Students navigate current events with the help of new website, Aggies Go!
While walking on the beach in Northern California, Colin Flint, a professor of geopolitics and geography, came up with an idea.
Flint wanted to create an accessible web page full of essays written by fellow students to help others navigate current events.
“I thought it would be a great way to help professionalize and give voice to our undergrads,” Flint said. “ I had people in mind that would be a part of the team. I asked them and they all said yes. I knew that they had done good work and were interested in the topic.”
This led to the creation of the website, Aggies Geopolitical Observatory, or Aggies GO! A team of six undergraduate students were chosen with Flint as their leader.
Bryn Wynder Both Sarah Porter and Tyler Whitney were previously in Flint’s introduction to geopolitics class and are now members of the Aggies GO! team.
“Profesor Flint’s class is one of the best classes I’ve ever taken because it is engaging and interactive. It is really nice to go in depth, even if you aren’t into politics it will help you understand current events,” Porter said. “The website is easy for me to be a part of because I think about this all the time. The opportunity to share it with other people and build my resume was really exciting.”
The teams is assigned to write and produce two essays a week for the website. Each writer selects a current news topic and discusses it using concepts from Flint’s geopolitics class. Some topics that have been covered are Irish boundaries, sanctuary cities, Guatemalan identity and Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
“Geopolitics can be best defined as the evaluation of strategic territory and its acquisition. The cool thing about geopolitics is that the concepts have a lot of explanatory power, so the essays can write themselves,” Whitney said.
Through this experience the team members have grown and developed through the discussion of geopolitics. It has made a impression on their professor.
“Each of these writers has very quickly developed their own voice and own take on this. It has been really neat for me to see that. This generation of college students is going to be very strongly impacted by global politics,” Flint said.
The Aggies GO! team hopes that fellow students will take a look at their writing and be able to gain some knowledge from it.
“Our website is awesome because the articles are really short and not political. It is written by people our age, so it is easy to connect to,” Porter said. “The goal is not ot tell you what to think, but to give you a way to think about it.”
Bryn Wynder Professor Flint plans to continue this project into the future. Flint is currently seeking partners and foundations that can help fund this project. He hopes to spread this idea to high schools within the area as well. For students who would like to join the Aggies GO! team, Flint said, “Be on the lookout. Students graduate so there will always be some new openings.”
To stay updated on current events and see the Aggies GO! team interpretation, check out their website.
“College campuses lately have been a place where the policies of tomorrow are being born. We are policy makers of tomorrow. Geopolitics is important for that,” Whitney said.
— shelby.black@aggiemail.usu.edu
@shelbsterblack