By Erica Moriarty '16

A few weeks ago, my Introduction to Journalism class discussed the idea of oddity in news.

My professor lectured on the importance of information that has something peculiar about it – a quirk or abnormality that makes it newsworthy. He proceeded to ask how many people (in my class of fifteen students) knew someone who had been diagnosed with cancer.

Thirteen people in the class raised their hand.

After this large percentage was revealed, we continued to discuss whether or not this constituted an oddity. Did the fact that everyone knows someone diagnosed with cancer make it normal and almost uninteresting? Or did the fact that cancer is so prominent make it newsworthy? That moment in class stuck with me through to my meeting for Concert For A Cure later that night.

Concert For A Cure is one of the three Park Scholar group service projects for the year. During the spring semester, we will put together a concert to raise money for the American Cancer Society. We find talent from all around Ithaca to put on a concert in order to bring the community together, a community in which too many are affected by cancer. The very community my journalism class talked about.

To me, my correlation with Concert For A Cure and my journalism class is one of the purposes of the Park Scholar service projects. Yes, first and foremost the point is to give back to the community. But in so doing we use our unique talents and passions for media. The group takes ideas from class discussion and skills learned in extracurricular activities to make the concert as successful as possible.

You see, there is a bigger picture for the Park Scholar Program, as the program focuses on more than just talent. Instead, the program focuses on an idea of global justice in mass media and teaches students exactly what this means.

Coming into the program, I thought I knew all about global justice. My goal was always to change the world, so how couldn’t I know what that meant? The truth is, I learned more in the past few months about how to have a true impact on the world than I ever thought possible. Over the past few months, global justice in mass media translated into learning first in my community. Various service programs, particularly Concert For A Cure, taught me about the importance of service within the community and how I can take those skills to a broad audience in the future.

What’s even better about the Park Scholar Program is that I still have so much more to learn.