Bored to Bits

I was excited when I read about this conference on the Chamber of Commerce website. I thought it was going to be about 3 people talking about innovative ways to fix downtown Syracuse, because, if any of us were asked, I think we could safely say that we make it downtown every time we're at freshman orientation and our RA's make us (which is only once...i hope). It also included a free breakfast, which was a definitely plus (sidenote: As an off campus resident with little money, I'm going to try and cover alot of events that include free food from now on)

I was disappointed to realize that the entire event was a lot of ballyhoo. Some of what the presenters talked about was good: bringing new industry to downtown, fixing up buildings, creating internships for college students that would encourage those students to stay and work in Central New York. All good things.

Then the Connective Corridoor discussion happened.

Again, I am pretty confident that if we polled every student on the SU campus, a vast majority would say they used the Connective Corridoor as often as I fly to India for brunch. Which is never. The people at the conference were gushing over the connective cooridoor as if it was God's gift to Syracuse students; truely the walkway to the pearly gates of heaven. They used words like "innovative" and "inspirational" to describe it, and they said it was doing a lot to connect the University to the downtown area. Now I, who was the youngest person at that conference by about three decades, was in complete disbelief. If any of these men in suits came to Syracuse and actually sat at that Connective Corridoor bus stop, they would realize exactly how NOT used it actually is.

And thats when I realized what was wrong with this event. It was meant "for the community", when in fact, tickets were 20 dollars, and the only way anyone would have known about it is if they subscribed to the Chamber of Commerce newsletter, or was a member of the Chamber itself, which is a hefty 315 dollars a year for 2 employees from your company, which doesn't include the 50 dollars you pay for recieving the newsletter, the 24 dollars you pay for the online subscription to the website, and the 35 dollar enrollment fee. All in all, this wasn't a community event at all; it was big companies talking about what students and the general Syracuse community wanted; when these people had no representation whatsoever.

Going Green - Koza...

Overall, though, I had little to no trouble covering the event. I called the manager ahead of time, and asked her if I could come for free (which she said yes to), and if it was okay if I covered the event (which she also said yes to). The catch was, I wasn't allowed to take any audio from the event, but I was allowed to interview the people afterwards, which was good. The woman even set the interview up for me, which was helpful. They seemed excited that "the media" was coming to their event. They kept calling me "the media". It was funny.