Hello, everyone! I am Anca Mihalcea, a second year graduate student in the COMM department at Virginia Tech. I am from Romania and I intend to graduate this spring. I have almost eight years of working experience in the media, in Romania, as a radio news editor and announcer, as well as a local corespondent for a national TV channel. I decided to quit my work in journalism, since in my vision, Romania lacks at this moment of some serious ethical working practices with huge implications towards people. Usually the media is controlled politically being funded by businessmen or politicians who can have a great influence on editorial policy. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to persuade my studies in the United States. So far, considering the different courses I have explored in communication, rhetoric (particularly the study of metaphor) along with crisis communication are of my high interest.
In regards to the VT Principles of Community, I totally resonate with all the ideas mentioned here. As an international student I found Virginia Tech a very open and friendly community towards students who come from other nations. Based on my personal reflection and understanding, the idea of principles is related to the ethical guidelines that an organization is seeking to respect and most important to be guided by these principles. The principles of an organization are like the values of a person. They define who that person is. The term principles can also be defined as the well known rules aimed to be respected by the community members. The statement related to “a legacy that reflected bias and exclusion.” underlines the shift of Virginia Tech identity and vision by looking into the past practices and being aware of some important changes needed to be made in order to improve the university’s public image. I consider that all these principles are essential to an academic organization considering the various differences between its members. One aspect that gets my attention is rejecting discrimination towards sexual orientation, a principle stated after other significant ones. This somehow underlines the history and trend of practices in recent times, since decades ago there wasn’t such a notion that an organization would express in public. This shows that as society evolves new principles can be added to the organization.
I believe that a document embedding all these principles would serve as a constitution for all the organization’s members. It is even critical for everyone to familiarize themselves with the culture at Virginia Tech (especially if there is a cultural gap, like in my case) and to be provided with guidelines toward permitted and prohibited actions. This would raise awareness towards the actions that individuals engage into and would contribute to the process of human learning and growth. Once you are labeled as belonging to Virginia Tech you also contribute through your words and actions to the university’s image by representing it in different environments. Therefore, it’s not just about us, the individuals. It’s also about other responsibilities that we carry.
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