Hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of food, labor, and water are wasted each year as 30-40% of the food supply in the United States ends up in landfills [1]. Here at Penn State, the university has taken a step to promote the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #12—responsible consumption and production—by installing screens to display food waste statistics in each dining commons. These screens alternate between displaying the pounds of food wasted for the current and previous day, and displaying previous monthly totals next to the projected waste for the current month. After thorough examination of these displays, both flaws and strengths of the visual design elements, utilization of the rhetorical situation, and deployment of social movement tactics become evident. Since the goal of ensuring responsible consumption and production continues to become more and more important as the global population increases, many other institutions and organizations are also taking steps to promote this goal, such as Global Footprint Network with their Earth Overshoot Day campaign. This campaign, which determines the date each year when humans have exhausted more resources than can be produced in a year, is effective in some ways in which Penn State’s dining commons displays fall short. Though each initiative operates in a vastly different manner (and neither is entirely productive or faulty) the Earth Overshoot Day campaign proves effective in terms of using kairos and establishing trust through ethos, logos, and pathos, as well as the use of a more hopeful tone.

Sources: 

[1] Food Loss and Waste | FDA  Continue reading RA Essay Intro →

Out of the pitches today, one that really stuck with me was Molly’s. Her presentation was strong and conveyed Greta Thunberg’s energy through the pitch. I can tell climate change is a topic that Molly is passionate about, so I can’t wait to watch her speech and read her rhetorical analysis essay. There is so much potential for rhetorical analysis in Thunberg’s speech and so many ways it could be done, and Molly chose perfect lenses through which to accomplish this. Specifically, the choice of breaking down the commonplace of childhood innocence and the role it plays in the speech is brilliant. Most of the speech hinges on Thunberg’s youth, which she uses to foster empathy and awareness. Combine that with a dive into the meta-competency of temporal thinking and ideological criticism, and this sounds like an essay sure to provoke many thoughts on the subject of rhetoric surrounding climate change. On top of all this, the arrangement of Molly’s pitch was clean and well-planned. It was easy to follow and flowed nicely, so excellent use of the style canon. Molly, if you’re reading this, great job and I look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Did you know 1,927.9 pounds of food were wasted at Redifer Commons during the month of August alone? At least, that’s what the screen above the trash and compost bins in the South buffet says.

These screens exist in every dining commons as a result of Penn State’s sustainability efforts– specifically in alignment with the United Nations’ 12th sustainable development goal to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”.

Whoever created the slides that are displayed on the screen had the student body in mind as one of the slides claims, “Every day in the U.S., we waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl”, which appeals to the typical Penn State student’s affinity for college football. However, this is where the designer’s awareness of the audience ends. The slides display negative reinforcement. There is something off-putting about placing blame for food waste on us college students who can barely afford to eat substantial meals outside of the commons buffets.

In my rhetorical analysis of these dining commons screens, I will compare different slides from every dining commons and investigate specific rhetorical choices through the lens of commonplaces and social movement studies, in addition to placing the statistics into international perspective. On the slides, commonplaces are found in statements such as “Together we can make a difference”, while the use of first person plural pronouns creates a sense of solidarity that is a key social movement tactic (in this case, the zero-waste movement).

This topic is incredibly relevant to all of us as we encounter these screens on a daily basis. By breaking down the components and implications of the slides displayed in the dining commons, I hope we can each approach reducing food waste from a more holistic angle.

Thank you for your time.

Content Warning: murder, r*pe

When talking about New York City, someone is sure to mention the high levels of crime and perceived apathetic attitudes of residents. In March 1964, the murder of Kitty Genovese became front-page news in a New York Times article that claimed “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call The Police.” At a time when America was rapidly urbanizing, Americans were starting to realize the dysfunctional NYC government policies along with high crime rates, but up until the publication of that article, few were actually talking about it. This breaking news gave not just NYC residents but all Americans a reason to accelerate the belief that cities were becoming more and more unsafe. The underlying discontent with city living festered into an exigence that motivated the immortalization of Kitty Genovese’s murder as a symbol for bystander and urban apathy.

Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was a 28-year-old bartender living in Kew Gardens in Queens, NY. During the early hours of March 13, 1964, she was followed by a man (known later as Winston Mosely) on her walk home from a late shift at the bar. In a dark alley, Mosely stabbed her with a knife, puncturing her lung. She stumbled in to a back hallway of her apartment building where Mosely found her ten minutes later, stabbed her several more times, and raped her.

There were several witnesses, but not 38 as the article led readers to believe. A few witnesses later said they heard screams but assumed it was a domestic fight, which was sadly not seen as severe or irregular in the 60s. One man mentioned his father did in fact call the police, and another man opened his window to yell “Let that girl alone!” during the first attack. When Kitty entered her building, her friend Karl Ross opened his door and saw the second stabbing, but he did not call the police right away. However, the original story left out that Ross was a gay man. He had a valid fear of interacting with law enforcement. Ross called a neighbor named Sophia Farrar who ran into the hallway, not knowing if it was fully safe to or not, and held Kitty in her final moments.

It is clear that the real events do not reflect an overall apathy of ordinary city residents and that there are several inaccuracies in the original article. The police controlled the narrative from the beginning as it was a chief commissioner who pitched the story to a NYT editor. The article left out that Kitty Genovese herself was a lesbian, despite the police’s harassment of Genovese’s girlfriend. The NYT writers were acutely aware of constraints such as the typical reader’s traditional values. It was a story that spoke to the growing uneasiness of city residents and motivated movement into the suburbs, thereby contributing to urban sprawl and the construction of our prevailing, unsustainable car-dependent infrastructure. Though cities tend to have higher crime rates due to a higher population density and exaggerated socioeconomic divides, the commonplace of the apathetic city resident is damaging. The original narrative of Kitty Genovese’s murder is still used today in textbooks to describe the bystander effect (not taking action if there are other people around out of an assumption that someone else will take care of the situation) and spread the overgeneralization of urban apathy. The NYT article is an example of dehumanizing someone to appeal to a commonplace regardless of the instances of the isolated scenario, and it serves as a reminder to write with integrity and encourage empathy.

References:

• https://open.spotify.com/episode/2KTiIAemXt87AmYyVQVSEI?si=HHPm5qYhQgGarMZDzv6xXw
• Remembering Kitty Genovese – The New York Times (nytimes.com)