Concussive birds, insectoid invaders and do-gooder community centers.
What links these scattershot subjects? They are the topics that won Elizabethtown College communication majors all three top spots in a Student Keystone Media Awards category. Each year, the Pennsylvania News Media Association holds a competition to recognize excellent student journalism. Etown’s students dominated the Best Feature (Broadcast) category within the Division II section.
Junior Jessica Freels took first place for her video “Benny the Bird,” a spotlight about a cardinal nesting near the Vera Hackman Apartments. Benny has a habit of flinging himself against dorm windows at breakneck (hopefully figuratively) speeds.
Senior Samantha Seely scored second for “Spotted Lantern Flies” about a new invasive bug species from Asia. With no natural predators, Seely recommends any student seeing the lantern fly’s eggs on campus trees should scrape them off with a credit card before they hatch and wreak havoc on the Pennsylvania ecosystem.
Finally, junior Cameron Scandle got honorable mention for “Flags,” where he shines a light on the good work of an up-and-coming youth organization. The Future Leaders and Achievers of Greater Shamokin provides homework help for kids in that area.
Freels, Seely and Scandle originally produced these videos for Dr. Kirsten Johnson’s COM 316 Broadcast News class. After viewing them, Johnson asked the three students if they would allow her to enter them for the award.
Johnson said, “When I saw the stories, I knew. Honestly, they were of such high quality they could have run on our local news.”
Etown students swept up the gold, silver and bronze, even when the track was strewn with corona-shaped hurdles. For the sake of cleanliness, students had limited access to AV equipment, all of which needed to be sanitized between users. The winners say one of COVID’s biggest monkey wrenches was that they were forced to operate mostly independently.
Scandle explains, “I was stuck at home for quarantine when I had the project due.” That challenge led him to pick the topic he did. “So, I knew I had to do something local. And since one of my buddies from high school started [Flags], I knew he’d be my ‘in.’”
Freels says, “We were all by ourselves. Which was a fun little challenge.”
Even after sweeping the awards under less-than-ideal circumstances, Freels, Seely and Scandle remain overwhelmingly humble. For instance, none have researched whether there is a certificate or if they just won bragging rights. Turns out there is a certificate. And also, a plaque for first place.
It opens up the question — Etown students achieve so much but talk about it so little; might our small town college be a little too humble?
For example, Freels, who is also the Class of 2022 President in Etown’s Student Senate, seemed more concerned with Benny the bird’s condition than with taking first place. Her dormmates have not seen the head-banging bird in a while. Migration? Hopefully.
When asked about her initial reaction to winning, Freels explained, “We don’t really talk about [awards] — or at least I don’t. I don’t talk about things like that with my friends. Even after I won, I was like, ‘You want to hear something funny? I won a Keystone Media Award?” adding on a nervous laugh.
Among Seely’s laundry list of extracurriculars, she’s Editor-in-Chief of Etown’s Fine Print Literary Magazine as well as (full disclosure) News Editor of the Etownian. She got the idea for her bug-busting epic from her roommate Aprille Mohn, a member of the SEEDS Ecology Club and (even more full disclosure) the Etownian’s Campus Life Editor.
But Seely says that winning the award surprised her.
“I was delighted that Dr. Johnson thought that my video was good enough to be submitted for this award. That in itself caught me by surprise to be honest. When I got news that I had actually won the award, I was really pleased. I was like ‘Sweet—that’s really surprising.’”
Johnson says Etown students are naturally humble.
She says, “I look forward to a time when we can get even more of our students comfortable with entering these kinds of contests. I think launching the [dedicated] journalism major is going to help with that kind of thing.”
You can find these students’ award-winning videos on Etown’s student news Facebook page called Wetown.org. Get it? That’s a pun.
