Tonight's Aritcle: “Band of Geeks” - or - “With honors: Smart kid program revealed”

Yesterday a friend pointed out an article about the UAlbany Honors College in the Albany Student Press, the university student newspaper. Before then I'd never read an article from the ASP, and now I wish it had stayed that way. This morning I took out my pen and corrected everything I saw in the article. I'll scan it tonight and add links so you can see for yourself.

As the title of this post alludes to, I'm not sure how to refer to this article. It's split over two pages; the first section is titled “Band of geeks”, the second is “With honors: Smart kid program revealed”. The capitalization is exactly as printed.

Aside from the issue of split personalities, I'm rather confused by the choice of titles. The first is just offensive. It's not that I mind being called a geek (I'm a computer science and math major!), but I'm sure others would object to the label. For example, I would not necessarily consider an English major in the Honors College to be a geek.

The second title is more perplexing. It would have made sense in late summer to early fall of 2006, when the Honors College accepted its first class, but it's been around for almost a year and a half now -- hardly “revealed”.

The body of the article is hardly better than its titles. In the second paragraph I saw this: “The Honor's [sic] College was first conceived in 2003, [sic] by the College of Arts and Sciences...”

The correct form is Honors College. The College is not possessed by Honor, but rather Honors is an attributive noun modifying College. The author does this elsewhere in the article, but gets it right most of the time (which almost screams that she didn't proofread her work).

In the same quotation, that comma does not belong. In fact, it seems that correct usage of commas eludes this author; I made several comma-related corrections throughout the article.

Another fun paragraph occurs toward the end: “He [Prof. Haugaard] claimed, unfortunately due to resource limitations, only a small amount of students can be admitted each year.”

I highly doubt that Prof. Haugaard claimed anything. He's the head of the Honors College for crying out loud! If anyone is a reliable source, he is.

Also, the sentence is poorly worded. I know what the author intended to say, but it reads as though it is unfortunate that limited resources is the reason a small amount of students is admitted, and that it would be more fortunate if the reason were something else. I might change it to:

“He claimed that, due to unfortunate resource limitations, only a small amount of students can be admitted each year.”

Finally, there's the list of Honors College advantages that accompanies the article:

The smart kids get all the breaks.
The Honors College Advantedge [sic]:

1. Advance Registration
2. Living with classmates
3. Weekly 7-page papers
4. Senior year thesis
5. Wedgies (if you're lucky)
6. Dinner dance lessons and museum trips

The spelling error is bad. My spell-check catches it, and surely the editor reads these articles before sending them to the presses. However, I'm more bothered by items 3, 4, and 5. What idiot wrote this list? These are neither advantages nor funny. I find item 5 offensive. Finally, who decided that the “advantedges” in item 6 should be grouped? Why not add an item 7?

This is not everything I wrote, but these are some of the fun ones. And yes, the irony that it's the Honors College article which is so poorly written is not lost on me. I don't know if the author is a member of the Honors College herself, and after reading this article I sincerely hope not. I would have expected to read this kind of article in my old middle school or high school newspapers, but I suppose I expect a bit more out of a university newspaper.

Works Cited

Brandecker, Maria. "Band of geeks". Albany Student Press. 12 Nov. 2007. 1, 3.