Evaluation of my Op Ed

[Note that the topic of my Op Ed changed in it's final draft]

An opinion editorial should be based on an argument that is doable. The thesis statement suggests to adapt the Living Standards for off-campus non-members studying at BYU to give them more freedom to do whatever they feel like, as long as they remain respectable and reliable and don’t damage BYU’s reputation. This is a pretty solid thesis that is actually possible. It is in a good kairos moment because this topic never really gets old, as non-members of the LDS church start their careers in BYU every year and this is a topic that concerns to all of them who want a little more freedom.

The main audience of this editorial is the Office of Off-Campus Housing in BYU, and all of the arguments are directed towards them with the goal of convincing them of the fact that the thesis is actually doable and it doesn’t affect BYU at all. The vocabulary and writing is formal, which adapts well to the audience. A secondary audience to this editorial is those students who are non-members and wish to exercise their usual activities without restrictions, but it is primarily reflected towards the Off-Campus Housing Office. There are no assumptions of common knowledge in this editorial and everything is well explained. The author clearly defines the issue in his thesis statement.

Counter arguments are predicted and prevented by the author. The biggest counter-argument the university might have against this editorial is the fact that if more freedom is allowed to non-members of the church outside of the university, these students might damage the university’s image and reputation by committing acts of dishonesty and immorality. This counter argument is taken care of by the author.

Rhetorical proofs are also used in this paper. Ethos is established when the author talks about his background and tells one of the ways these rules for off-campus living have affected him, so he is identifying with the secondary audience. Pathos is used at the beginning of the introduction, where the author tries to sympathize with the primary audience by recognizing the positive effects of the Honor Code and behavior of BYU. Logos is used in examples like the Testing Center example, where it seems logical to trust students with this responsibility after they have been trusted many other things like these of taking exams without supervision.

MLA formatting conventions are followed and the grammar is good, there are no wordy complicated sentences and because of all of this, this Opinion Editorial is worthy of a shiny A. 

Comment on my intro.

Well, I decided to post my introduction because I think it's the most difficult part of my Op Ed and maybe I can make it a bit better with some comments. Any suggestions and comments that will help it get better will be very welcome.

" Brigham Young University is a very prestigious college owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, with some of the best ranked schools in the United States such as the BYU Business School. Even though most students in this university are members of this church, it is not only limited for them. Many international students apply to BYU because of its low costs and prestige. However, the acceptance rate for these international applications is not the highest amongst the American universities. I am an international student myself, and I know of someone who was just about as skilled as I am, and didn’t make it through due to the limited amount of international students that were accepted. I’m not denying BYU knows about the whole range of benefits of cultural diversity and does as much as possible to accept international applicants. All I’m suggesting is to increase the rate of accepted applicants so that more international applicants worthy of this education enjoy the benefits of studying in such a great university, as many of them who I’m sure are very brilliant, like my friend, deserve this education. The acceptance of more internationals will help everyone: The university, the student body and the accepted internationals.  "

My topic.

The topic I chose is globalization of social networks. This looked like an interesting topic to me because ever since the release of sites like MySpace and facebook, social networks have become a very important part in the society's identity. There are millions of facebook and twitter accounts, active accounts that are regularly checked and updated by their owners, and these numbers just keep getting higher. The whole social networking process is affecting users' privacy. If this is not taken seriously by those who publish their lives and what they do on these networks, this "open" information may affect users negatively and the sense of privacy itself might suffer a huge change. Nobody acts the same way with everyone: If making a job application, the background and resume will not be the same as if talking to a friend from last night's party. Social networks don't differ between who is looking at your profile, so this type of privacy is lost with them. Some people have even lost their jobs because of some picture that wasn't supposed to be uploaded but somehow reached facebook or twitter.

Why is this important to me? I just talked about it: Privacy is something really important and if this is not controlled, these social networks have the power to and will affect people's privacy. And not only that, networking has even become addictive to some, absorbing a lot of time in their lives which is spent doing useless things. This could, in the worst cases, affect the way people relate with each other. It is not strange to notice that some would rather talk through these networks than talking in real life, face to face.

What can I do about this? Well, the most popular networks have already implemented privacy settings that will prevent many of the negative effects of these networks. But who controls these settings are the users. My goal is to find ways to encourage social networkers to pay more attention to privacy and prevent these users from becoming addicted to these networks.

This blog will be based on the globalization of social networks like Facebook,  Twitter and Myspace and their impact on society.