Are colleges just businesses?

In class this week we watched a video that played out a setting for a panel full of professors, students, supreme court justices, university presidents, and journalists. The setting was at a made-up school, where a student started a group that believed that white men were the superior race over women, blacks, etc. They posted ads in the school news paper for their group and held a meeting in the schools social hall. Throughout the video more and more facts would be added to the list, and then the panel would discuss and decide what they would do and how they would handle the situation. From my view, there were different groups of people on the panel: the students wanted the situation to be handled immediately and wanted to shut down the group. The university president didn't want to do anything and wanted to let them proceed with their racist acts and their group gatherings. The justices and journalists simply tried to follow the law am much as possible, even if they wouldn't have wanted to. If this were a real situation and the students on the panel went with their plan, I believe they would cause a lot of "drama" on their campus and it would end up with a lawsuit against the university for restricting their rights. If the university president had his way, the university would've been a mess and fights would eventually break out between students. The group would continue to do more racist acts that could increase the risk of the students. More and more minority students would feel uncomfortable and unsafe. This video taught me that as students, what we see as wrong we want gone immediately, and university administrators will do what ever it takes to stay out of a lawsuit and from losing money... After thinking more and more about this, I don't know how I feel about giving a university money.

Class Color

In our last Issues class, we ended the period with a discussion on class colors. At Deerfield High School the freshman are white, sophomores are gray, Juniors are red, and finally the seniors are black. Mr. Kramer talked about his confusion of why we have class colors. He did make very valid points by saying that shouldn't we be united... since it is Homecoming?! My answer is yes of course we should and we are! we are united in the school and the gym for the pep rally and we all come together and wear a different part of our school colors. We do not distinguish ourselves by race or ethnicity or language, but by our class! As a class we are one. In no way is the senior class anything like the freshman class. We are bigger, smarter, older, more mature, and our decision making skills are very different (not automatically saying good or bad...) One could say that this is a settings if  miniature size compared to what happens in the world today and its what wars are fought over... In a way that's true and not true. Wars are fought over race and skin tone and power, but in high school we do not fight over why we are better than another grade, we simply just say we are better and leave it at that! As seniors we don't believe we need to explain why we are better than freshman, sophomores, and juniors because we just know and  believe we are better than them. Being a senior has been a ride of my life and I've only been a senior for 1 month! I just ended my homecoming weekend and I had a blast and it was one of the best weekends I've ever had. One half of me wants to get out of Deerfield A.S.A.P, yet the other half wants to stay a senior forever. being a senior is a "little thing" in my life and its one of those little things I'll just have to sit back and enjoy it while it lasts.


P.S. I'm fully aware of the.... outrageous cockiness in this blog post and i did it that way on purpose :) SENIORS 2012!!!!!!!

Speech code on campus

It is currently 2011... There haven't been slaves in this country in over 100 years, yet we still have problems with race and togetherness. The immature minds of young adults have made terrible decisions that they thought would be humorous, but in reality are horrific and hard to look at. I thought as a nation we were better than this. Over and done with these problems. At Auburn there was not a whole lot that the university could do to change these students minds. The university also did not take part in influencing the students to take part in these activities, so why should they be blamed. The university can't be blamed for such acts unless they were done in a school organized event. "'In the wake of what we experienced September 11th, this is the last thing we would have expected to see,' said Evelyn Crayton, president of the Auburn Black Caucus, an organization of African American faculty, staff and administrators."

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=dc3mpv73_0f92nqdhg

Flag Burning

I am not going to write on my opinions of whether or not it should be illegal to burn the United States Flag, but during this week in class i have gathered up many questions that i can put into one question for those whom chose to burn the flag in protest:

If you decide to protest against America by burning its flag, then why do you live here?

I live in America because, besides that i live with my parents and they raised me here, i love this country and i would stand by it against other nations. I many have my disagreements with our government just like everyone else, but i do not get angry enough to burn and protest what our nation stands by. I live by the red, white, and blue. To me it represents freedom and liberty but also good and bad. Everything in our nations past makes our nation what it is today, good and bad. I doubt that there is one person that is happy with every decision that our nation has made, but what makes our nation so unique is that we made our decision together has a whole. I would say that the protesters who burn the flag are lucky enough to be able to even stand trial because in other nations u could be shot for doing such acts. Before you think about how unhappy you are with what you don't have, think about how lucky you are to have what you already have.

9-11

Even though I have seen the film before, it is still very touching and compelling. When we watch a WWII video it seems almost fake, but when we watch a 9-11 video there is a much different feeling because I lived through it and remember what happened and everything you see is identical to today. One of the most compelling and touching parts of the film is when one of the bothers in walking around in the streets and is just filming the people. People of all races and ethnicities and ages have the same expressions as each other, fear. The amount of fear that was able to be capture on film is shocking because never before have I watched ‘America fear.’ American have always seen themselves as fearless, but this is the first film that shows fear in Americans.

The article I read was about how Presidents Busch and Obama gathered at the 9-11 memorial. This is a very important gathering between presidents because they have very different views and beliefs, but they shared a crisis and had to lead the nation through one of its toughest times in its history. Something I learned from the article is that, “He is a president who banned torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists and pledged — unsuccessfully, so far — to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but carried out more drone strikes in Pakistan in his first year in office than Mr. Bush did in his eight years.” I never knew what orders President Obama gave to the military. Both Presidents made sure our fear was protected by doing what was right and attacking the men who though America was weak. The Presidents took the duty of making Al Qaeda fear the United States.

9-11 has given me hope in my country. It makes me feel actually safe when most people would shrivel in fear. We have men and woman who are willing to put their lives behind others. We have men and woman who will stand for freedom. And we have men and woman who aren’t afraid to say “F*** YOU!”  when rebels think they can take us down. 9-11 brought everyone together in America of all ethnicities and I believe that’s what America’s image should be.

Should I talk in class?

From various court trials that our class has read these past four days, its scary to think of how little rights students have in school. In U.S history we learned about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and all the rights that are given to citizens. But from these court cases it almost seems as if we don't have freedom of speech. In school, we simply can NOT speak our mind. As students we are vulnerable to unfair abuse(non physical) At Deerfield High School we are lucky to have nice teachers who encourage opinions and encourage us to speak our minds. But at any moment, what we say and our privacy at school can be taken away.
From these court cases we have learned that we can use our freedom of speech in any way outside of school. But, inside of school we must stay in the "boundaries". These boundaries  consist of not promoting, or what seems to be, talking about illegal actions at all. If a student disagrees with a teacher on a topic of keeping marijuana illegal, he could get in serious trouble. If a student doesn't believe that our nation should be at war and he wants people to know that he/she strongly believes that, he/she could get into a lot of trouble based on passed events and court trials. I personally think this is ridiculous! this is a free nation, is it not? Don't we have rights in our nation that we should practice, especially in school? Its not that we are just in school but also that we are teenagers, it is easy to take advantage of us. If an adult were to speak out about the war, he would not go to jail or get fined because he has rights that he is practicing. But don't and shouldn't teenagers have the same rights too? what makes us so different? because the last time i checked we are all people growing up in the same world with all of the same problems...

Examples: In the case of Tinker v. Des Moines, two kids went to school with black wrist bands on to represent that they were against the Vietnam War. Their principle heard of this and banned kids from wearing wrist bands. The Supreme Court ruled the case in favor of Tinker because it was a pieceful protest that had no threat of an outbreak of fighting or riot. the principle in this case was trying to take away these kids right to peacefully protest and freedom of speech. No matter what age, a citizen of The United States of America has all rights given to by our founding fathers.