Mentor Profile

One of my PSL mentors is Vanessa Frank. She is a junior here at OSU, and she is majoring in Biology on the Pre-law track with a minor in Political Science. She is from Geneva, Ohio, and she has two sisters. One is a junior in high school, and the other is a freshman at Kent State University. Also, her father is a chemical engineer. She came from a high school where she had about 100 people in her class, so she wanted to come to a big college like Ohio State for a new experience. She also liked that OSU was in a big city and that she could get in-state tuition. For Venessa, it was hard at first adapting to college life, but she was able to become comfortable with the change after meeting new friends. After college, she plans on pursuing Law School to become a patent attorney. She is taking the LSAT in the spring. She said that the hardest thing about OSU was realizing that you are not always going to get all A’s like in high school. She said to suck it up and work your hardest. She is also part of a sorority and Charge, a girls fitness club. Finally, her favorite part of PSL was making friends and going to events, especially the zoo trip.

October Question of the Month

Social media/the internet + hyperpartisanship = a lot of inaccurate and unattributable thoughts masquerading as news.  What can be done to make what we see/read/experience online more trustworthy and verifiable?

This issue has gained much attention in recent years especially after the 2016 election. There are many people on the internet and social media that post inaccurate information just to achieve as many “clicks” as possible. This non-credible informations has gained a new name as “fake news.” Countless internet users have been exposed to this fake news, and they have been fooled by it. Fake news is dangerous because it corrupts the way people view the world around them. Foreign governments have been known to post this inaccurate information online in order to undermine our American democracy. Something more needs to be done so the American people can avoid this biased and erroneous information.

First,  almost every news outlet nowadays has some bias associated with it. In my opinion, there should be more nonpartisan news organizations that give accurate and objective information. Without left-leaning and right-leaning news outlets, the American people can absorb the news and form there own opinions and ideas without being told what to think. It is not that news articles or reports are inaccurate, the facts are just loosely scattered throughout these biased articles and reports. The news should be written completely based on facts and not speculation or flashy headlines.

I also believe there should be multiple third party, non-biased, credible sources that fact check news stories. These sources should only judge the news based on facts that can be backed-up with evidence and on whether or not the story is objective or not. Of course, there has to be numerous rules and regulations put into place so that citizens’ First Amendment rights are not infringed on. Objective news is vital to American society. We have drifted far away from the objective news of the past to the biased fake news of today. In today’s day and age where anyone can post what ever they want whenever they want, it is important to keep the facts straight.

Advocacy Projects Reflection

I visited the “Libertarianism in the Face of a Pandemic” project which was about how the ideals of libertarianism hold up during the current COVID-19 pandemic. I also visited the “Use of Nuclear Weapons to Make Mars Habitable” project which was about the possibility of using nuclear weapons to make Mars habitable for mankind. Finally, I visited “The Workload of College Students” project which was about how stress can pile up from a variety of ways on college students in today’s society. These projects showed me that I can advocate for change in a variety of areas and for many different things. The workload project gave me some inspiration to look into the problems that are currently affecting me and the millions of other college students in the United States. I have always been interested in space, so the Mars project gave me inspiration to look into the many possibilities of how we can make an impact outside of this world. With the current pandemic, I am also interested in looking into medical project ideas that could better the lives of people in the United States and around the world. This would also coincide with what I would like to do in my future career.