An Inside Perspective on the Student Intern Experience
December 13, 2022
An Inside Perspective on the Student Intern Experience
By Tabitha Ireifej - December 12th, 2022
After an insightful visit to the University of Vermont campus green, it became clear that students in Burlington are quite engaged in democracy. They expressed the importance of showing up to the ballots not only to cast their own vote, but to speak up on behalf of those who’s access to democracy is far slimmer. Their educated remarks were delivered with hopeful energy, a sign that the future of Burlington’s local democracy is in good hands. To add our own voices to the conversation, myself and a group of four other student interns worked with CCTV this past fall to share access to democracy with students across all platforms.
As the school semester closes and we reflect as a community on the outcomes of the 2022 general election, myself and my fellow student interns are feeling energized and inspired by our experience at CCTV. It feels like just yesterday when we stepped into the studio for the first time. We were in awe of the vast archive closet, thrilled by the astonishing collection of equipment, and eager to work alongside the crew. Weeks later, we are proud to have used CCTV’s plentiful resources to share democracy with our fellow students and with the entire community of Burlington.
Our experience at CCTV began with a robust brainstorming session. Our mission at hand was to discover new ways to open the doors of community media to a wider audience here in Burlington. We adopted a classic divide and conquer approach to deliver community media via audio-visual, written, and social platforms. Two of my fellow teammates, Luke Maggio and Harrison Goldstein, got straight to work on reaching out to two of our community members for a podcast interview. They called upon one of our beloved UVM professors, Myles Jewell, and executive director of CCTV, Lauren-Glenn Davitian. With Harrison, Myles, and Lauren-Glenn all engaged in conversation, the gap between the student experience and the community media world was bridged. The discussion brought to light the historical importance of community media and the role that CCTV has played in providing public access TV to the citizens of Burlington. The publishing of the podcast prompted me to create a piece of written material to complement it, and with that began my role of synthesizing the content we produced into blog posts. We are proud to have contributed podcast episodes and blogs to the CCTV website. Ultimately these materials served to reach our fellow UVM students; we shared our work with our classmates and community on social media and around campus.
Besides using the amazing platform that CCTV has already established with their website and Town Meeting TV Channel, we decided to take to social media to reach an even wider audience. Intern Brooke Noble led our social media efforts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. From the endless collection of archives, Brooke discovered gems that were not only relevant to the November election, but relevant to the cares and interests of Burlington’s student population. Meanwhile, intern Erik Brown got started on identifying ways to make CCTV’s existing platform even more effective and accessible to students. He created a linktree to efficiently direct social media followers to the website, Town Meeting TV channel, and more. After all, community media is only as powerful as its two components: the community, and the media through which we connect.
After endeavoring our own projects and media avenues, the five of us interns were able to come together on the night of the November 8th general election. We were lucky enough to visit the Progressive Party headquarters on perhaps the biggest night of local government. This experience was truly a culmination of what we had learned thus far while working with CCTV. We arrived and entered the lively room where candidates made encouraging speeches, cheersed to their triumphs, and warmly welcomed our curiosity. Speaking to the candidates was an incredibly hands-on way to connect the student body to the voices of our local democracy. As students ourselves, speaking with the candidates was a privilege, and sharing that experience on the CCTV website and with our classmates was very special.
The student intern experience at CCTV was full of lessons learned, new experiences had, and new colleagues made. We are grateful to Meghan O’Rourke, our internship coordinator, for welcoming us to the studio and guiding our learning experiences. We would like to thank the entire CCTV team for sharing with us their knowledge, and for delivering public access TV to the Burlington community. With their help, the student population will have the tools to become educated and passionate members of democracy.