Final Project Short Form

Here is my final project short form. I used a meme and short paragraph to get my readers thinking about medical amnesty policies. It would be circulated on Facebook so thousands of Pitt students could see it in the matter of a couple hours. This meme takes a serious spin on the usually humorous "college freshman" meme. Hopefully it sparks your interest and make you want to read the full project below.

Let’s face it; drinking happens on college campuses…a lot. In a 2010 Core Institute Survey, 82.2% of college students reported drinking in the last year. Unfortunately, 4,700 youth (under the age 21) die each year in the United States from excessive alcohol consumption. Protect Pitt students by supporting the movement for a complete medical amnesty policy. Under a complete policy, both the caller and the intoxicated student could be granted amnesty from legal actions (even though they broke the drinking laws) because they sought help. Currently, Pitt’s Responsible Action Protocol only protects the caller but not the intoxicated student. This can lead students to not call for help because they afraid of getting their friend in trouble. Like, comment, and share so that Pitt officials know a change to our policy is necessary! You pay to be here, now urge our officials to lobby for us in Harrisburg so the state can enact laws that prioritize student safety! Sign the petition at www.fakepetitions.com/pittmedicalamnesty

Final Project

Well the process is now complete; I have finished the publication. It is a bit long page wise but it had to be that way to fit in 3,200 words worth of information. I think it is quite informative and profession. The project would work best as a secondary source of information because it is too long to expect any old person to read it. I think my short form project, posted above, would be a more effective way of grabbing readers' attention and calling them to action. While my final project is very text heavy, I am proud of it and think that it is a magnificent conglomeration of all the work I have been doing for the last six weeks. I hope you enjoy reading it and can learn something along the way!

Final Project

Final Project Preparation

As the final project comes near, I find myself struggling to find balance between content and formatting. I'm trying to keep white space so that the document doesn't look overwhelming. Unfortunately, to achieve this, I will need to add more pages so the final document in print will feel thicker. Are other people feeling the same way? What is worse: a longer document with more white space or a short document crammed with info? I'm just trying to get a feel for how other people feel for what people think...

Synthesis and Reflection

            Now that my interview is complete, I begin the task of figuring out how I’m going to use the information I received. I personally believe the most effective thing I could do is write an article about “What to the Pitt Police Think”. This exact title might be a bit dangerous because I only interviewed one person, but I think I would like to write one cohesive article about this interview that is more than just my transcript. I believe that having one article will add to my ethos but will not seem like I am overusing the source. In an example we looked at in class, there were interview quotes on nearly every page which gave the appearance, in my opinion, that the source was relied on too much. By using one article, it allows the reader to get someone else’s opinion without getting a dose of that opinion every page.

            The biggest thing I took away from this interview was the fact that Pitt cannot change its policies. I originally thought Pitt had the power to do this but it is actually the state. This made me have to tweak my final action step in my project. It’s not something I have to adjust a lot for, but it is something more for me to explore. I will also try to find information explaining why CMU has a bit more leniency with the law and why it can provide a more comprehensive medical amnesty policy.

            I am also very pleased with this interview because of how much we discussed educating students on the issues. In my publication, I will need to educate and convince the reader that action is needed. The information I got out of this interview will be very helpful in providing the “education” part of my publication. This will hopefully appeal to logos as well because they are pure facts.

            Because of the recent bomb threats on our campus, there has been an overwhelming support of the Pitt police so I think an interview with a police officer will increase my ethos, even without the words. My audience (Pitt undergrads) should respond positively to this interview because of this support. I don’t believe I will be able to develop pathos out of this interview because we really just discussed facts and situations. I will have to build pathos elsewhere in my final document.

            Overall, I think the experience was very rewarding and it was enjoyable to talk with Officer Bennett, especially when we got a little off topic. In the future, I would try to provide my interviewee the questions I will ask before the interview so they can prepare appropriately. I initially had an interview set up with Lieutenant Lamb but she didn’t feel quite prepared enough to do an interview on the spot. I fully respect that and appreciate the fact that a little more time was taken to get all the fact rights before proceeding with an interview. The interview with Officer Bennett will be very helpful in my final projects and I thank him again for taking some of his time to talk with me.

Interview Notes/Transcript

I have decided to not post the full transcript of my interview because I want to make sure I use Officer Bennett's words appropriately. I also don't want to post everything all over the internet. I have, however, included a few quotes from the interview that I believe are pretty much fact-based and don't reflect an opinion.

"...they introduced it during freshman orientation and that’s mainly to let them know right up front, what the policy is. It’s also in the student code of conduct book so they can also look at that."


"the RDs and RAs also, during their floor orientations, they discuss those issues with them during that time."

"Carnegie Mellon works on a different code than we do. We operate under, as a police department, under Act 120 which is a Pennsylvania state law."


"And for about three years or so, if not longer, this policy has been tried to be implemented but always when it comes down to the enforcement part, we keep saying “We can’t budge”.


"Honestly, we don’t care who calls. As long as we find out, we get them to the hospital. That is the main thing we are concerned about."

Fact Sheet Remix

I am extremely pleased with my remixed fact sheet and I personally think it is much better than my original fact sheet. I did a major overhaul on the design and because of that, I believe it better suits my audience. Undergraduates at Pitt are my primary audience so I thought, what better way to grab their attention than putting my fact sheet on a red solo cup. The red solo cup is an iconic symbol associated with college drinking so it would certainly stand out for undergraduate drinkers. I think the design also makes the document feel less formal even though a majority of the facts are the same.

The design change did come with its challenges though. The reduced surface area of the fact sheet forced me to shrink the font sizes a bit and eliminate the space after a heading and before the text began. I also had to shape the text to fit within the confines of the cup. Although it is traditionally frowned upon to put text on top of an image, I believe that text is still fully legible and the image does not detract from the readability of the document.

I also altered the language of the document to try to convey a more casual tone and increase the likelihood that someone will read the full document. I kept the same question/answer format as my original fact sheet but I tried to word the questions to make more of a personal connection. I utilized more personal pronouns (I, you, etc.) and possessives (your, my, etc.) to help the reader connect with the material I was presenting. This addition of a more human element hopefully developed my pathos in the document.

I played with the order of the facts a bit and decided to start this fact sheet with my statistics, then work my way into the medical amnesty policies. I think this establishes my ethos more quickly and increases the logos of the fact sheet. I tried to convey an understanding and realistic tone when presenting the statistics so as not to scare the reader away from reading the rest of the document. I left the text from the Code of Conduct unabridged so that it doesn’t seem like I am trying change the meaning of the law. It is text heavy but I think it was important to leave it alone so my ethos does not decrease.

Lastly, I eliminated a lot about other schools’ medical amnesty policies. I kept the one law from Carnegie Mellon but eliminated some of the other facts. This was done to conserve space and to keep the document focused on Pitt as much as possible. Having now conducted my interview, I was able to present a little bit of information from that. Because of the interview, I have tweaked the action step of my project. I have come to understand that Pitt is actually powerless to make the changes I am proposing so the new course of action encourages Pitt officials to lobby on our behalf to change the current law in Pennsylvania. Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome of this new fact sheet and it would most likely be the one I would use if I were to actually distribute it to students.

Fact Sheet Remix

Fact Sheet

This is a fact sheet on current medical amnesty policies at the University of Pittsburgh and some needed course of actions. I wanted to inform my audience about current policies and provide brief details about some of the dangers associated with drinking. My audience probably expects this document to just be another bashing on underage drinking, but it is not so I did my best to not drown my audience with lots of statistics. I still wanted to provide some knowledge about the issues and show that there is a need for medical amnesty policies. I tired to use the most recent sources I could find and get them from reputable organizations like the government and universities. I think that providing my sources adds a great deal of ethos to the document and the pathos is developed through a few of the statistics that I did include. I think the logos was developed when I discussed what other schools were doing and showed that implementing these policies would not really be groundbreaking but would rather bring our school up to the caliber of other institutions. I decided to keep my font large and not cram in as much information as possible. I tried to write in simple speech so I often found myself replacing more complex words for simpler ones to help increase the readability. I also used as much white space as possible so my reader will be less overwhelmed by the text. I chose the order of my sections so that it would alternate text heavy sections with bulleted sections. I hope that you find this fact sheet informative and I welcome any feedback that could make this a better resource!

Fact Sheet