains, and depending on what happens, you could imagine somebody taking a big chunk out of the bank and then having to come back in […] and stabilize it after the fact so that it doesn’t turn into a huge erosion area,” Jackson said. He also said there isn’t a lot of information about the pond’s floor, meaning that it could be very soft and present a real danger to anyone who may get stuck in it and require rescue.

Daredevils and swimmers haven’t been allowed in the campus pond since 1958, but before that, it was a site of regular activity. After two students built the pond in the 1890’s, the university successfully lobbied state legislators to build a permanent dam, making the pond a fixture on campus. In the early 20th century, students would enter the pond’s waters for annual games of freshman vs. sophomore tug of war and sometimes take dunks as part of initiation rituals. Until the 1950s, the pond was also regularly used to play hockey in the wintertime.

For most who live here, there is no arguing that the campus pond is a beautiful and iconic part of the culture at UMass Amherst. While it would be a neat novelty to be able to swim, skate, or in Quinn’s case, jump over the pond, it doesn’t seem like a realistic possibility to those who regulate it. Still, Quinn remains determined to finish what he set out to do.

“We’re definitely not giving up. I’ve been talking to a couple physics majors about making a better ramp. I’m thinking about seeing if I can go through a permitting process to do it legally. And if not, I’ll probably just find a time to strike where I won’t get caught,” Quinn said.

And what of the danger? “Nothing has really proven to me yet that I’m not immortal,” he said with a characteristic smirk and a shrug. He doesn’t seem concerned about the risk, and all signs point to a second attempt being planned for the fall.

By Julian Mendoza

The Facebook Dilemma Frontline documentary brings to the forefront of the mind what we’re really signing up for when we create and operate a Facebook account. One major issue posed is that Facebook’s algorithm promotes a culture where false information thrives and pollutes how we think. Another concern presented is how the social media service handles user privacy. Just think about how many people don’t read the extensive terms and conditions when making an online account. Now, couple that ignorance with the invasive conditions Facebook fails to detail in these policies. As consumers, it is seemingly impossible to keep track of where our personal data goes, especially when the public is being purposely left in the dark. The documentary explains the several dimensions of danger that can stem from an online presence.

The most basic issue that The Facebook Dilemma identifies is the way Facebook has constructed its algorithm for presenting news to its users. The algorithm prioritizes news stories that garner the most “engagement,” which often leads to shocking headlines and hot takes that may or may not be true taking precedence over important and truthful information. The documentary highlights how these “fake news” stories that are primed by Facebook to go viral can affect public perception of an issue. In addition, it scrutinizes the position Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook staff takes on the propagation of misleading information that they are not responsible as a technology company to regulate the flow of news. To some interviewed in the documentary, Facebook distancing itself from the identity of a media company backs up the disregard Zuckerberg shows for the real-life impact of his platform.

The second main issue talked about in The Facebook Dilemma is the behind-the-scenes management of personal information. The documentary breaks down how Facebook essentially prioritizes revenue over the privacy of its users. One way that Facebook has done so is by dealing with third-party companies known as “data brokers” who use compromised personal information to target an audience’s interests. While Facebook has supposedly stopped dealing with these such companies, it continues to deal with third-party organizations of various sorts. This concerns users because Facebook has no way of regulation the operations of these separate companies. Companies can have any sort of nefarious intent and Facebook has no way of knowing. It becomes apparent that their only concern is the revenue they receive by leaking user info.

This prioritization of revenue seems true when given the context of when Facebook began getting creative with ways to collect real-world info. The documentary brings up how Facebook only started to develop methods to harvest information when revenue began to flatten. When the sale of personal information posed privacy problems later, Facebook always seemed to acknowledge its platform as the solution and not the problem, citing slow response time as the primary fault on their part.

It’s been well-known that online organizations sometimes compromise private information, but The Facebook Dilemma makes the situation scarier by depicting how apathetic, and sometimes malevolent, Facebook can be regarding the issue. The viewer is left wondering where Facebook’s allegiances lie, and in turn, whether the platform focuses more on providing good information and connecting people or connecting people to malicious parties unknowingly to sell their own information.

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that UMass Amherst is a mixing bowl of different architectural styles that is always changing. Students and faculty share their thoughts on the past, present, and future of buildings on campus.

By Julian Mendoza

Putting together this video piece was a milestone, a pleasure, and a learning opportunity for me. Considering that this was my first time using video as my primary storytelling medium, I am especially pleased with how my partner and I executed our vision and polished it into a cohesive, fluid end product. All in all, despite it being my first experience putting together a news piece centered around video, I’m glad that my journalism background and prior experience using editing software made my roles for the project possible.

One of my primary contributions to the piece was my role as an interviewer. I was responsible for interviewing UMass Amherst Chair of Architecture Stephen Schreiber, Amherst College Chair of Architectural Studies Nicola Courtright, and UMass Amherst architecture major Olivia Mol. Fortunately, scheduling these interviews wasn’t stressful since I reached out to my interviewees long before the deadline. I was also pleased by the fact that each person was prompt and enthusiastic both when they responded to my request and when it was time to sit down and have a conversation.

After conducting and filming those three interviews, I shifted gears and used Adobe Premiere Pro to cut out memorable and informational lines from each for use in the final cut. Afterwards, I arranged these clips, as well as footage taken by my partner, into a rough linear order and wrote an outline to help define a clearer direction for the scripted narration that would be added later. The skeleton I constructed was later used as the backbone for the script written by my partner that helped the unify the piece into a more linear finished product. Editing this video myself and observing my partner’s editing process helped me develop a firmer grasp on Adobe Premiere, which I had only used for one project prior.

After the initial editing and rough drafting process, I took to the great outdoors to film some supplemental footage of additional buildings that was later used to fill gaps in the rough draft. Filming with intention and my goal in mind, I was able to better comprehend what my interviewees told me about by seeing the architecture with my own eyes. The architectural similarities and discrepancies became more obvious to me, and in turn, I gained a greater appreciation for architecture as a whole. The growing personal interest made it more important to me to perfect my work and do the topic justice.

Perhaps the greatest pleasure and fortune I experienced working on this project was the collaboration I enjoyed with my partner. Becky Wandel, an upperclassmen with radio broadcasting experience as well as skill in video editing, took to her role of narrating the script with ease and helped greatly during the editing process, both by editing herself and by giving me advice as to what would make my work better. I have found that an in-class working pair in which both partners carry their fair share of the load is hard to come by, but I feel that we achieved that balance as a team. Not having to worry about the apathy of my partner helped me focus on my portion of the responsibility and further develop my collaborative skills.

Overall, I enjoyed every part of this project and I believe that I grew as a journalist from it. I am more confident in my skills as a multimedia journalist, whereas writing was my primary comfort zone before. Being able to tell a story in a multitude of ways will help me communicate to a wider array of people because different people respond differently to different things. I hope that in the future, I can use this newly-strengthened confidence to better myself in yet another medium.

By Julian Mendoza

The New York Times article “Deliverance From 27,000 Feet” does a remarkable job employing a multitude of dimensions to supplement a story so that it immerses the audience. The writing is vivid and rich in detail, catapulting into an action movie-like moment and continuing to enthrall the reader as the story goes on. It doesn’t feel like a conventional news story, but rather a creative writing piece that masquerades real-life important details as plot-developing devices. By writing in this way, the piece does justice to the thrilling nature of hiking up Mount Everest.

The article also contains several stills of the climbers written about, as well as images of family members to both give some background and capture moments chronologically in a timeline following the climbers’ disappearances. Towards the end of the story, there are images of the funeral ceremony and grieving process these family members endured, adding strong emotional value and a sense of reality to the story. Without these images, the audience would have a harder time grasping what it looked like to be in the room.

The most magical and unique storytelling elements in the story aren’t found within the text or the stills, though. The article is more than just your everyday news piece: it is a multimedia experience. One powerful and innovative device the article employs is the use of a three-dimensional terrain model created by Jeremy White that gives the audience a visual tour of the mountain, complete with labels that detail elevation levels at different spots. This not only lets the audience visualize the setting, but it highlights the extremity of what climbers face when they take on the mountain.

Another device embedded later in the article is expedition doctor Paul Pottinger’s video of climbers hiking their way across the mountain. This helps the audience comprehend how difficult of a hike the mountain poses, depicting deep snow, steep inclines, howling winds, and a lack of proper trails.

What might be the most impactful, authentic, and revealing additions to the story are the photos and videos taken by the climbers of themselves while they were up on the mountain to keep a log of what was going on in the moment. Aside from putting a voice to the climbers pictured earlier in the article, the photos and videos act as a first-person source for the telling of the climbers’ story. With the climbers speaking for themselves in this way and giving the audience a real-life look into their situation, everything else added to the article is simply content that fills in the blanks and adds context to help the reader fully encompass everything.

News in 2019 should include elements like these frequently to put the audience in the shoes of the subjects of stories. For journalists doing the best they can to make their pieces as accurate as they can, comprehensive strategies like these are to be embraced.