Reagan's Published Articles

I am excited to have been published three times in a local college newspaper.

My first published article is a recounting of a mission trip to the Bahamas Islands during Spring Break 2007. The article made the front page, with the headline "Global Conscience Moves Student." I describe the activities that I undertook on the trip, and discuss briefly the history and economic status of the Bahamas Islands. Check out this article by following the link below!

http://media.www.dscinmotion.com/media/storage/paper1037/news/2007/05/01...

My two additional articles were letters to the editor, written in response to two specific articles penned by a student columnist regarding the Iraq War. What began as my letter to the editor set off a chain reaction of articles written by the columnist and myself in response to one another. This all began one August afternoon in a small college cafeteria...

I picked up the latest edition of the student newspaper. On the front page, the main article's headline read "Iraq: What Now?" As I read through the text, it became apparent that the viewpoint being expressed was skewed to a very pessimistic side of the Iraq dialogue. If the article had been in the Opinion section of the publication, perhaps I would not have acted. However, since the work itself was a front-page report, which I assumed was not supposed to take sides in a debate, I took action. Thanks to a helpful acquaintance, I was told to write a letter to the editor in response to "Iraq: What Now?" A due date for submission was also provided.

Please read the original article, "Iraq: What Now?" by following the link below:

http://media.www.dscinmotion.com/media/storage/paper1037/news/2007/08/22...

Although my letter to the editor was pushed back to the November issue because of last minute changes, it finally printed. Interestingly, when I observed my article's place on it's respective page, another article hung directly below mine. This other article was actually the original columnist's response to, well, my response. Although I assumed letters to the editor did not merit responses by original columnists, my hypothesis was disproved. Apparently, the columnist would have both the first and the last word. Read both articles by following this link:

http://media.www.dscinmotion.com/media/storage/paper1037/news/2007/11/01...

"Surprisingly," I decided to appeal to the student editor's ethical framework regarding fairness. I wrote a diplomatic (but firm) email to the student editor, appealing to his sense of journalistic fairness. I asked for one more letter to the editor. Days passed, and I received no reply. So, I took it upon myself to conveniently drop in to the paper's weekly staff meeting. The student editor graciously stepped out of the meeting to talk with me. After five-or-ten minutes of discussion - and after I pointed out the columnist's sloppy journalism in his "response to my response" - the editor agreed to publish one last letter to the editor, written by me.

In critical, discerning fashion, I broke down most of the points in the columnist's last article, addressing them with up-to-date facts and disciplined reasoning and logic. My following article (which you can view by following the link below), indeed the "last word", marks an end to the saga that spanned an entire semester and served as a microcosm of the Iraq War debate in America.

http://media.www.dscinmotion.com/media/storage/paper1037/news/2007/12/05...