Student documentary

Students from a University of Delaware Department of Communication class appeared on WHYY-TV on Friday, Sept. 23, to discuss their documentary, The Quiet Riot: Apathy and Activism. The interviews aired as part of WHYY's First news magazine.

The documentary explores the perception of college students as apathetic and party-crazy. Lydia R. Timmins, assistant professor of communication who teaches the COMM 425 news documentary course, explained that this was an issue near and dear to her students' hearts -- how adults perceive them. She said the documentary helps to disprove this widely believed myth.

COMM 425 has been offered for several years and other documentaries have been shown at the Newark Film Festival, and Timmins said she was pleased that Quiet Riot drew the attention of the local news program.

Timmins credited students in the class for their hard work on the project. "The students did it all," she said. "I was there to offer guidance, but it was all them."

The news documentary course is currently scheduled for spring semesters, Timmins said. The students conceive of a topic suitable for a half-hour documentary, gather all the video, write the script and edit the production themselves.

Timmins said the Quiet Riot documentary took all of spring semester 2011 to complete. "We started talking and planning in February, and it was completed at the end of classes in May."

The segment which aired on First, Delaware's public media news magazine, will also be available to download on the WHYY website and could be seen on Comcast VOD in October.