Abortion?

1.       I’m not sure which side is winning the debate, because it seems as if there are a significant amount of people supporting each side. Also, both sides basically spend their time arguing why the other is wrong. The first website, for NARAL Pro-Choice America, does a good job of proving why it is so important for women to be able to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It begins by explaining what anti-abortion groups want and what tactics they use to reach their goals. Then, they say what they believe the solution to the abortion problems in America are. The second website, National Right to Life, explains all the reasons women shouldn’t have abortions and why it should be abolished in America. This includes links to “The Diary of an Unborn Baby” and more to try to convince people to be pro-life and to be against women having the choice to get an abortion. Both websites influenced me to be pro-choice. It doesn’t make sense to me at all that anybody should make the decision whether or not a woman should get an abortion but that individual woman. No person with no connection to the person has any idea why they need an abortion and why having an abortion would be the right choice for both her and the future of her child.

2.      I think that no matter what age a girl is, she has the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. For most cases in which women get an abortion, they don’t really have any other choice. It’s not fair for the baby to be born into a family that doesn’t want him or her or that can’t take care of him or her. I think it’s different in every family for a girl to tell her parents that she is getting or needs to get an abortion. In some cases, it could be cause more harm than good if a girl really needs one and her parents don’t consent to it. It’s their daughter’s choice if she has a baby or not, and it is her choice who knows that she has or is going to have an abortion. It should be up to her if she tell sher parents or not and up to her if she is going to get one.

3.      Depending on the circumstances, the father should be notified of a woman’s decision to get an abortion. If it is his child, he may want to take care of it although the mother cannot. If she gets an abortion, it is getting rid of his child too, which is kind of unfair to him. But, it’s hard to say, because the baby is going to be growing and developing in the mother’s body and she has to deal with most of the consequences of having a baby and being pregnant. Therefore, I don’t think the father should have to consent to a woman having an abortion, but he should be notified and aware of the decision she is making or going to make.

4.      I was really surprised by many of Illinois laws on abortion. For example, the ban on abortion. There seem to be more laws supporting pro-life and not pro-choice, which I was surprised about because we seem to be a generally democratic and liberal state. It’s good that we have a law providing low income women with access to abortions because they make up a large percentage of the people who get abortions. I think that most of the anti-choice laws should be change to provide every woman with the right to choose whether or not abortion is right for them, instead of trying to convince them it is wrong.

Death Penalty- Clifford Boggess

Clifford Boggess should not have been executed. From the time he was born, it seemed that his fate was already decided. He was born into a family with a drug addicted, alcoholic, and abusive mother. After living as a baby in that terrible environment, he lived in an orphanage until the Boggess family adopted him. But, soon after this his adopted parents divorced and he was sent to live with his grandparents. Both of these factors very early in his life had a major impact on him and who he grew up to be. As he grew up, he recalled never feeling like he belonged. He had a very bad temper from the beginning, and never really learned the skills he needed to deal with certain situations. A person’s history contributes a lot to how they act as they grow up. His past does not excuse the crimes he committed, but they prove that who Clifford was wasn’t entirely his own fault. He was a really insane person at the time of the killings. He recalled being mentally aware of what he was doing at the time and in control of himself; he knew what he was doing. Then, he admitted, he just didn’t care. When we met Clifford in the movie, he had been on death row for years. He was almost a completely different person than the one described to and who I pictured would be the person brutally killing those elderly men. He was a talented artist and a devout Christian. He didn’t seem at all like a man who could kill people and fell any empathy towards them. He was described to be the best friend some of the other prisoners had, and his paintings were really beautiful. I think that Boggess was proof that any person has the ability to change. Maybe a brutal killer still lives inside of him somewhere, but I think that sitting in jail and through learning more about himself he was able to change. Any person is able to look within themselves and recognize they need to change something and do so. Even on death row, Boggess contributed to society through is artwork and as a Christian. He kept close relationships with some friends through writing letters and many of them sold his paintings for him and brought him money. In these ways, he was still a part of mainstream society, though not directly. It is not hard to see that his execution was wrong and was a mistake. For the families of those he killed, Boggess being dead or alive could never bring their loved one back. In these situations, I don’t really think that redemption or vengeance will do anyone any good. The victim’s families were still just as sad if not worse after Clifford’s execution than before. Nothing can bring the families complete peace. I don’t think our justice system has any reason to be fighting fire with fire. It needs to be objective; to not be supporting vengeance. Despite the evils a human can commit, nothing will be solved by ending their life. Every person’s life should be valued equally, no matter what they do throughout their lives. Justice is not about doing what they did to you. It’s about making sure it doesn’t happen again.

Bullying

Beginning as young as in elementary school, kids are bullied in some way. They are left out, picked on, or teased. Sometimes this bullying can significantly and permanently affect a person, other times it is just temporary.  As the years continue and new technology continues to be made, it has become easier for kids to bully one another. Once children start using cell phones, online social networks, and instant messaging, it is easier than ever for someone to be harassed or bullied in and out of school. “If you have a cell phone, you can post to your entire school that a girl is a slut or a boy is a fag- and you can attach an unflattering photo or video of them to try to prove it. At least bullies of previous decades had to hold you down before they could spit in your face,” John Cloud wrote in his article “Bullied to Death?” Now, bullying doesn’t have to be done in person, it can be done almost anywhere. Kids are being mercilessly bullied to the point that they no longer want to live. Kids are ending their lives before they’ve even really started living. At only thirteen years old, Ryan Patrick Halligan hanged himself because of abuse from other kids at his school. It’s disturbing that kids can be so cruel to each other just for the sake of being mean. I can’t understand how a person could continuously harass another to the point where they made the decision to kill themselves. What’s the point?
I looked back at the article we read about Phoebe Prince’s suicide in January as a result of relentless bullying. She moved to South Hadley from Ireland and soon began dating a popular boy. This made other students in the school bully her online and off. Nine students were being charged for causing Phoebe to commit suicide. “Scheibel says that the nine students she charged participated in ‘a nearly-three-month campaign’ of verbal assaults and physical threats against Phoebe.” For almost three months, she was verbally assaulted, received countless physical threats and harassed throughout school. Close to a year later, I found an article called “Until bullying is brought to its knees, teen sport stars- and the rest of us- must help in the fight”. This article described how recently, Barbara Coloroso came to speak to the parents in South Hadley. She was there once before Prince’s suicide and was asked to come back recently. Through speaking to students and parents, she is trying to fight the bullying problem in America by trying to get those in sports who have influence in their school to set a good example. She wants these teens to take a stand when they see others being bullied and convince more teens to do the same. “The Prince tragedy forced this insidious issue to the table. We need people like Coloroso to come back, to keep the dialogue alive, to remove the ‘taboo’ label from it- even if she’s sometimes preaching to the choir. Progress will be made when we don’t need her back anymore. We are not nearly there yet.” The problem with bullying in South Hadley still needs some work, but hopefully if students begin to follow Coloroso’s example, the town will be able to start moving on from the tragedy and stop bullying in their schools. I think that Coloroso is right and that it is up to students to encourage their peers to make good choices. Many teenagers don’t listen to adults or look up to many adults in their life and instead idolize other students. If kids are standing up for each other and fighting bullying together, they will be able to change things for the future a lot better than by relying only on school teachers and administrators or even parents.
From what I see, bullying Is not really a large problem in Deerfield High School. Our school is cliquey, but people seem to stick to their own groups and leave each other alone. Occasionally, there are of course arguments and disagreements that happen between people either in person or on Facebook or instant messaging, but I don’t see a lot of it. Some people are meaner than others, of course, but it seems that most of the time people respect each other despite their social status. I don’t see or really know of anyone who is singled out or harassed by mostly everyone in the school. Even kids who aren’t very popular seem to be able to find their group of friends and the place in school that they are accepted. If bullying really is a problem for anybody, it is well hidden. It might just be in our grade, but I don’t think that bullying is a very big problem here. Most people seem to keep to themselves and their own lives and are not really focused on ruining the life of someone else. If there’s a lot of bullying here, then I don’t really see it.
To solve this problem, I don’t think there is any simple solution. There are many people who are involved when someone is being bullied. There who is being bullied, who is bullying, who is watching, etc. I think what it really comes down to are the parents. If a child is raised right and taught that bullying is mean and it’s not right to harass and torment another person, then a lot of that behavior would be cut down by the time the kids are in high school. Each child needs to have moral values and think about how their words and actions affect those they are directed to. Although the school is where much of this bullying is taking place, I don’t think the responsibility lies mostly in the hands of the school administrators or teachers. Students act differently in class and around their teachers than they act around their friends and classmates. Therefore, other students see bullying that is going on more than teachers and other adults in the school might. I think it is really important for schools to have counseling centers for students to go to if they are being bullied and don’t know where to turn. And, these counselors need to listen to the students and make sure that they aren’t in serious danger if they fear they may be. But, every person has an individual responsibility to stand up for what’s right. If students see a kid being picked on or bullied, they need to know that the right thing to do would be to stand up for the kid. The only solution to bullying is if everybody works together to prevent and stop it.

Student Drug Testing/ Searching

Do a post in which you come down firmly either in favor of or against drug testing in schools. Be specific and use information from class to support your point of view.
Drug testing in schools isn't right or constitutional. As a child, it makes sense that Fourth Amendment rights are limited and reduced because we are still very dependent on our parents. But as we grow and enter a High School setting, it shouldn't be true that our constitutionally guaranteed rights are partially taken away the second we walk through the front doors, or even park our cars. Because we are in the same building and in contact for much of week days, it makes sense that teachers and administrators would be concerned about student’s drug use. Despite these legitimate concerns, I don’t think that drug testing is the way to go about limiting drug use within schools. Being drug tested goes against the fundamental beliefs in the United States. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t specifically mention anything about schools and school searches. It’s not fair to the students, innocent or guilty, to be seen by their peers and teachers as a drug user until they prove that they aren’t with a negative drug test. “Indeed, many schools, like many parents, prefer to trust their children unless given reason to do otherwise. As James Acton’s father said on the witness stand, ‘[suspicionless testing] sends a message to children that are trying to be responsible citizens.. that they have to prove that they’re innocent…, and I think that kind of sets a bad tone for citizenship.” Drug testing students is therefore setting up a negative environment at school and making students prove themselves for something that does not necessarily have something to do with anything academic. Even if the school has a thousand reasons, like School District 92 of Pottawatomie County, it shouldn’t be the school’s responsibility to test students and making sure they aren’t doing drugs. The school should be using that money, if it is available, to better the school in terms of education and learning, not drug tests that may or may not work or could end up being a waste of money that in this economy, nobody can really afford to lose. The case in Arizona further proves that drug testing should not be addressed in this way by a school. In terms of searching and testing students, too much is left up to interpretation for school administrators and teachers. In any given school that regularly tests or searches their students, each school could have different way of viewing reasonableness and how much of a student’s constitutional rights are really taken away when they step foot onto school property. This leads to inconsistencies between school and states and can result in what happened to this girl in Arizona.

Teaching Relgion

As I looked through the results of the surveys, I was really surprised that 38% of the people questioned strongly agreed that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Since the United States is a secular nation, it’s strange that people believe that the constitutionally national religion is Christianity. After reading the overview, I became more curious about how religion is taught and why. I read the article called “Teaching about Religion” which explains why religion should be taught in public schools and in what way. The article explained how without learning about religion, students would not be receiving a complete education because of the significant role religion has played in the history of the world and the culture within our own society. Before reading this, I hadn’t really considered the positives of learning about religion and the different religions found throughout the world. When I think about all my years of schooling and how much we have actually learned about religion, I realize that I cannot imagine if that knowledge was never available to us. Learning about religion helps students gain a better understanding of the world and the people within it. It contributes to a better society, teaching students to understand each other’s religious differences instead of making fun of them for things they do not know anything about. The guidelines of teaching about religions in public schools are simply to be sure what is taught is in agreement with the constitution, educationally sound, and sensitive to the beliefs of both students and their parents. Although I am not religious myself, I think that it is very important for students to learn about all the different religions. With the right to practice any religion of our choice, Americans also have the responsibility to educate themselves on all religions, even if they believe in something different.

"7 Days in September"

Although I missed the last half of the movie, “7 Days in September” affected the way that I view the tragedy of September 11^th, 2001. Because I was so young when it happened, I never really or knew what was actually happening in New York. It was really scary to actually see the building collapse, and all the smoke that it produced. It’s sad to see all the people that were affected by event because they gave the situation human characteristics and feelings. This movie also proved how this tragedy brought the people o f the United States together. People were all helping each other during and after the buildings collapsed. It was nice to see everyone working together and helping one another despite the differences that normally separate them. It’s sad that it seems that Americans need something tragic to happen in order to come together. Despite the multiple times that this has happened and the country finally seems united, we always fall back into our old ways instead of learning from these experiences and seeing the good in working together.

Speech Codes

Speech codes are defined as any policy or regulation by a university to limit or prohibit any expression protected by the First Amendment by society at large. They draw boundary lines between "acceptable" speech and "unacceptable" speech. Most speech codes deal with language that will negatively influence other people at a school or university. Although they may be a slight infringement on our rights to free speech, they are there for the security and well being of a school and the students attending it. School is meant for learning, and it is very important for students to feel safe and comfortable in their learning environment. No student should be scared to go to school because of their peers taunting and harassing them.
But, along with speech codes, I think that it is equally important for a school to respect and protect the rights of their students. They should be able to ask questions, voice their opinions, and own their own opinions. If students act on their opinions in violent or negative ways, they would disrupt the learning process, which is why speech codes are important.