At a time when the world is quickly transitioning to the World Wide Web with online shopping, dating and social networking, it was only a matter of time before college students saw an online higher education.

Joining the web migration, UH announced that professors will begin contributing to a massive open online course company known as Coursera earlier this summer. Coursera, one of the four companies leading the massive open online courses revolution, currently offers 391 not-for-credit courses for free online to anyone with access to a computer, according to its website.

UH is joining eighty-three colleges that are contributing content as partners.

The plan is for professors to use each other’s course material in attempts of creating a “blended learning” experience nationwide.

“We think the coming decade will see a transformation in the way education is delivered, where teachers and online content come together to better serve students on campus and beyond,” said  Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller in a press release.

UH plans to eventually offer these courses for credit, but for a fee. The University of Texas announced their contribution of MOOCs through another company, edX, and — beginning this fall — they will offer four of these courses for credit. Just one weekend after the courses opened, UT had more than 15,000 students registered for these four classes, according to The Daily Texan.

Providing an easily accessible higher education experience to more people is an opportunity for UH to grow. More students can access classes, and UH creates a bigger revenue pool. Anyone with a business mind can see the obvious perks to introducing MOOCs to the UH System.

However, UH cannot have it all.

The intrinsic benefits are clouded by a few daunting possibilities. For instance, some students may believe these MOOCs may shine a negative light on UH. After UT announced their participation, Board of Regents Chair Gene Powell said to Texas Monthly that he was accused of attempting to make UT a degree mill. Some students feel that MOOCs are diminishing the value of their degree rather than spreading the wealth.

All perceptions aside, we at The Daily Cougar feel that the positives greatly outweigh the negatives, and — seeing as the MOOC revolution is inevitable — we are glad to be a part of one of the Texas universities at its forefront.

This University was founded with working men and women in mind. Having more easily accessible classes to provide for students who would not otherwise be able to attend or afford classes directly aligns with the foundation of UH.

David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

Paula Deen’s recent scandal, in which she has been accused by her employees of practicing racial discrimination and making racist remarks, has many people wondering what is and what is not considered politically correct.

Those who are watching the scandal unravel from afar have a lot to think about. Many adults may remember a time when the accusations made against Deen were par for the course. However, for young people, the picture is a little less black and white.

The amount of social integration in UH alone could lead people to think that racial lines have been blurred.

No one should ever use the N-word or any racially offensive language. These are moral standards by which everyone should live.

Journalism professor Bryan Butler said Deen is being held to a high standard for a celebrity chef.

“I wish that we held politicians to similar standards. No one seems to care about the filibuster, about the abortion clinics,” Butler said, adding that Deen’s controversy has received “more attention than it deserves.”

According to The Washington Post, Deen said she used the N-word 30 years ago. For some reason, it didn’t seem all that important back then. Her sons said the answer is plain and simple: “character assassination” and “extortion”.

According to the New York Post, son Bobby Deen said “The important thing here is for people to know that that is not her heart.”

To call Deen a racist because she used the N-word is a bit far-fetched because according to the Huffington Post, Deen said she used the word a long time ago, and everyone makes mistakes. Of course, the usage of hateful language shouldn’t be tolerated, but I would be remiss to say that there isn’t a double standard.

If we won’t accept one type of person using offensive language, then we shouldn’t accept it from anyone.

According to the New York Post, Deen said she used the N-word in describing a man who held a gun to her head in a bank robbery.

“Racial slurs are not very smart or very creative,” Butler said. “If you are to have a rivalry with someone, be creative and don’t take the easy route. If you’re going to use racial slurs, you run the risk of alienating your own fans.”

It’s spreading like wildfire through multiple news sources that Deen has been dropped from the Food Network and other companies.

“A lot of us have in the past said things we have regretted saying years ago,” said Al Sharpton in the Huffington Post. “I think she has a lawsuit now about activities now whether it was discriminatory. And whether or not she’s engaged in things now. It’s not about her past. … She deserves what’s fair, but that’s based on what she’s engaged in now.”

In pondering whether Deen should be blacklisted, Bill Maher, on his show “Real Time with Bill Maher” said, “It’s just a word; it’s a wrong word; she’s wrong to use it. But do we always have to make people go away?”

Callie Parrish is a senior who double majors in mathematics and art. She can be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com.

David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

If Edward Snowden is to be believed, he is no longer in his Hong Kong hotel room. He is no longer communicating with journalists over an encrypted internet connection. He’s no longer residing in China nor where he should be in Russia. Neither is he in Ecuador, a nation which claims to have received his request for political asylum.

Snowden has supposedly made a hefty salary, worked for Dell and shared a home in Hawaii. Now he has become one of America’s most significant whistleblowers against one of the most secretive organizations, and less than a month after his actions, Hollywood opted for film rights to capture his story.

Snowden requested that The Guardian release his identity stating that he has no intention of hiding because he believes he has done nothing wrong.

America is pulling to find this invisible man. He’d chosen Hong Kong for its “commitment to free speech and pride for political dissent”. A couple weeks later, a seat was booked under Snowden’s name from Moscow to Havana, hopping from one crater of socio-political inscrutability to another. However, he didn’t board the flight.

Under the guide of PRISM, the National Security Agency collects phone records. Director of National Security James Clapper only revealed its existence to the public last week. Drawing on ambiguous constitutional interpretations, PRISM collects data flow “directly from the servers” of U.S. internet companies. At least nine major providers have been implicated.

Facebook, Google and Microsoft were quick to clarify that they sold no such records to the agency. Verizon Wireless and AT&T were politely silent. Shortly afterwards, President Barack Obama reminded the public that the National Security Agency’s secrets aren’t actually secrets at all, rather only in the sense of classified information.

If you haven’t formed your opinion on the “leak”, it’ll help to put a bead on what a whistleblower actually is. Determining what you think was done might shed light on what you think the title means as it yields a clearer lens to watch the proceedings. Incidentally, that first step is the hardest part.

Representative Loretta Sanchez has deemed the PRISM leaks as a broad issue with a huge  impact made on society. Senator Jon Tester said he didn’t find any wrongdoing in Snowden’s actions.

“Quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn’t aware of before,” Tester said.

UH’s professor Matthew Tribbe harbors similar sentiments on PRISM. Americans might find the information disturbing, which makes the situation about the issue being public satisfying matter.

“Simply knowing the vast extent of the data collection would not seem to imperil any critical NSA operations or investigations,” Tribbe said.

“But it may perhaps, endanger the continuation of the programs themselves, which should be the decision of the American people.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov claims Snowden never crossed their border while President Vladmir Putin condemned American requests for an extradition.

“The Russian special services are not engaged with him and will not be engaged,” Putin said.

Snowden called his sole motive to “inform the public as to which has been done in their name and that which is done against them.” He’s since told the Guardian that he didn’t want to reside in a society with those type of agenda’s in order.

So he left.

In the June 24 issue of Time Magazine, the publication all but equates whistleblowing to spying. They’ve cited Snowden, Pfc. Bradley Manning and Aaron Schwarts, who committed suicide shortly after lifting documents from the JSTOR academic database as “The Informers”.

It might confuse anyone who caught their 2011 issue. They’d deemed “The Protestor” as their “Person of the Year.”

Meanwhile, Snowden is nowhere. For the time being, it seems he has disappeared from the grid he sought to expose. In spite of everything, it’s important not to lose the forest for the trees: Edward Snowden is important, but he’s only an individual. One guy.

The policies he’s exposed are what affect us. They’re what matters and it’s through their lens that the story should develop.

Bryan Washington is a sociology and English sophomore and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com.

A hurricane of change has tumbled the financial world of UH and some undergrads feel like their voice has been swept from underneath their feet.

Students feel that Gov. Rick Perry’s line-item vetoes that denied the UH System hundreds of thousands of dollars in special programs funding and the Board of Regents’ unanimous approval for a tuition increase in the coming academic year came without warning.

In the last 10 years, state funding of UH’s budget has diminished 25 percent from 39 percent . In the last six years, tuition as been raised by nearly $2,000.

Additionally, the cost of attending UH has been increased by $13 per undergraduate semester hour beginning in August. Although that amount seems small on its own, it accumulates to nearly $200 more per semester for a student enrolled in 15 credit hours.

According to College For All Texans, with this new tuition rate, UH will now cost, on average, more than Texas A&M and The University of Texas at Austin – two public universities that receive more funding from Texas than we do.

As we see less financial support from the state, a rise in the cost of tuition is inevitable. Students feel it is an insult to approve an increase without first including them in greater dialogue. To those who are hearing about the matter after it has already been passed makes the dip into their wallets all the worse.

We understand that raising tuition is one of the steps needed to make and keep UH a competitive name against other universities in the state. Yet, administration needs to ensure that students are adequately warned and given a greater opportunity to speak out before plunging its hands further into students’ pockets.

opinion@thedailycougar.com

Nearly everyone has heard the name Edward Snowden or the term PRISM. Glenn Greenwald, a reporter from the Guardian, reported classified information regarding the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs after receiving data from a low-level employee at Booz Allen Hamilton, a technology firm hired by the government as a private contractor.

Snowden, the former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, may have uncovered something no one truly expected from an administration who has repeatedly boasted about its transparency.

The NSA is currently mining data from phone records, internet history and other private information looking for patterns to foil terror plots.

Greenwald, proponent of government transparency and a supporter of whistleblowers, has led the public to believe he has classified information to release.

The actual issues behind the NSA’s PRISM program haven’t been as interesting to many as Snowden. The media has lacked in covering the current administration, as well as the previous Bush administration, and are not only trampling on our right to privacy, but also convincing the mainstream media and a majority of the U.S. population that it’s completely acceptable.

David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

The concept of whistleblowers isn’t new and neither is the public’s general distaste for them.

However, Snowden is hiding out in a hotel in Hong Kong, and Bradley Manning is being prosecuted for releasing classified information during his time in the U.S. Army while being stationed in Iraq.

While Manning did release information with specific names of both CIA agents and local citizens working with the U.S. forces that could potentially cost lives, Snowden has merely released information regarding a far-reaching government surveillance program.

Several hots on 24-hour news networks advance the erroneous belief that he is endangering U.S. citizens’ lives.

“Snowden hasn’t put anyone in danger—he’s revealed a government program. The bigger question about whistleblowers should be how many people they’ve helped by revealing such destructive and intrusive institutional programs,” said UH history professor Robert Buzzanco.

Buzzanco has spent much time researching the Pentagon Papers, released by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg in 1971.

Ellsberg was similarly smeared as being a traitor, but was later acquitted.

The same will not happen for Manning or Snowden, if he’s extradited from Hong Kong.

A life on the run or years in prison may not seem worth it for many Americans. Some shrug the NSA’s PRISM program off and have said that they suspected it was happening.

“At this point, the main way, maybe the only way, we find out about these government efforts it through whistleblowers like the ones mentioned above or through technological groups like WikiLeaks or Anonymous,” Buzzanco said.

Without an open dialogue regarding programs like NSA or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can never truly advance and have a say in what our government is doing. Sure, many people speculated that the 2001 Patriot Act gave the government free reign as long as the ultimate goal wasn’t to trample on the rights of private citizens but to ensure another 9/11 doesn’t occur.

“Nothing in this case is new. There’s an old joke that spying is ‘the world’s second oldest profession’ but the scope of it is truly new and dangerous,” Buzzanco said.

There’s no need to launch attack campaigns against whistleblowers, nor is their a reason to romanticize those who leak the classified information.

Those who acted in what they thought was good faith and released the information are not of consequence. The information that is leaked is what should be the public’s focus.

These men gave up their freedom in order to ensure we, as American citizens, have a shot at electing a transparent, honest government.

Ellsberg, the whistleblower in the case of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, was interviewed after Snowden came forward as the leak for the NSA program.  Ellsberg said the three whistleblowers “chose to give priority to our oath to defend and support the Constitution, rather than our promise to keep secrets for our boss or for our agency, when those secrets were concealing evidence that the Constitution was being violated.”

No matter what side of the coin you land on in regards to whether or not the NSA is acting appropriately, one cannot ignore the fact that whistleblowers releasing this information might be the only hope to hold the U.S. government accountable.

Caroline Giese is a public relations senior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com.

On May 8, an Arizona jury found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. Arias’ story of self-defense against her former boyfriend Travis Alexander wasn’t convincing enough to sway the jury in her favor. Now, as the penalty phase goes into its second round after a hung jury, the question surrounding the case is whether Arias will be given life without parole or the death penalty.

David Delgado/ The Daily Cougar

There are many moral aspects that shape a person’s views on the death penalty ranging from religious views to views of the Constitution. While these can be argued until everyone is blue in the face, nearly everyone can agree that when it comes to money nobody wants to waste a penny.

This is, undoubtedly, the most concrete reason Arias should not be sentenced to the death penalty. Enough money has already been wasted on the trial.

The Huffington Post estimates that, by the time the next round of the penalty phase is (hopefully) finished, Maricopa County taxpayers will have spent $1 million on Arias’ lawyer fees. The trial has seen such expenses as $250 an hour for research and $300 an hour for testimony from expert witnesses. Because Arias is represented by public defenders this number will only rise if she is sentenced to the death penalty and the public can be sure to see round after round of appeals, all while the taxpayers of Maricopa foot the bill.

Throughout the years of waiting for an execution date, inmates tend to see an annual invoice nearly double as they must be housed on death row, go through countless appeals, and basic prison costs, which is also on the taxpayers’ shoulders.

Talking about this on paper seems relatively simple, but no one truly knows how the jury will decide even if the 24-hour media coverage continues to speculate the different scenarios every day.

“I would say that when trials turn into media circuses, they can really go either way,” said UH Law Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson.

“There was outrage over the verdict.  But the point is that during the jury’s deliberations, they probably didn’t know the public’s opinion, or, if they did, they ignored it,” Thompson said.

A new jury will be chosen and if the new panel finds themselves gridlocked, as the previous sentencing jury did, the death penalty will be removed as an option and the judge will give an executive decision to be chosen from life with the possibility of parole or life without parole.

While the way in which Arias brutally murdered her former boyfriend is reprehensible, so is the amount of taxpayers’ money that has already been spent on the trial. Moral aspects of the death penalty aside, the public likely doesn’t want to continue giving funds year after year as the case goes through with multiple rounds of appeals to try to sway the court to get Arias off death row.

 Caroline Giese is a public relations senior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com.

It appears that once again, the wolf is trying to scheme Little Red out of her basket of treats. As congressional Republicans use the recent scandal to attack the Obama administration, tax payers are sharpening their pitchforks to defend conservative groups against the big bad Internal Revenue Service, and the witch hunt seems to grow more vicious each day.

During the past few weeks the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been interrogating front-line and top-desk employees from the IRS office in Cincinnati about an alleged tactic to eliminate conservative organizations by denying them tax-exempt status.

During the investigation, several conservative groups gave testimonies of IRS agents badgering them with obscene questioning, holding their applications unjustifiably and implementing other strategies to either slow down the process or make it more tedious than necessary.

Although the situation escalated into a scandal in May, an email mistakenly sent to the Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements unit by Cincinnati IRS employee Elizabeth Hofacre suggests that Washington, D.C. had been aware of the mistreatment of these groups since 2010.

In the message intended to be read only by IRS attorney Carter Hull, the agent claimed that her supervisors had instructed her and other employees to flag organizations identified on a list that was blatantly discriminative toward conservative groups.

The investigation is being overseen by a panel comprising members from both parties and the committee’s chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

Despite a lack of proof, Issa insists that the mistreatment is an intentional scheme plotted by the Obama administration to debunk conservative ideology and hurt the Republican Party.

Investigative committee member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the poster child for congressional Democrats, has openly opposed Issa.

In an interview with ABC news, Cummings demanded that Issa come forward with interview transcripts that prove that the White House is not connected to the scandal.

The spar between Issa and Cumming has compromised the objectivity of the committee. So far it has proven to be more concerned with pinning the blame and characterizing victims as either Democrats or Republicans versus appropriately identifying the problem.

Every day there are new witnesses and evidence coming forth between the hearing, and other panel members need to be able to focus on the information being presented in order to decipher the truth.

The situation is not isolated to the Cincinnati office. According to NBC news, IRS employees in other cities were also sent this list. There may be bigger problems happening with the IRS that are reflective of non-partisan issues within the bureaucratic system.

In 2010, the nonprofit organization, Citizens United, wanted to use its funds to promote a negative documentary film about Hillary Clinton through cable airing and theatrical releases. In the groundbreaking case, Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Committee, the court ruled in favor of the nonprofit and gave corporations rights under freedom of speech that were previously reserved for individuals.

“This ruling allowed people and corporations to make unlimited contributions to the kinds of organizations at the center of the current scandal,” said political science professor Bryan Cole.

“Organizations that are primarily geared toward social welfare can receive tax exempt status. These organizations may sometimes engage in political activities, but if their main purpose is political, then they are not eligible,” Cole said.

In many cases, these corporations and groups are not required to give a list identifying their donors.

In a sense, the IRS has a moral obligation to fulfill its role in protecting our democratic system from being overwhelmed by corporate interest. This is done by discouraging organizations that are merely tools in fundraising for politicians and lobbyists.

“Many, many new groups sprang up following the ruling,” Cole said. “Thus, a more benign explanation would be that the IRS was overworked and exercised poor judgment in terms of taking shortcuts.”

On the other hand, if the accusations being investigated are true and officials were purposely targeting conservative groups, then it would mean that these organizations were being denied their rights under federal law.

It is easier to accept that the IRS is up to something down and dirty. Although the money collected by this department of the government is used for funding Pell Grants and building better schools and neighborhoods, most Americans don’t have positive views of the IRS.

However, we can’t allow fears of tax season and missing the seemingly rigorous deadlines imposed by the IRS to distract us from the situation at hand. The scary, larger-than-life image of “the government” needs to be downsized so that the situation can be appropriately addressed.

One of our country’s most hated government entities is stuck playing the role of the big bad wolf, while a sensationalistic media entertains us with a frivolous partisan debate, and the public takes its opportunity to hit the IRS under the belt.

If we don’t put a stop to this witch hunt, we will never get down to fixing the real problems in the system.

Ciara Rouege is an advertising junior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com.

Despite nationwide belt tightening, salaries for college athletic staff have been increasing. In some cases, this has given head coaches a higher salary than academic deans, and many are  questioning whether universities are valuing the gridiron over the classroom.

Universities in the Bowl Championship Series saw dramatic salary increases for their athletics faculty — dramatic being a kind understatement. Inside Higher Ed reported football coaches saw an approximate 97 percent increase in their salaries, and athletic coach salaries rose by about 78 percent, while academic faculty saw their salaries rise by only 15.8 percent.

David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

Once percentages have been swapped out for actual numbers, the gap becomes even more apparent. Inside Higher Ed reports also show that in 2006, instructors at Southeastern Conference universities, such as Texas A&M, were paid $70,886 annually. This figure rose by 15.5 percent to $81,758 by 2011. In that same time frame, the coaching staff started out with a salary of more than $3 million and ended in 2011 at $6.9 million.

That is the salary that coaches at A&M can expect now. According to the Texas Tribune, former UH coach Kevin Sumlin traded in his red and white for Aggie maroon and a $2 million salary. After an 11-2 season, coaching a Heisman Trophy winner and a Cotton Bowl victory he was given a raise to $3.1 million. His former boss, Texas A&M Athletic Director Clarence “Bill” Byrne made $690,000, according to the Texas Tribune. Both of them are making much more than the provost of their university, Karan Watson, who makes $360,000. Combined, however, these heavy earners at TAMU are like peasants to Mack Brown, the head coach at the University of Texas, whose salary is a whopping $5.2 million. 

Student athletics builds an identity, builds the student community and builds brand notoriety for its university. Brand notoriety attracts more students, and more students means more funding. More funding means more money for the university to spend on everything overall, including more housing, better facilities and even improved professor salaries.

This doesn’t excuse the fact that a coach can be a millionaire while professors are making pennies in comparison. It says something about how we as a society have come to value sports as opposed to education. It is a sad reality when UH is hidden in obscurity because its sports program is not as stellar or as famed as UT or A&M’s, and that, despite several previous academic accomplishments, only after a superb athletic football season did UH begin to get greater widespread recognition.

Still, the University cannot afford to miss out on the potential revenue that can be found in merchandising rights, tickets and a surge of new students looking to come to the next big sports university. When asked about the University’s stance on this growing trend, Interim Associate Vice Chancellor Richard Bonnin replied that, “The University of Houston’s designation as a Tier One institution brings with it an obligation to be nationally competitive in everything we do” — and that includes athletics.

UH is, at the very least, very well-rounded when it comes to staff salaries. Mack Rhoades, the Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics at UH, is making $350,000, while the dean of the college of engineering, Joseph Tedesco, makes $308,000. The gap isn’t nearly as wide at UH as it is at other universities, and it serves to show that while UH recognizes that athletics are important, academics is the core of every university and is no less true here.

The athletics department also recognizes the importance of academic success, which is perhaps why Bonnin said, “UH student-athletes this spring recorded the highest cumulative GPA after a spring term in the history of the department.”

That the University has maintained such a well-rounded grasp of student athletics and academics will be a milestone for us as various parts of our athletics infrastructure comes under renovation. With each renovation comes big price tags that have many questioning the worth of it all, but it would be foolish to neglect a large source of nationwide fame and income just to take a moral high ground.

James Wang is a history major and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com

David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

On Saturday, the University joined 711 colleges and universities around the country when it banned all tobacco products and became a tobacco-free campus, except for 20 one-year designated smoking areas.

A tobacco-free policy was first introduced in 2001. Four revisions and approximately 10 years later, it was approved by a new condition from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, requiring any school receiving funds from the Institute to disallow tobacco products on its campus.

According to a UH press release, the initiative is part of UH’s commitment to providing a healthy and sustainable environment for everyone in the UH community.

Some such as Jim, author of “University of Houston to Ban Tobacco” an article found on smokersutopia.com, rebuffs Tolley’s comment saying that the real reason behind the policy is the approximately $9.4 million that the CPRIT grants the University. Regardless of reason, the true problem is not that there is a policy, it is the University’s weak implementation of it.

“This policy will be achieved primarily through education, awareness and cooperation,” according to the press release. Once enacted, “UH community members are allowed to respectfully inform a person using a tobacco product about the ban and request that (they) comply,” unless in a smoking area.

Those who disrespect the policy can be reported to the UH Tobacco Task Force website. These individuals will then receive an email reminding them of the policy.

The policy can be termed more of a suggestion than a rule. Having students self-police others without actual repercussions is as useless as telling a child to behave without ensuring punishment. If there is no fine for violating the policy, there is little incentive to respect it.

Even faultier is the email report. Random strangers do not carry a name tag on their shirt. Hence, if a stranger is smoking in a non-smoking area, there is no way to report them unless you ask for their name, and they actually give it to you. This only gets faultier with non-students who would not receive an email even if they gave their name.

The University of Texas, which has a similar policy to UH, is in its second year of a tobacco ban and removed the smoking areas this year. UT sophomore Muhammad Merli-Ahmad said that although students employ their watch-dog role, smoking still happens on campus.

“People still seem to be able to smoke at the old smoking areas,” Merli-Ahmad said. “(The policy) limited the area of smoking, but who knows, maybe one day if they see they aren’t getting punished or fined, they will smoke more freely on campus.”

Prior to the tobacco-free policy, there was a 15-feet smoking ban from buildings and yet smokers still crowded the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library steps daily. Compliance with this policy is doubtful and although the University policy fulfills the CPRIT’s requirements, it lacks the strengths to make a real change. Without a more severe punishment for its violators, preferably in the form of a monetary fine, there is little incentive to comply.

Mónica Rojas is a print journalism sophomore may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com

 

Freedom of speech and professional media duke it out for the world to see. | David Delgado/The Daily Cougar

Jeff Bliss is something like a martyr. After being asked to leave his high school classroom in early May, the Duncanville student informed his teacher, “you can’t expect a kid to change if all you do is tell ‘em.”

“You want kids to come into your class,” he said. “You want them to get excited for this? You gotta come in here — you gotta make them excited. You gotta touch his freaking heart.”

Bliss is blonde, with long hair. He is wearing a blue shirt and red Nike high tops.

His instructions were noted, but Bliss couldn’t have known they were being recorded by a classmate in the front row. He couldn’t have known that his classmate would have the fortitude to upload the recording to YouTube. And he couldn’t have known that, less than a week later, he’d find himself reiterating his elegy for ABC.

That telecast found over 4,000,000 hits on YouTube. He has since been spotted on The Examiner, New American News Media, the International Business Times, the Huffington Post, The Dallas Morning Observer, CNN, World Star, NBC Washington, CBS DFW and the Socialist Worker Online. He’s also been re-interviewed by Steve Eager of Fox News and SAY CHEESE TV.

In both interviews, he wears a beanie. In the latter, he’s sitting in the park. He has not cut his hair.

The problem with Jeff Bliss is the problem with social media, and the problem with social media is a problem that’s becoming very much our own — our reliance for perspective regardless of reputability.

Hard facts are one thing. The weather is the weather is the weather. Events are events. Whether you’ve been told the Dow report by Rush Limbaugh or Anderson Cooper or Huckleberry Finn, you have information untainted by perspective or motive. But you’ve got a distinct other when, say, your go-to source for the particulars of our state’s public education framework is an 18-year-old former high school drop-out lacking the patience to sit through a social studies course.

The Pew Research Center took note. With over 15 months worth of findings in hand, they believe YouTube has created “a complex, symbiotic relationship between citizens and news organizations … a relationship that comes close to the journalistic ‘dialogue’ many observers predicted would become the new journalism online.”

You’d think that the furthering of journalistic interest would be good thing. It mostly is. The Research Center later qualifies “the rise of social media recommendations does not appear to be coming at the expense of people going directly to new sites or searching for the topics they’re interested in.”

They’ve found that user uploaded news transmissions weren’t diminishing appetites for more traditional news sources: if anything, they stimulated them.

But in our haste for front line, definitive reports, the risk of perpetuating inaccuracies looms ever further. Complacency becomes commonplace. Several weeks ago, CNN’s Jake Trapper accused ABC and the Weekly Standard of inaccurately reporting emails in an exchange regarding this year’s terrorist attacks in Benghazi. He did so with an email of his own.

Conversely, CNN flubbed their coverage of last month’s Boston Marathon bombings by erroneously “reporting Wednesday afternoon that an arrest had been made.” It hadn’t. The suspects weren’t even identified yet. And all at the leisure of “eye witness” reports, observations conveyed via Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the networking gamut.

And why would faulty national news coverage tie back to a public schooler’s rants? In what way does Jeff Bliss, despite what are surely spectacular intentions, exemplify the issue of immediacy in our generation’s information grabbing?

Because he’s the representation of the future. Or at least a representation. We’ve got time to change. Mistakes will be made. But if we continue to forsake accuracy for “first dibs’” sake, a social studies classroom will be the least intimidating locale we’ve got to look forward to.

opinion@thedailycougar.com