Ever wonder where my heart is at? It’s all mapped out for you.

For college students, the presidential campaign seems like a far-off land where a rich bigot and two career politicians are in a street brawl for the GOP nomination, and the two Democratic candidates, one an “email-deleter” and the other a “socialist,” are politely disagreeing over the path to the same goals.

I’d like to argue that assumption is dead wrong – especially in the case of Donald J. Trump. At first glance, one might think these campaigns won’t impact college students until the first Tuesday of November.

Sorry, Donald Drumpf. (I’ll get it right next time, John Oliver. I promise).

Most notably, I can see his words and his beliefs reflected in our own UW-Whitewater students through numerous issues with campus climate. 

We’ve had people dropping the n-word on Snapchat and residence hall bulletin boards like they’ve suddenly been possessed by racist ghosts of our country’s past.

Now we have more people taking to Snapchat to record someone using a mobility device, struggling to get around snow-covered walkways. It’s obviously a funny joke to whoever posted it, as they place the “crying-and-laughing” emoji over the video.

Since when is someone having a difficult time getting around a joke? Since Trump decided to throw his toupee (or whatever his hair is) in the ring for presidency, that’s when.

In the past nine months, he has attacked individuals of the black, Latino and Asian ethnicities. He has proposed a ban of all Muslims from entering the United States. He has gone after women, most notably Megyn Kelly, for having “blood coming out of everywhere” when she challenged him on his answer in a debate.

He said on ABC’s “the View” he’d date his daughter Ivanka if she wasn’t, you know, half of his DNA. A few months ago, he mocked a journalist with a disability. Last month, he refused to condemn the KKK on “Meet the Press,” until receiving national pressure to later do so.

Think about our own campus climate now. Is any of this starting to hit home just a little too hard? Might Trump’s behavior be rubbing off onto a country, one that was formerly known for freedom and righteousness?

As I watched former Royal Purple News Editor Alexandria Zamecnik write her stories about campus, she never had to write about UW-W students mocking the disabled, or racism to the point where the Huffington Post wrote about our discrimination. We as a staff never had to write about the campus climate. Granted, it was happening because microaggression is everywhere, but not at this rate.

I don’t even think the news editor before the two of us, Michael Riley, had to sift through issues like this. While Zamecnik and Riley both had continual controversies they wrote about that defined their careers as news editor, mine is going to be defined by campus-wide political unrest and bigotry.

And I think Trump is to blame for that. He’s proven to the country that one can still rise to the top of the polls while being an “everything-ist” pig.

He’s proven this to the country and Whitewater students. It leads people to think it’s acceptable to mock others and deepen divisions.

Enough is enough. As a campus, we need to decide that, no matter our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion or ability, we don’t approve of this campus climate – and this national climate.

We need to go out to the polls on April 5 for the primary election, and vote for a candidate – from either side of the aisle – who doesn’t act like a schoolyard bully, encouraging others to act just like him.

That’s not who we are as individuals, and certainly not who we are as a campus. Knock it off with the discrimination already.

Here’s a closer look at the fabulosity that is the UW-W IMPACT Drag Show.

Anyone who knows me could tell you I love to talk politics.

Whether the person I’m talking with loves it or not is a different story.

It took until last month at the Dem Debate where I realized how much I loved it. Politics surround almost every aspect of a person’s life; there’s really no limit to what you can write and report on – the politicians on both sides of the aisle will fight about anything.

It’s gone as far to make me consider adding a poli-sci minor.

For two months this summer, those who know me will have a break from hearing me talk about it – to them, anyways.

I’ll be headed to the heart of Washington, D.C. this summer, where the rush and adrenaline from the one night of the Dem Debate will be my everyday as an intern/student at the Institute of Political Journalism.

I don’t know what media outlet I’ll be working at yet, but I know I’ll be in my own little paradise. Grabbing photos of protestors outside the Supreme Court. Walking the halls of the Capitol trying to grab my next story.

Sure, they’ll have a two-month break – but just imagine what they’ll have to deal with when I get back.

Here’s a photograph of a dog, because if you read the blog post below, you’ll understand why I don’t have art from the event I’m talking about.

If you’d have met my father in his prime as a teenager and young adult, you would have thought of him as a hell-raiser.

He was redneck, police-ditching, “I let a Vaseline-smeared pig loose in the school as a prank” sort of rebel, one of which I’m glad I never met.

It’s absolutely safe to assume that this redneck rebel’s daughter, a bookworm with dreams of being a writer instead of a nurse – like HE wanted her to be – did not have that same streak of “FU, authority” running through her veins.

That is, until 4:30 p.m. this last Tuesday. My father’s long tenure of being the only one to fight the power was finally passed on to me.

It was aimed straight at our Chancellor, and the Campus Climate Working Group, who so conveniently decided that it was a good idea to prevent student journalists from photographing and taking video of the Action Forum held this last week.

The Action Forum was held as a way for the Working Group to gain perspective on how to fix injustices on campus. It was advertised as a public meeting, where anyone could walk in and listen.

Yet I (a student who could have gained full rights, had she not been branded with the negativity of being a journalist) was not allowed to do my job. The reasoning: allowing students to speak freely without “fear” of cameras.

Student journalists also had to sit in the back of the Hamilton Room, and could not walk through the tables of attendees, as another method of “protection” in a public setting.

With last week’s media coverage of the facial mask controversy, I can understand why administration felt the need to censor journalists. The first result when you Google UW-W is the Snapchat photo of the two students. From a PR standpoint, it doesn’t look great.

So I complied, because it’s more important to get the story and pick my battles, over not be allowed to cover it at all. That doesn’t mean I agree with the policy.

And by “policy,” I mean denial of First Amendment rights. The media and the public are one in the same; if students have the right to speak freely to the public, I have the right to report on it. Anyone who’s taken an American history class should know that.

If the university wants to look open and responsive to students following the acts of racism, cutting out the people who can help them most do that is detrimental to them. Furthermore, it proves to me that they care about their image more than their own students. If they truly wanted their students to be heard, they would have allowed photos and video to be taken to help spread their messages.

They don’t want that, because it shows the truth – race relations have been an ongoing problem for years, and they’ve only just started paying attention.

This was the first time that I truly felt rebel spirit my father has always had. I wanted to fight them, and their decision. I wanted to stand up for myself, and for those whose stories were at risk of never being told to anyone outside of the Hamilton Room. They wanted silence, unless they could moderate the noise.

And I am, by telling people. By making others aware of the injustices served to the students discriminated against, whether it be their skin color, their sexual or gender identity or their career choice.

Maybe my father’s rebellious spirit isn’t so bad after all.

I found this assignment to be incredibly frustrating, because it gave me unrealistic expectations as to what a college kid could do.
I read over all of the reading material and thought each concept was a no brainer.
And then I tried to implement it.
I had to close my laptop a few times because I felt I was spinning my tires deep in code I didn’t understand.
I’d look at the home page of my blog in disgust each and every time I reopened it.
I needed a reality check: I shouldn’t expect to click a few buttons and gaze upon a CNN-esque homepage. They’ve paid for their page to look a certain way, every element syncing up in harmony.
I found myself trying out the looks of different themes, settings within those themes, the coloring. Nothing made it look like what I envisioned it could.

I tried to change a few things, though; here’s what I managed to do:

1. Added more to my menu

-Instead of having just an “About Kimberly” tab, I decided to put news, features on it as well, as well as a search bar. Other news websites had a menu full of different tabs, so that’ll be something to continue to work on as I go throughout the class.

1. Made my pictures bigger along the left side of the page

-This is a pretty common occurrence and a consistent layout design for websites and newspapers alike. Just makes sense for me to continue to do that with my stories and posts from now on.

1. Added an external link to my blog

-My blog now has a link to my external website (one I have to pay for), just as a way to link it with to a satellite site. CNN does this often, with CNNMoney, as an example.

1. Saved white space by removing my page’s title

-Instead, I placed it in the header photo. The title header itself was taking up too much space and left a lot of white on the top of my blog page, so I decided to get rid of it.

Despite having almost constant access to a wifi signal for the past five years, not many blogs have captured my attention in a such a way to keep me coming back to them as a form of entertainment. There are a few, however, that break the mold:

Photo courtesy WKOW.com

1. “Dani’s Diary,” written by Dani Maxwell at WKOW-27

As a child, my parents played favorites.

Not so much with my brothers and I (although all three siblings have claims to support we’ve all been wronged at some point in our adolescence), but they definitely did with their preferred news stations. We’d watch WISC-TV 95 percent of the time, but there would be days we couldn’t get a signal to come through, and we found ourselves clicking to the next favorite station: WKOW-27.

That’s how I had the name recognition with Dani Maxwell earlier this year, as she wrote blog posts about the loss of her three triplet sons in April 2015. I was drawn to it, because even though I’d never lost a sibling or a child, I know someone who has: my own mother.

She talked about her brother Richard, born in January of 1969, and how she’d never met him, but felt a connection to him through her mother’s creative non-fiction writing, much of which she’d read after Grandma Toni’s passing.

Reading Dani’s Diary gave me powerful insight into the loss my four-year-old mother had dealt with, the quietness my grandfather exhibits when my uncle is mentioned and why it’s so important to my mother that she honored her little brother by christening my little brother with his name.

Dani’s blog posts convey raw emotion rarely seen, speaking about the ways she can honor the lives of her sons, who only lived for a few hours. The tone she presents her story with, one where she doesn’t hold back about how she struggled with the loss she felt, is what helped build her audience. By writing candidly about the loss of her children and turning herself into someone human, not just a distant TV personality, she gained an audience of those who had dealt with the loss of family members.

The only fault: she’s only written a few posts, but there will likely be more to come as she continues to cope.

A few links to her posts:

http://www.wkow.com/story/28692881/danis-diary-a-blog-about-having-triplets

http://www.wkow.com/story/28858010/danis-diary-mckay-asher-and-kenji

http://www.wkow.com/story/30341639/danis-diary-capture-your-grief-project-2015

2. Love and Lemons Healthy Eating Blog

Photo courtesy of loveandlemons.com

General knowledge about nutrition doesn’t come easy for a girl who ate maybe three slices of whole wheat bread up until the age of 16. That led me to becoming a vegetarian for a few years that still ate complete processed garbage with a Pinterest account of “Healthy fun recipes!” that I was never going to try.

That’s when Love and Lemons, a food blog focusing on mainly vegetarian dishes not filled with junk prompted me to put down my “vegetarian” cinnamon roll and seriously reconsider what my goals were. Was I not eating meat because I wanted to stick it to my steak-a-day family, or was it a long-term health goal I had for myself?

I’ll be honest, one of the things that stopped me dead in my tracks was the quality of the art on their blog. It made healthy eating look glamorous, and simple to obtain. Using quality photography to show the ease of eating healthy can aid anyone to at least giving it a shot, and IMHO, that’s one of the best strengths you can have. Showing that anyone can do it is basically saying your audience is as infinite as the number of people who are willing to try.

They’ll build more of an audience come March 2016, when they release their first printed cookbook. If anyone wants to buy me an apartment-warming gift two months early, you know what to get me.

http://www.loveandlemons.com/

3. 500px ISO Photography Blog

Photo courtesy of iso.500px.com

Looking at this blog makes my soul hurt.

Not just because I’m nowhere near as good as all of the photographers writing blog posts for 500px ISO, but because it shows the infinite potential of how creative you can be with photography. The articles range from the ugly beauty of the recent snowstorm hitting the East Coast, to how do create multiple exposure photographs and how to become a novice travel photographer, etc.

Going off the list I spewed off above, it’s easy to say this blog’s biggest strength is its diversity in the types of photography and the experience level needed to comprehend the material. Finding a way to reach the most basic learners while still engaging the most advanced photographers is can be quite the undertaking because of the differences in technical knowledge, and they seem to be able to do it pretty well.

Here’s where you can see some of the most breath-taking photos on the internet, and learn how to take them: https://iso.500px.com/

*Note: this story is a class assignment, and is was staged in class for the purpose of the professor knowing the accuracy of the numbers and quotes in the story.

By Kimberly Wethal

Mayor Gustavus Petykiewicz unveiled the proposed budget for the City of Kittatinny on Tuesday “with a heavy heart.”

His proposed 2016 budget involves cuts to programs such as the police department and involves a tax increase for residents to help cover the loss of $100,000,000 in property value. The loss can be attributed to Susquehanna Steel Corporation, as the company shut down one of their two blast furnace units earlier in the year, taking 24 percent of the industrial property’s tax revenue and 600 local jobs with it.

Petykiewicz said the actions resulting from the budget cuts are “not ones I take lightly.”

“The situation at Susquehanna Steel Corporation is forcing us to make some very difficult choices,” Petykiewicz said. “Today I have set forth a budget that would be balanced, but would involve items that would be painful or controversial.”

That controversy includes the layoff of two police officers, the elimination of the police’s morning shift running from 4 a.m. to noon and garbage services for residents and the purchases of new equipment.

Pennsylvania state law requires the budget for the upcoming year to be signed and in place by Dec. 1, leaving the mayor and the city council less than two months to come up with a finalized version of the budget.

The city’s proposed tax budget for 2016 totals $3,189,740, down $114,600 from the year prior. This leaves the city with a xxx percent cut in tax levies, even with a proposed tax increase of .3 mills, a number Petykiewicz said is “negotiable.”

The current mill rate for the City is at 4 mills. If the proposed tax increase remained the same and is signed into law, a homeowner with a property value of $100,000 would see their property tax rise by $30.

New equipment purchases are also in store for the city, including a new police cruiser, a new riding lawn mower, a combination dump truck/snow plow for the streets department and a drivable weed removal vehicle for the beach at White Deer Lake.

The weed removal vehicle is slated to cost the city $100,000, Petykiewicz said.

With all of the cuts, Petykiewicz is willing to take one himself.

In the budget, he’s frozen his salary, along with the salaries of the other non-unionized department heads, and would take a 10 percent cut in pay if other city officials agree to do the same.

“I do need to step forward,” Petykiewicz said. “I will make that offer.”

By the numbers

Kittatinny had property value totaling $826,100,000 in 2015.

For 2016, however, that number has dropped to $741,800,000, due partially in part to Susquehanna’s lost blast furnace and a slight decrease in residential property, about $1.2 million’s worth.

Petykiewicz’s version of the budget would raise the tax levy to 4.3 mills, bringing in $3,189,740. That still leaves the city with $114,660 less to work with, a 3.5 percent decrease.

The total collection number is also just an estimate; with former Susquehanna employees still potentially out of work, Petykiewicz hopes to be able to collect all of the $3.1 million tax levy.

“I would encourage people to help us through this difficult time and to be good citizens, because taxes are part of citizenship,” he said. “Taxes are a price of citizenship. Dig deep, tighten your belts; I think we’re all going to have to do that.”

Residential property value decreased by 0.6 percent for the upcoming fiscal year, seeing as the City condemned 11 properties lining the east bank of Loyalsock Creek earlier in 2015. Other homes in the City did not have their property reassessed.

Existing commercial properties also did not see a change in their worth, but overall property value went up 9.7 percent to $232,300,000, thanks to the completion of Tohickon Creek Plaza, which houses Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Radio Shack and the Acme supermarket.

Additional income to the city is planned in the budget, as Petykiewicz expects to see $15,436 more in higher parking fees (rising from a dime to a quarter an hour for parking meters and from $65 to $75 for the two city parking lots) and a rise in parking tickets, along with more revenue from a higher number of police citations.

With all income combined, the budget would give the city $3,315,946 to work with, a decrease of $99,044 from last year’s $3,414,990 budget.

‘Taking danger, and compounding it’

Bjarne Westhoff, president of the Pennsylvania Police Association Local 34, said cutting the police force’s personnel and hours is the Petykiewicz’s way to take a jab at Police Chief Roman Hruska.

“The mayor and the police chief don’t get along,” Westhoff said. “You all know that; you all see the way they snarl at each other … personally, I think this is a really bad way to solve a personal dispute.”

Two police officers are being laid off, and pending city council approval, the budget would cut the 4 a.m. to noon morning shift for the department as well, leaving emergencies to be handled by Schuylkill County sheriff deputies.

The contract with the county would cost the city $35,332 for the 2016 fiscal year.

These proposals don’t make Kittatinny Police Chief Roman Hruska happy.

“I cannot stand idly by and watch a city of this size be deprived of their police protection for a third of each day,” he said. “I think it’s a terrible idea, and I have told the mayor as much.”

Hruska says that while the 8-hour span is the quietest shift of the day, that doesn’t mean nothing happens.

“You’re not likely to have a violent gang incident at 7 in the morning, but I’ll tell you what you could have at 7 in the morning,” he said. “You could have a domestic violence incident. For a police officer, there is nothing more dangerous than a domestic violence incident.

“You get a call that a man is holding his wife at knifepoint in an apartment, and you enter that hallway with your gun drawn because you know her life or your life could be in danger.”

Petykiewicz stated during the press conference that the cuts to the police department were purely due to the city’s high cost of personnel expenses.

“I did it simply because as you know, with a city government, our overwhelming cost is personnel, payroll and benefits,” Petykiewicz said. “By reducing the force by two officers, we’ll save a lot of money. This is a major item for cost-savings.”

In order to make these changes, contracts will be have to be renegotiated by the Pennsylvania Police Association. The contracts were originally scheduled to expire in June of 2017.

It would break Westhoff’s heart to see the two police officers go.

“I feel awful, on a couple of fronts,” he said. “First of all, they’re excellent officers; I consider them my friends and my comrades and my colleagues. We work together very well … if they’re career police, they’ll go somewhere else and leave town. On another front,  I think their absence would be a terrible loss for the city because it would put our citizens in jeopardy.”

New Equipment Purchases

While the police department might be losing two officers in the next budget, they might be gaining new equipment.

A new police cruiser is set to replace the decade-old Ford Fairlane, which has around 220,000 miles on it and is fitted with outdated technology.

Technology is the big cost of the vehicle – fitting it with the electronics costs $20,000 alone.

Squad cars are usually replaced when they reach the age of 5 years or climb past 175,000 miles, Petykiewicz said.

“The problem with that cruiser is that it is no longer reliable,” he said. “Which is to say it could be en route to an emergency and conk out on the street … we cannot let that happen. That’s the kind of thing that’s going to end up on the TV news up in Scranton.”

In the budget, there’s also money set aside for a new $12,000 industrial-grade riding lawn mower. The city usually depreciates for 15 years before being replaced. The current one is going on 20.

“Some people have said to me, ‘why don’t we just let the lawns grow up and be like natural prairie?’” Petykiewicz said. “The problem is, even though we are having trouble in Kittatinny, we simply can’t let things go to pot. We have to maintain our appearances.”

The last piece of equipment is the weed removal vehicle for White Deer Lake’s beachfront, a cost of $100,000. Petykiewicz did not comment on the weed removal vehicle during the press conference.

Changes in Garbage Services

For City of Kittatinny residents, garbage disposal services have only been visible to them for the few minutes the trucks are stopped outside their house.

Now, they’ll see it on their water bills as well.

Garbage services will add an additional $30 to their monthly bill, should residents choose to keep it.

The proposed budget cuts garbage disposal from the tax levy, forcing residents to pay for it themselves if they are interested in keeping the service.

The service will remain to be contracted through Tioga Sanitation Company for residential customers. The city is currently negotiating with Tioga to work through the fine details of the contract.

Commercial and industrial properties are not impacted by the removal of trash pick-up from the tax levy because businesses have already been handling their own disposal services.

“The services are being paid for specifically by the people who use them,” Petykiewicz said. “I know this will not be an easy item. There is some pain to be spread around here, and I think this spreads it around uniformly.