2008 Woodie Awards
Senior Awarded 2nd Place in Statewide Writing Competition
Nick Brown Staff Reporter
Issue date: 9/22/05 Section: News
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She had noticed a new trend where students, mostly female, were wearing bracelets that supported a website that aided people lose weight.
After visiting the website, she discovered that perhaps the address was causing more harm than good.
Diana Muniz is a senior and a media studies major. She commutes to SHU from Stamford, but is originally from the Bronx in New York.
Before attending Sacred Heart University she told the Spectrum that she had moved around quite a bit, from the Bronx to all over Massachusetts to Connecticut.
The site Diana found, had pictures that portrayed extremely skinny girls as beautiful.
Diana studied the site and even went through the trouble of showing it to a SHU professor for a second opinion on this matter.
The professor analyzed the article and came to the same conclusion as Diana, that this particular website encouraged eating disorders.
After further research, Diana wrote the article that she has recently received high recognition for.
In the spring, Diana was a member of The Spectrum writing staff. Before she joined the staff as part of her media studies requirement, she had been writing poetry in her spare time and always seemed to have a knack and an enjoyment for putting words down on paper.
After she had written the article for the Spectrum, she received her first award. She received the award for the best article of the semester and then the article began receiving more attention outside the campus.
Recently, The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in Connecticut presented her with second place for the best article statewide in their college section.
"I was literally in shock, I did not expect to get the award, I had previously won the award for the best article of the semester and never thought I'd win the state contest," said Muniz.
"Young girls are really tortured by the concept of beauty, its been said before but the way women are portrayed on television and in publications creates an image that is almost impossible to achieve and some girls are killing themselves to try to obtain this appearance."