Slipp Finding His Way at Gordon

Wenham, MA- Students spend hours upon hours deciding where it is they want to spend their college years. It is often viewed as perhaps the most important four years of a person’s life, so making a solid decision on where to go to college can impact a person’s future in more ways than they can imagine.

Matt Slipp, of Gorham, ME, decided during his time at The Juilliard School in New York, that the school simply wasn’t for him.

“At Juilliard you are a musician, dancer, or an actor. You are basically their product and once you get out of the school, you’re out of their prepared system. Everybody was the same and there weren’t many ‘individuals’ there” said Slipp on what made him decide to shake up his college plans.

Matt, a freshman opera singer, transferred to Gordon this fall and is looking to start fresh, majoring in both music and psychology.

“Of course being in New York City was fun, but it only stays fun if you have money and can afford to go out and do things.”

Slipp said that though he enjoyed being in New York, he finds solace in being in a small town environment, like Gordon, because it makes him feel more at home.

“I’ve learned at college that I like to be a big fish in a small pond. A small town environment is what’s best for me. It almost makes me feel more wanted to always see people that I know around campus.”

Matt is starting over his college career at Gordon and could not be more excited about it. Being able to be around people that study different fields other than music and people who have many different interests were very attractive traits of Gordon that have not only attracted Matt to attend, but many others as well.

“When I came here to visit my best friend, I immediately fell for the campus. It was like love at first sight. It felt so different, in a good way, being here. It was something that really spoke to me.”

Classic Book Loses Relevance in Some Aspects

Wenham, MA-William Zinsser's first version of On Writing Well was written over 30 years ago and his ideas are still closely followed by present-day writers and journalists.  But a few of his ideas have gotten lost or ignored over time as the world and the fields of writing/journalism have evolved. Zinsser says in the opening pages of his book: "I urge people to write in the first person and use I and me and we and us. They put up a fight."


Growing up students often learn that when writing a formal piece, such as an article or published piece, the word "I" should never be used when referring to any part of the piece that shows opinion or possible bias. Zinsser said that "they[writers] think they must earn the right to reveal their emotions or their thoughts. Or that it's egotistical." Because the common belief on when it is acceptable to use the word "I" is very much a large gray area, writers either overuse the word "I" and turn their writing into a hate/love piece, or they are afraid of not being politically correct enough; therefore taking any personal opinion out of their writing.

"I definetly feel as if many writers are afraid to take a stand because they are afraid of the criticisms that may follow," said Katie S., 19, of Wenham. Right now we live in a world where declaring something for what it is is often looked down upon, where minority groups have more power because they have the ability to hold the majority accountable for being politically correct and trying to please everybody. In many cases people do not want to hear the truth, or they already know the truth but would prefer to deny its' occurrence as it is not favorable to their beliefs. “Still,” Zinsser says, “we have become a society afraid of revealing who we are…Americans are unwilling to go out on a limb. A generation ago our leaders told us where they stood and what they believed. Today they perform strenuous verbal feats to escape that fate.”

Maybe writers denying themselves their own opinions is simply a facet of writing that has developed overtime, but Zinsser makes it very clear that a writer can report facts while still expressing themselves through words. “Good writers are visible behind their words,” says Zinsser.

Gordon Students Informed by Various News Outlets By Christian Bradley

Wenham, MA- In analyzing our society as a whole, we have developed media so far that anybody with an e-mail account and internet access can go online and initiate or comment on news by creating their own blog or website.

Gordon College students choose to discover their news in different ways, but for the most part most people share the same common source that can be helpful in a search for news, but can also pose a problem when validity and ethics come into play: the internet.

The same common theme amongst Gordon students and professors is that most seem to get quickly reeled in by the news stories that are posted with flashy photos on the front page of "homepages"; such as MSN, AOL, Yahoo, CNN, NPR, or even ESPN.

Of three interviewed students, they all agreed that though blogs aren't always a reliable source. Blogs do make it extremely easy to simply google a subject and read the search results of whatever news story was searched, but the question that always comes into play is the worry of the possibility of bias or infidelity in the blogs that are being viewed.

The three students, between the ages of 19-21 agreed that many websites now specialize in a certain type of news, or at least to consumers they associate the name of a news company with a specificity in a certain kind of news.

The two males that were interviewed both quickly agreed that when anytime they need to find something out about sports, they just go on to ESPN.com, while the female student did also agreed that she has noticed sports journalism being dominated by ESPN and Yahoo Sports.

For political and entertainment news, the students listed a variety of websites, and, interestingly enough, the prospect of consuming news through television or newspaper never even came up in conversation unless they were asked how often they watch the news on TV or read it in a newspaper. Being college students, all of them agreed that there wasn't enough time in the day to be able to sit down and read a newspaper, while two of the students said that television news seems to be very reptitive and biased.

Though the internet may not always be reliable, it appears that the internet has become the primary source for news for some of the busiest people in the world: college students.