Editorial Roundup: Mississippi

Columbus Dispatch. April 26, 2022.

Editorial: A brand new sort of analysis paper: podcasts

For older readers, the highschool analysis paper meant taking an assigned subject and spending lengthy after-school hours within the public library navigating the mysteries of card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System, scanning the pages of thick books to discover a related nuggets or two, compiling bibliographies and footnotes, adopted by the arduous chore of placing all these parts collectively, typed and double-spaced, into some type of coherent manuscript.

Over the previous 25 years, a lot has modified, and the method of placing collectively a analysis paper is loads simpler within the age of the web.

Nowhere is that prone to be extra obvious than at Mississippi College for Math and Science the place a minimum of one conventional analysis paper has been changed with podcasts.

In line with the most recent knowledge, there are greater than 1,000,000 distinctive particular person podcasts, with about 104 million American podcast listeners and 78 million podcast views. Podcasts promoting income exceeded $1 billion in 2021.

Nonetheless, analysis reveals half of all Individuals have by no means listened to or seen a podcast.

A podcast is a digital audio file made obtainable on the web for downloading to a pc or cellular system, usually obtainable as a sequence, new installments of which will be acquired by subscribers mechanically. Consider it as radio-on-demand however for computer systems and cellular units.

The subject material obtainable is limitless, all the things from politics to popular culture and each specialty curiosity conceivable.

Even The Dispatch has a podcast within the fall for Mississippi State soccer evaluation.

The concept of changing the standard analysis paper right into a podcast got here to MSMS English trainer Thomas Easterling two years in the past as a work-around for the difficulties offered by the COVID-19 pandemic. This yr’s college students got a immediate — heroes and villains from their hometown — and set to work.

A number of the primary parts stay. College students should nonetheless analysis their topics, present citations and write a script. With the podcast format, college students should do greater than summarize details; they have to use sound modifying software program to combine their audio reviews, including ambient noise and music.

The aim now could be because it was for earlier generations — telling a narrative, based mostly on stable analysis in an informative and entertaining method.

However the greatest distinction will be the MSMS college students truly appear to benefit from the expertise, which most likely appears suspicious to older readers.

By embracing this new platform, the previous “analysis paper” doesn’t need to be a tedious and dreaded endeavor.

That’s a great factor, we expect. When studying is enjoyable, the teachings discovered stick with you and you’re prone to embrace them.

Much more, the scholars are studying a sensible twenty first century ability.

Greenwood Commonwealth. April 27, 2022.

Editorial: Override Reeves On Felon Voting Invoice

Gov. Tate Reeves has vetoed a invoice that arrange a path for a lot of convicted felons to have their voting rights restored after finishing their sentence and paying all associated prices.

The veto displays a throwback mind-set from the Mississippi governor, and the Legislature ought to override him on the soonest alternative, which sadly will not be prone to be till subsequent January.

Senate Invoice 2536 had vast help within the Legislature. Together with restoring felons’ voting rights, the invoice additionally arrange a registry of individuals convicted of embezzling or improperly spending public cash. There was a lot to love about this invoice, however the governor didn’t see it.

His veto message stated felony disenfranchisement was “an animating precept” courting again to the traditional Greek and Roman empires. He additionally famous that in America, legal guidelines completely stopping felons from voting date again to the colonial period, and that Mississippi has adopted the apply ever because it turned a state.

The place to begin? Effectively, almost certainly, the “animating precept” among the many Romans was that anyone who dedicated a felony can be crucified, tortured, condemned to slavery or just executed on the spot to be executed with it. That’s hardly a justice system to which anybody ought to aspire.

As for early American historical past, simply because felons couldn’t vote a very long time in the past doesn’t make it proper. Slavery as soon as was authorized, too, and neither ladies nor minorities gained correct entry to the poll field till the twentieth century.

If Reeves goes to look again 200 years, he additionally ought to have a look at legal guidelines across the nation right now. Mississippi Right this moment reviews that this state is amongst lower than 10 that don’t restore most felons’ proper to vote after finishing their sentence.

Lawmakers got here up with a approach to be much less punitive. The invoice stated any felon, upon completion of his sentence and full fee of fines, may ask the courtroom that sentenced him to expunge the conviction — mainly wipe it away. If a decide authorised, the previous felon can be restored “to the standing he occupied” earlier than his arrest and conviction, together with the proper to vote.

The invoice was a method round among the much less critical felony crimes listed within the state Structure that completely bar somebody from casting a poll, and which, the historic file reveals, have been initially motivated by a want to disenfranchise as many Black voters as attainable.

Senate Invoice 2536 particularly restricted expungement to 1 per individual, and it additionally included a listing of crimes that have been ineligible for this aid, together with crimes of violence, first-degree arson, drug trafficking, a felony DUI cost, witness intimidation, abuse or neglect of a susceptible individual, and embezzlement.

The unique invoice handed the Senate 52-0 and received by way of the Home by a 100-16 vote. A convention invoice that ironed out variations in what the 2 chambers authorised handed with solely two dissenting votes within the Senate and none within the Home.

On condition that overwhelming degree of help, the Legislature clearly has the votes to override the governor’s veto. Lawmakers must do it as a matter of equity. Legal punishment shouldn’t be everlasting besides in probably the most excessive instances.

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