PoliTech Presents : “Politically Challenged”

“Who won the Civil War?”

“Like the one in 1965?”

A new bipartisan political group on campus, PoliTech, is trying to educate fellow Texas Tech students about politics through humor.

Raul Cevallos, president of PoliTech, said the group was founded to provide the Tech community with unbiased political information. Cevallos said the group has members from other political organizations on campus, like the Young Conservatives of Texas and Tech Student Democrats groups.

Politech_a

Cevallos said the group’s goal is to make students more aware of the world around them.

“I think one of the first steps that we want to accomplish is to get students to realize that they don’t know a lot,” Cevallos said. “Because they may think that they know enough, and it’s not so much that students don’t know because they’re dumb. They don’t know it because they’re being distracted by other things. So, we want people to know that we’d be in a much better place right now if we watched less Kardashians and a little more, you know, the news.”

Cevallos said watching other news shows helped to inspire their new web series, “Politically Challenged.” The man on the street video features PoliTech’s public relations manager, Courtney Plunk, asking students history and pop culture questions. Many students were willing to appear on the video, but had trouble answering some of the questions.

“A lot of people were like, ‘Well,what’s the question?,’ you know,” Plunk said. “And then when we started asking, they were like, ‘If you’d have told me that I wouldn’t have done it!'”

After the interviews, Cevallos said every student who appears in the video signed a release form, with a good sense of humor.

Watch the first installment of “Politically Challenged” here!

About Sarah Self-Walbrick

Graduate Executive Director — Mass Communication Graduate Student, Class of 2017
Sarah, a Lubbock native, has two bachelor of art degrees in electronic media and communication and journalism, and is pursuing a master's in mass communications. She loves Texas, her husband and dog, and good storytelling.

Comments

  1. Wow, this makes me super disappointed to be a Texas Tech student.

  2. You cant take credit for the segment. This has been a show on FOX for 4-5 years called Waters World

  3. That is absolutely horrible! Please tell me TECH students were just joking about those interviews? The perception of TECH academics has taken all of suddenly a downward spiral, if this is occurring on campus. Please retake this video segment again later on down the road to another batch of students?

    🙁

  4. The staff of The Hub@TTU would like to remind viewers that this video was created by a student organization at Texas Tech and therefore, is not a direct product of The Hub@TTU. As a student media organization, The Hub@TTU supports PoliTech in its efforts to encourage students to consume more news. Viewers are encouraged to read the accompanying article to understand the intent of “Politically Challenged.”

    • Hub’s attempt to redirect the ire this video is drawing. Having read this article, I’m much more forgiving of this video due to the President’s statement. However, this video doesn’t reflect that at all and they did a horrible job representing that goal. Had they prefaced the interviews with his words, people would be a whole lot more understanding and not as pissed off.

  5. Miesha Edelen says

    Well… that was horrible. Do you even school lol? Can we get a new sample group. One that makes the students of Texas Tech look like they actually attend a university. That was basic American history.

  6. They should have also asked the students where Washington D.C is located. It surprises me how many people in this country don’t know the answer.

  7. Rick Spivey says

    I would like to see the statistics on how many students were polled and the percentage of students that answered correctly. Any idiot can go film a bunch of people answering questions and only select the “silly” ones for final editing.

    • Exactly. This is the beauty of editing. It makes me mad enough to do something about it. People are mocking us (film crew included), and I’ll bet that this was edited to show a certain perception. It’s fristrating.

  8. “The Hub@TTU is devoted to providing a collaborative student media environment showcasing the news and the creativity of the Texas Tech community.” If this is your mission, why would you make a video showcasing the lack of knowledge in the TTU community. This post does a disservice to everyone associated with TTU, including this website. As frustrating as the answers in the video were, the fact that you published this is exponentially more frustrating. WHY?! It would be one thing if you were not associated with TTU, but you are. This is disappointing. Think about the repercussions of your actions. I saw this video on Facebook, a platform of more than one billion users. If perspective students saw this video (it might as well be a bash video), they may choose to pass on TTU. This example may seem extreme, but something as seemingly benign as this could prove to be detrimental. This video should be taken down, although I fear that with the leap to Facebook, the damage is done.

    Editor’s Note: The video in this post is an embed of the actual video that PoliTech, a separate student organization on campus, put on its YouTube account, which The Hub@TTU has no control over. The original post can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZZpk_9k8E&feature=youtu.be.

  9. Whitepaladin says

    Yeah, as a Tech grad who was a National Merit Scholar and could have answered any of those questions in the 2nd grade, I am disappointed that a Tech organization wants to make Tech look like a bunch of idiots by editing out most of the correct answers.

  10. This is completely ridiculous I’m a senior here and graduate this December how could you put something like this destroying our reputation. I realize that most interviewed answered these simple questions right but this makes us look like the most ignorant university in the country. If this girl really feels the need to disgrace my school I don’t want her here. Also these idiots in the video should be expelled.

  11. Way to make the whole student body look stupid. Who’s (sic) bright idea was it to conduct this interview and put it on the Internet making our school look bad? I would be interested in seeing the uncut tape to see exactly how many students did know the answers because I could tell you the answers to those ridiculously simple questions off the top of my head and I know many other people who could do the same. Shame on PoliTech for making those of us who are here for an education look bad by asking all the Greek morons on campus something other than what their favorite beer is and shame on the school for letting something like this hit the Internet.

    Editor’s Note: The video in this post is an embed of the actual video that PoliTech, a separate student organization on campus, put on its YouTube account, which The Hub@TTU has no control over. The original post can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZZpk_9k8E&feature=youtu.be.

  12. “Whose” and “Who’s” — not the same.

  13. Wow, I am incredibly disappointed that Tech students would decide to portray their University in such a bad light. This reflects negatively on the University, on current students and alum.

  14. Not so fast! This is Texas!! The correct answers are:
    1) The winner of the Civil War was the Mexican province of Texas. However, only Mexicans would call it the “Civil War”. For Texans, this was the Texas Revolt, fought in 1835-1836.
    2) Trick question: there is no vice-president of Texas. The last vice-president of the Republic of Texas was Kenneth Lewis Anderson, who died in 1845.
    3) Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, and continued as an independent nation until December 29, 1845 when the Republic was annexed by the United States, largely through the efforts of President John Tyler. Although a majority of citizens of the Republic of Texas were in favor of this annexation, a minority opposed it, and to this day there are Texans who favor reestablishing an independent Republic of Texas.

  15. Cody Cook says

    As a graduate of Texas Tech, I am very disappointed in this video being done in this manner. There was NEVER an intention to show anything other than an ignorant body of students as a whole. You should be ashamed in the damage you are STILL doing to the reputation of this institution to this day. The video made is still going viral and reflects poorly on Texas Tech STILL TO THIS DAY! Did you all just think this would “fade away”? Disgraceful… How about another video of all the students who answered CORRECTLY? Where are those segments? Oh wait, that’s right…they wouldn’t go viral so they didn’t make the cut! Never forget…” Strive for honor”….you all FAILED MISERABLY in that department.

    • Peter Foster says

      I respectfully disagree. I believe the video shows what a terrible job our high school system is doing. Even our primary schools. I believe US History is taught beginning in 6th grade. TTU is just the “beneficiary” of the lower schools failures.