Presenter(s): Zack Demars—Journalism, Political Science
Faculty Mentor(s): Peter Laufer
Session 3: Pens & Clicks are Mightier than the Sword
As the capstone of nearly a year of reporting by myself and 13 peers, I wrote two chapters of a forthcoming journalistic book on the ground in Rostov-on-Don and Moscow, Russia . In the majority of the book, my colleagues and I posed questions about human political and social nature as they related to an abortive pen pal project attempted between Roseburg, Oregon and then-Soviet Russia in 1960 . In the final two chapters I authored, I sought to answer those questions by posing a new potential pen pal relationship to fourth-grade students and teachers . The youngsters offered a simple answer: that kids will be kids, in search of new friends . On a broader level, however, the teachers of today and students of the past tell us that, in the words of a sculpture found in a park on the Moskva River, children are the victims of adult vices . What we are left with is a narrative that traverses continents, transcends languages, and collapses decades . It leaves us to ask what the real differences are between seemingly disparate societies in terms of politics, propaganda and human relationships .