New School Politics

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In our first Quarterly Report Card at the conclusion of 2007’s first quarter, we made several promises. First, we promised more content and more writers. Since then, we’ve slowly been adding writers to our staff without a full announcement. Without further delay, I’d like to announce our four new writers: Ryan Chou, Frank Rinaldi, George Hansel, and Chas Morrison. Each will publish entries categorized under their own name. I’ve included a brief snippet about each of them to help our readers understand who helps to bring great content to New School Politics every day. If you’d like to join our burgeoning staff of writers, we’d love to have you. Please send us an e-mail and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Our new writers have caused an influx of comments and visitors. We feel that the new user group has helped to bring a sense of community to the blog; new users engage in intelligent banter with older, more experienced readers, and the entire blog, including its readers, benefit.

New School Politics has embraced a variety of technological means to get our new articles out to the public. Primarily, if you’d like to stay updated, we invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed, which pushes site updates out every time a new article is published. If you’d like to learn more about RSS, please visit “What is RSS?” Furthermore, if you’re a member of Twitter, we invite you to follow our blog. You’ll get updates on your mobile phone if you choose. When our Q1 Report was published, New School Politics had integrated “Share This” buttons to get our content on social news sites. We’ve since disabled those buttons and we’re currently working on a more improved solution. In the mean time, feel free to get a Digg, Reddit, or Del.icio.us account and help promote the articles yourself. Soon enough, we’ll have built in sharing features to help all users share articles.Social news isn’t the only new feature coming.

We also had discussed redesigning the blog. We’ve taken considerable steps forward and we’re proud to announce that a redesign is coming. We’ve signed Leo Mancini to custom design every facet of the blog. When the design is complete, you’ll notice a new logo, a new layout, new sharing features, and lots more. We hope our readers benefit from these changes and, should you have any opinions regarding the redesign, we invite you to e-mail us from the Contact tab. As New School Politics has grown, we’ve made some friends in the blogosphere. We’d like to thank frequent commenters like Simmons of Thoughts on the World for livening discussion on the blog, and we invite anyone simply reading the blog to interact via the comments, or by e-mailing us.  Thanks again to all our readers for your continuous support, and we hope to bring you a better New School in the future.  Have a terrific summer! 

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America once again felt insecure today as 33 lives were taken on the campus of Virginia Tech University. Several notable things occurred in the immediate aftermath of the event. First came an outpouring of grief from Americans and foreign nationals. Governor Tim Kaine, away in Tokyo, immediately jumped on a plane to fly back to Virginia. The President of the United States read from a prepared statement. Campus officials held numerous press conferences to keep America briefed. As the gravity of the massacre became clear, America collectively wept for the deceased at Virginia Tech.

The inquest into the behavior of the Virginia Tech Police Department began next. An e-mail was sent to students approximately two hours after the first shooting occurred. Although it’s not immediately clear, one must wonder whether the two shootings are connected. If so, shouldn’t the college have taken more action? Several in the mainstream press have wondered. It’s not time for an investigation into misconduct just yet, however. What is important is an investigation into the motives and reasoning of the killer. Pajamas Media & Boing Boing have terrific ongoing coverage on the shooting while Planet Blacksburg, a student run publication, is the place to go for eyewitness accounts.

Some, however, weren’t content to leave the situation without debate. Immediately, the shooting was transformed into the trigger for a nationwide argument about gun control. If given more rights, could students with guns have protected themselves from the impending threat of a shooter on the loose? Dozens of blogs seem to be intent on debating the subject, paying little attention to the tragedy itself. Michelle Malkin, one of the conservative movement’s leading bloggers, seems to be leading the charge. Instapundit chimed in as well, noting that “had the bill [one that planned to allow college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus], “things might have turned out differently.”  There is no official word on the weapon the gunman used, so gun control activists are unable to protest.  What if, however, the gunman was never allowed access to the gun in the first place?  I, similar to Eugene Volokh (of the Volokh Conspiracy), wonder whether it’s too soon to create debate. The nation has just witnessed the worst mass-shooting on a school campus in its history. It’s certainly too soon to stir up controversy.

Is That Legal? has more on the other tragedy, the shift from the massacre to a gun control argument. Along with President Bush, Govenor Kaine, and all of America, I send my sincere condolences to the victims of an attack that viciously took the lives of 32 college students and professors. I hope that this event will serve not as a catalyst for further debate but as a sign of our twisted society. May the victims and their families take solace in knowing that America is with them.

technorati tags:education, shooting, virginiatech, guncontrol

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New School Politics began as an idea in early 2006. Its first implementation, a mere idea, gradually morphed into the idea of a blog. Months later, we took the first step, signing up for hosting and a domain name. Ryan’s choice, New School Politics, won out against other domain names because we decided it was a combination of what we wanted to convey in our name: youth and enthusiasm for politics. Since then, we chose WordPress as a platform to host our blog and set about customizing it to best fit our readers.

On January 9, 2007, the blog went live after lots of talk and planning. Since our launch, we’ve gone through several design revisions and we’ve added tons of different plugins. To run things down for our readers, we’ve added some new features, including Book Reviews, which are powered by Shelfari. MyBlogLog has provided a platform for user communication and community building. We’ve made it easier for users to share our articles with a “Share This!” button at the bottom of every post.

We’re still not satisfied, however. New School Politics has clearly grown from what it was in January of this year, but it’s not near the website we want it to be. So what’s coming in the future? We’ll give our readers a little sneak preview at some stuff we’re working on for the next several months…hopefully finished by around June.
It’s hard for three high school students to write an article everyday, but we’re making it a goal. To help accomplish our writing aims, we’re going to be hiring several more writers. If you’d like to write for New School Politics, please send us an e-mail. With a higher post frequency, hopefully we’ll be able to build a bigger community of readers. Unfortunately, to support our readers, we plan on either soliciting donations or adding a bank of advertising. Avid readers may have noticed the Performancing ad network integration earlier in the year. We took down the unobtrusive block of ads to clear up our interface for readers. In the future, however, we’ll have a much more streamlined webpage. In the second quarter of 2007, we plan on commissioning a web designer to both design a logo for New School Politics and redesign New School Politics.
We’ll also be adding more social features. Newly popular Twitter helps to give readers constant updates on blogs. We’ve just created a New School Politics Twitter for those who’d like to receive our updates over IM and text message. Those subscribing to our feed may receive special insights and up to date news from the writers here. We’re also tossing around several other ideas to help our readers interact.
New School Politics is young and we still have a lot to learn. That’s why, in the coming year, we’ll be attending a number of conferences about technology and politics. In April, we most likely will make an appearence at PodCamp NYC, an “unconference” designed to edify its visitors about podcasting. That brings us to another one of our stipulated goals for the next quarter…a podcast. Whether it’s once a month or once a week, we’d like to be on your iPod. Look out for an announcement in the next couple of months regarding that. In May, we’ll be attending the Personal Democracy Forum, a conference dedicated to the merging of technology and politics. Our attendance at these two conferences will surely improve New School Politics.
We thank our readers for their continued support and hope that the next quarter of New School Politics’ existence will be its best yet.
Thank you,

Zach, Ryan, and Efty

technorati tags:newschoolpolitics

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