UM Marine: 'We need to finish what we started'
Last Updated (Thursday, 01 May 2008 14:33) Written by Joe Meloni, AmherstWire.com Tuesday, 29 April 2008 21:47
Editor's Note: This is part of a series of stories generated by a journalism course titled "Politics, Journalism and the Web." Students will be reporting stories from now until the end of the semester.
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Training for combat
Brad Durkin never really liked ceramics class and found little joy in watching the clock count down his final high school days. So, instead of spending months counting to a graduation ceremony he didn’t consider particularly important, Durkin marched into his principal’s office with an odd proposal.
“Once you get into college [during high school], you take easy classes that you don’t care about; like ceramics, all my friends took ceramics,” he says muffled by a soft laugh. “I didn’t want to waste half of my year, and I didn’t care about graduating with my friends. So I asked my principal to write me up a diploma. He typed it up, stamped it; and I brought it to [a marine recruiter]; I left the next day.”
Soldier says it's too late in Iraq
Last Updated (Tuesday, 29 April 2008 22:39) Written by Stephanie McPherson, AmherstWire.com Friday, 25 April 2008 12:00
Editor's Note: This is part of a series of stories generated by a journalism course titled "Politics, Journalism and the Web." Students will be reporting stories from now until the end of the semester.I was sitting at my butcher’s block in my comfortable rural home, dinner heating on the stove. I was on my laptop, chatting with a friend, discussing what would happen when the 48 hour deadline President Bush set had passed. It was March 20, 2003, just hours before the end of the deadline. I remember wondering, if Saddam Hussein and his sons didn’t leave Iraq, would they immediately start bombing? Was this really going to happen?
Halfway around the world, my cousin, Kyle Frost, of Kernersville, N.C., sat waiting as well. Waiting for the message stating the deadline passed. Waiting for the order to start the attack on Iraq.
Iraq the top issue for UMass Marine
Last Updated (Tuesday, 29 April 2008 22:38) Written by Mary Kate Alfieri, AmherstWire.com Friday, 25 April 2008 13:08
Editor's Note: This is part of a series of stories generated by a journalism course titled "Politics, Journalism and the Web." Students will be reporting stories from now until the end of the semester.
When Steve Shepard, a current UMass student, joined the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 2001, he had no idea what was in store for him. “I remember thinking what are the odds a war is going to break out in the next six years, and then six weeks later, 9-11 happened. All of a sudden it was a whole new ballgame.”
AUDIO: A Tragic Personal Experience
After serving from August 2001 to March 2006, it is Shepard’s experience that now has made the war the single most defining issue for him in the 2008 elections.
VIDEO: War sways student's vote
Last Updated (Monday, 28 April 2008 12:53) Written by Administrator Monday, 28 April 2008 11:59
