Billy Bulger swarmed by reporters outside the courthouse.

"Victim's son: '"He's a scumbag"'" -- UniversalHub.com

UniversalHub had a story going, but it was lacking a photo so I offered… everybody reads more when they see a picture with an article. More photos on my Flickr.

Since I spoke on the, “Online Editors Discuss Management” panel most of my ideas and thoughts are going to be on that topic. If anyone was at the panel it got off to a rough start, one over eager panelist decided to speak for a straight 30 minutes, and everything went down hill from there. I didn’t envision a lecture, since when I was in the audience for the same panel last year I enjoyed it so much.

At one point The Suffolk Journal website was in transition between CollegePublisher and WordPress, and that’s were I feel like a lot of other college newspapers are currently. You have a system, but it’s not perfect – nor are you completely satisfied with it. From the students I talked to at #acpla their colleges website is a one man band operation or the code monkey left and the website is a rusting piece of machinery sitting on the front lawn, and nobody knows how to move it. While I am happy with our newspaper website, it needs constant adjustment and tweaking. The news industry is required to constantly adapt, and as a result you’re colleges website should need to do the same. You ask how?

• WordPress, CollegePublisher, Drupal, Joomla, or DIY? You need to explore them all, find one you like, play with it extensively and see if your staff can use it. Look at the industry trends, what are the major players using? I’m biased towards WordPress, I wouldn’t touch CollegePublisher with a ten-foot pole. WordPress is easy to install, easy to update, it has extensive plugins and themes, and it’s gaining traction at an exponential rate.

• Engage your audience, engage your audience, engage your audience. You didn’t repeat it out loud, so go back and do that please. If your using Facebook Pages and Twitter, you must engage your audience. If someone tweets to you, @reply them back if its relevant. If someone posts on your Facebook wall, make sure you comment if it’s relevant. When you engage you’re audience, you are showing that you care, you boost the credibility of you’re brand, and you make a connection with that person. You are reaching out and saying, I am human too.

• Credible versus Tabloid. This all depends on your organization and which side you lean to, but generally avoid “tabloidisms”. The three issues you want to avoid are, retweeting irrelevant things, breaking rumors, and fire poking. Who care’s that Charlie Sheen tweets “#winning” you don’t need to retweet that from your organizations account. It’s not relevant. Rumor has it your president is involved in a top secret clandestine spy mission to sabotage the school down the street. You expose his plan via Twitter, did you talk to him, the other school, or confirm anything yet. It’s probably not April Fools Day either. Yeah, you’re screwed, and you have no credibility. Last those two guys on the SGA keep having Twitter fits at each other. You retweet and encourage their epic battle. You just promoted anti-Darwinism, plus who cares. Mind your own business, you just gained four tabloid points #fail.

• Hit by a bus theory. This is probably the most important point, but the farthest from reality, or right around the corner. If you were to get hit by a bus in 15 minutes, would someone know how to manage the site, add content, upgrade, and inform your audience of your funeral date? If you answered no to any of the above you need a staff manual, or “pass down book” as we call them in the security industry. This is the bible of your organization. It will contain the commenting policy, the important contact information for the domain, hosting, university, and web editor. A “what if” section for all those hypothetical situations that someone might encounter after your tragedy. It also will highlight your policy on social media, how the site is organized, who manages the site, what platform and services you use on the site, and how will it’s successor be chosen? If you don’t have one, create one. At the very least: contact phone numbers, who owns the domain, and where it’s registered, who controls the hosting and what provider do you use, emergency contact numbers and emails for tech support staff, and where the backups are stored or what backup service you use.

If you ignore everything else, you need to take into account what your staff have to say, and what your community says. Just because someone is a freshman or a senior who’s a vegetable with senioritis, doesn’t mean they don’t have good input. Most of the time people don’t say their opinions because they feel they don’t control it, it doesn’t matter what they think. Ask your staff what they think, ask your community what’s missing from the website. Train your staff to use the website, even if they just have a login with limited permissions so they are at least familiar with the platform. Don’t be afraid of change. Make improvements to your theme, try out new features, track your progress, address areas that need work. Following these simple steps you are setting yourself up for success.

Recently, President Obama decided to cut $89 billion over the next 10 years in order to preserve the Pell Grant program. Alright, that’s not cool, coming from the guy who said we need to be the nation with the most college graduates, thus propelling us into an economic powerhouse.

It doesn’t make sense to begin with. How can we become that leading nation if there’s no funding behind it? It doesn’t help that colleges are constantly raising the tuition rates while the quality of education remains the same.

The cuts also affect a program that lowers student loan interest rates for graduate students.  Alright now, graduates I’m sorry but if you want your masters or doctorate you’re on your own. Everybody has a right to a college education, but if you want to go above and beyond that bachelor’s degree, the cost shouldn’t be subsidized by my tax dollars.

Those costs should be fronted on your own, or get a job with a company that gives you reimbursement or an educational incentive plan. After all, if you’re going for a higher degree, you should be smart enough to know how to pay for it – burying yourself in loans doesn’t count.

How can we curb the costs of the Pell Grant program? For starters, students should be limited to one grant per academic year. As a stipulation for receiving the grant, it should only be applied towards a state school education. Therefore students are making use of state resources, thus getting in-state tuition rates in addition to the Pell Grant making the overall cost more manageable. If you want to go to a private school, it’s going to cost more to begin with so that $5,000 something dollars you’re going to receive per year from Pell isn’t really going to make an overall difference in the long run. It’s harsh, but it’s reality.

Another issue I take up with the Obama administration is the “Race to the Top” program that uses a point system to award funding. First off, anytime you mix performance and money together you get an output of fraud. Our education system isn’t a car sales company with monthly performance quotas.  By telling states that if you perform better you get more money, you are opening the door to inaccurate results, unnecessary pressure, and students that get hurt academically.  It’s encouragement for the states to fudge the results to get more money. It puts unnecessary pressure on teachers to teach to the national program otherwise they’ll be terminated for poor evaluations which will cost the state funding.  Personally I’ve learned from teachers that take their own approach and don’t teach out of a handbook.  High school classes were boring, now it’s going to be even worse that Obama has a point system worse than my math class in place.

Bottom line, increase funding of the Pell Grant, get rid of this performance point system. The Department of Education isn’t a corporation – it’s a branch of government. Why don’t we implement the performance evaluations on the legislators and senators?  We could easily terminate the ineffective ones, and bring in brighter talent – just like the Obama administration aims to do through his own plan.

Originally published in The Suffolk Journal February 23, 2011

That laptop came out of left field, correct? Well if your friends with ThreeWords.ME founder Mark Bao, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve been a good friend of Marks since high school. Bently should be proud to call him one of their own. I’m sure Babson is pissed. Anyways Mark’s Facebook status informed me his laptop had been stolen – unfortunate. Very unfortunate considering it was a new Macbook Air.

So my advice to Mark, and you – Protected It! My recommendations:

Prey Project – $5/month Pro Version & Free Open Source version

Prey lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen. It’s lightweight, open source software, and free for anyone to use. And it just works.

Undercover for Mac – $39 Student Edition

Undercover aids in recovering a stolen Mac by transmitting its location, photos of the thief and screenshots revealing what he is up to.

Bottom line is you need to use something. I prefer the software trackers, instead of the lock and cable method, just because I am so mobile, I’d go nuts with the lock. Also keep your stuff secure, or in sight. Disclaimer: I run the student edition of Undercover, and the free version of Prey Project. I prefer Undercover for now.

One would think a new machine that doesn’t require someone to get in your personal space is efficient. It’s a nuisance to walk back and forth through a detector because you forgot you had a nickel in your pocket, or to have a person who you don’t know touching you more than your significant other. I understand the concern that they can somewhat see your private areas, but it’s all blurred! It’s just an X-ray, and on top of it being just an X-ray, the person is locked away in a room somewhere with a computer and a desk. The poor TSA officer probably can’t even eat or drink in that room, let alone have the ability to look at computers in there. If anybody should be complaining about the new machines it’s the TSA agents who get stuck in a room staring at a screen for hours.

Let’s address those crazy theories of people leaking images, the TSA pedophile working the machine, the TSA agent getting off to the images on the machine. First off, if that crowd of coo-coo’s flew over the nest, the rest of us would be long through the security lines and sitting in our seats waiting for takeoff. Like basically all employers these days, TSA conducts background checks. And like basically all other jobs, you go through training and agree to abide by certain rules. So the whole idea that we have huge creeps behind the machine — sorry, I’m not buying it. And once again, they don’t see you; they just see the X-ray on the screen.

In all honesty, I don’t think the machines are that big of a deal. So when asked to step into one, I will gladly accept. Because seriously, who in their right mind wants to get touched all over by a stranger when you can stand there for a few seconds and that’s the end of it? If you have medical conditions, or are trying to transport drugs, sure it’s inconvenient, but such is life. Regardless of what technology or man power we use to screen our passengers, everyone sitting next to you is “safe.” All you have to worry about now is grabbing that extra bag of pretzels before the flight attendant disappears.

Originally published in The Suffolk Journal December 1, 2010

The Journey is a four-year leadership program through the Office of Student Leadership and Involvement.  The program has existed at Suffolk for three years, and compliments a classroom curriculum.  The foundation of The Journey program is built upon the principles of leadership training, service, involvement, and career exploration.

Unlike traditional academic classes, The Journey has a strong focus on “hands on” training and learning through experience.   Director of S.L.I., Dave DeAngelis feels students will benefit more from the program through these experiences, “rather than just talking to students” in a classroom environment.

Four students and one advisor were aboard two sailboats with Boston Sailing Center instructors out of Lewis Wharf.  Throughout the three-hour experience, students were taught to properly operate different stations on the boat.  Students rotated from rigging the sails, to steering the vessel – even learning the hard way how to yell to the crew that they were tacking by getting an unexpected bump on the head from the “boom.”

As for freshman Gilberto Del Busto, The Leadership in Sailing program was his first time being aboard a sailboat. “Nacho,” as he is called by his peers, said the most rewarding part of the experience was the satisfaction from, “controlling your emotion, fear and trusting somebody that nothing is going to happen.”

“The instructors really make the program a great experience,” remarked DeAngelis.  Senior Houssam Saeed reinforced that by recalling a point where he had trouble tacking (turning the vessel into the wind to change direction) by saying, “At first I felt like I got it wrong. So [the instructor] wanted to keep me there till I got it right. And then he said, ‘This was your personal best tack.’”

So far, the program has been, “very well received,” according to DeAngelis. As for future Leadership in Sailing events, Journey would like get more students involved and hold the event earlier in the fall to avoid the frigid weather. Next year, with the right amount of people, DeAngelis hopes to hold a miniature Suffolk regatta after the students learn the ropes. As teamwork, communication, and critical thinking skills are gained from their time on the water, DeAngelis hopes the program will “lead students into starting a sailing team, being able to race collegiately with other colleges in the area.”

For the students that braved the freezing temperatures on the water, they will soon be thankful for things to heat up during an event in the pit of an F1 racing team. In the spring, Journey members will participate in a leadership exchange with students from University of South Carolina and Kennesaw State University. They will be working together to address the problem of homelessness in Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Students wishing to get involved with The Journey can email thejourney@suffolk.edu or stop by SLI in Donahue 430. Photos from the leadership in sailing experience are available at flickr.com/photos/ryanboyle/sets/72157625300794756/.

Originally published in The Suffolk Journal, November 8, 2010

Excursion Boston is hitting the home screens of college students’ iPhones across the city.  The application was updated recently with real-time location based tracking of MBTA buses and heavy-rail subway lines.  This update comes after the recent release of real-time location based data becoming available from the Massachusetts Developmental Office in an attempt to spur innovation with transit data.

The Excursion Boston application is available for 99 cents in the iTunes App Store.  Upon opening the app, the user is presented a screen with a button that says, “Closest Stops” and some instructions.  This is my first gripe with the application – you shouldn’t have to click a button to have the closest stations and bus stops displayed.  Once you get through clicking that button the app utilizes the built-in GPS to display the closest MBTA subway stations and buses.  Each station and bus has a color-coded box to indicate the different subway lines.  In addition to color-coding and station names, the distance to the station is also displayed on the far right.

Upon clicking on a station or bus route, you are presented with inbound and outbound trains.  For example clicking on the Government Center station, you’re presented with options for Bowdoin, Wonderland, Boston College, Cleveland Circle, and so on. Clicking on the subway train to Bowdoin, one can see when the next sets of trains are departing, as well as future scheduled trains.  This feature is essential to any college student that rides the T and keeps a tight schedule. The application’s real time data is only available on the blue, red, and orange lines and certain bus lines.   The green line does not have real time data, although it’s “static” schedule is built into the application.

In addition to the real-time location data the app makes available, you can also click a button to view the closest subway and bus routes around you displayed on a Google Map.  Upon clicking one of the numerous red pins, marking bus stops or MBTA stations, you can “show the location in Google Map,” “ride the T from current location,” or “walk here from current location.” This feature is nice if you want to see your current options for getting a ride, except you can already view station locations station location in Google Maps – they’re marked with a MBTA symbol.

Overall I would say this app is a decent three out of five.  The functionally works, the real time tracking is accurate – at least for the #43 Bus at Beacon and Park Street.  My only real complaint is the way the interface was designed.  There is no point for a home screen on this app; it serves no actual purpose other than to link you to the stations and busses.  When the user makes a downward swipe motion it should refresh the current data like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare do.  Additionally the spacing between the bottom menu navigation icons is off. They could have at least made them clearer, and spaced out properly.

Bottom line, if you’re not satisfied with the other MBTA apps out there, go for it.

Originally published in The Suffolk Journal, October 19, 2010

Although the incident described here is only an example, it’s a reality that can happen to any college student in Boston. Suffolk Police Chief John Pagliarulo’s message to students: “Always use caution, you’re in an urban institution.  Be alert, walk together in groups, keep your head clean.”  The Chief’s message is simple; keeping those two thoughts in mind on the way home can be enough to prevent yourself and your friends from becoming victims.

“They never ask for an ID.  I feel like anybody could just walk in.  The building here, who’s stopping anybody from saying, ‘Give me your MacBook?’” said junior Ornella Greaf while she sat in the Sawyer Lounge which, like most academic buildings at Suffolk, doesn’t require an ID to enter.

Universities, including Suffolk, that accept financial aid must disclose information regarding crimes that take place on campus and surrounding areas to students in an annual report by October 1 under the Clery Act. Suffolk University’s annual report has been released, and is available for students to view online. .  In addition to releasing a yearly report, the university is mandated to maintain a incident log viewable by all students, report fire statistics for on-campus housing, provide “timely-warning” incident notifications, establish emergency notification procedures, and establish procedures for security and fire safety.

Senior Jessica Richards said overall she feels the campus is safe. “I’ve been here for four years, never had a bad experience, as long as you mind your business.”

In the 2009 annual report, there was one reported on-campus robbery, one on-campus arrest resulting from a drug law violation, and a combined total of 673 drug and alcohol violations in the residence halls.

Upon reviewing the yearly report, sophomore Andy Cataluma said he was “surprised at how sparse the incidents were in the report. I thought there would be more incidents, so we’re relatively safe.”

“It’s good and I’m always concerned. Safety is a very fluid word, what might be safe to you is not safe to me,” said Suffolk Chief Pagliarulo of the security situations at Suffolk.

“I feel moderately safe.  If it’s me alone, and it’s like 9:00, I’d rather not walk through the common alone” said sophomore Angel Mar.

Pagliarulo advises students to always remain aware of their surroundings, travel in groups, always carry a cell phone, most importantly to walk next to businesses and travel in well lighted areas when out at night.

The Suffolk Police offers a 24/7 escort program between campus buildings, residence halls, nearby by parking garages and select MBTA stations. To date, 21 students have utilized this service from the SUPD.  To request an escort, students can call the SUPD at 617-573-8113. A dispatcher will answer and request that the student provides a location where the uniformed police officer is to meet the student and record the student’s name and ID number. An officer will then meet the student at the desired location and walk them to their end destination.  SUPD escorts are walking only at this time; officers will not drive students, nor will they go to areas such as the North End or other off-campus locations.

Pagliarulo encourages students to “build a community where you look out for one another.”  In addition to building a safe community, students in the residence halls should not fear disciplinary action when reporting alcohol poisoning or adverse reactions from drugs, “We are not looking to bust kids and get people in trouble.  We want to see the person gets the help they need for the night.”

Students with comments or concerns are encouraged to contact the SUPD or talk to the Chief.  In addition to being open to feedback, students are encouraged to report suspicious activity and potential threats by calling 617-573-8111.  For more information on crime prevention initiatives, you can view the SUPD website.

Originally published in The Suffolk Journal, October 9, 2010