In my opinion, I don’t think it would make that big of a difference if Sandusky was black or latino. The amount of hatred and negative attention Sandusky has received as a result of this scandal is immeasurable. The crime he commited has no racial boundaries. In this world, crimes against children are considered the worst. It is said that in jail, men who rape children are treated with no respect compared to other high-end criminals. After visiting Ohio State this weekend I realized how bad the publicity on Sandusky really was. I couldn’t leave my friends apartment building in Penn State attire without getting threatening remarks or rude slanders. People were rightfully outraged at the acts that Sandusky committed, as is all of Penn State, but I don’t see it as a result of his race.

While at Ohio State, many people couldn’t contain their anger about what was going on with the Sandusky trial. People were looking at Penn State like each and every student had something to do with the abuse and horrible crimes to these poor children. Everyone thought that Penn State students weren’t making the children the number one concern in the matter. I think it’s agreed upon by everyone that the victims are the number one concern. Changing Sandusky to a man of color would still not change the horrible crimes that were commited against these children.

To play devils advocate, it’s very possible that things would be a little different if Sandusky was black or latino. Many people may use this as an excuse to further stereotype against blacks and latinos. It’s human nature to categorize people and people tend to use this as an excuse to better themselves while hurting others. The Sandusky trial could pose as the perfect timing to make another race look bad as a whole. It could make people want to claim, “this is what’s expected of people with that color skin.” Just as I said earlier, one person doesn’t define a whole group. Just because one leader at Penn State did wrong, doesn’t mean Penn State did wrong as a whole. Just because one white man committed this crime, doesn’t mean that all white men are capable of committing a crime like this. And if Sandusky were black or latino, the same would apply. Just because one black or latino male is capable of abusing a child, doesn’t mean that all others are. This scandal was a great eye opener for people in the Penn State community and around the world. It taught all of us a very valuable lesson. It showed us that one man doesn’t define an entire group. In conclusion, changing Sandusky’s race would still make him appear like a monster, but should never define a group as a whole.

The scandal going on at Penn State has taught me many things. Though it may seem hard sometimes, it’s always best to be honest. A lot of the time in my past I have put off being honest because I was afraid of the consequences or concerned about who’s feelings I’d hurt in the process, but it’s clear to me now that not telling the truth at the outset of a problem can really damage your future. It’s clear now that JoePa really regrets not speaking up sooner or “doing enough” but if he did it at the time, imagine what could have happened. It’s scary to do the right thing because this world places so much emphasis on the way others perceive us. JoePa was probably terrified of giving Penn State a bad name when he heard of the horrible acts going on with Sandusky. It wasn’t like he was pro-child abuse or a bad person, but when our image or the image of those close to us is in jeopardy it could greatly effect the time and extent to which people take action. This scandal has also taught me many things about my Penn State pride. I have learned that rioting and “voicing my anger” isn’t always the best route to choose when there are a group of people involved. I’ve learned that Penn State is truly a family and that when one person hurts, a lot of people hurt. I’ve learned that legacies are irreplaceable and losing someone that you don’t really give credit to everyday hurts in the long run. I’ve learned that Penn Staters stick together and that this school is a lot more then just textbooks, parties, and a great football team. I’ve learned that other people are oblivious. I’ve learned that people can’t truly understand a situation or event unless they live through it. I’ve learned that being a part of Penn State and losing our leaders is a lot more than a heartache; it’s losing our dignity. I’ve learned that this school is made up of so many people that care about their university. I’ve learned that no other school could possibly compare to the one I go to. I’ve learned that in light of all of this controversy the Penn State community is one of the proudest, most spirited, dedicated, and warm group of people in possibly the world. I’ve learned that being a nittany lion is by far the best thing you can be. I’ve learned that one week can change a school forever, but make a university that much closer and stronger as a whole. I’ve learned that Penn State pride is forever and nothing can tarnish the Penn State name. WE ARE…

Over the past few days our name as a Penn State community has been tainted. This community is one of the most proud, dedicated, spirited, and close college families that exists in the United States. The most recent events have made people look at Penn State in a different light. Not as the school that donated over nine million dollars to pediatric cancer. Not as the school that gets recruited for the most jobs in the U.S. Not as the school that has THE largest alumni base in America, but now we are viewed as insensitive and wrong. No one on the outside understands what our community is going through as a whole. We are definitely embarrassed and feel a great amount of guilt and sadness for all of the victims of these horrible events. That’s without question. What amazes me is that people on the outside can sit at their computer screens and on the news and talk about how WRONG we are as a campus to be upset about the firing of OUR legacy. What people fail to recognize is, this Penn State family is full of students, alumni, and faculty that are beyond proud of their school. This is a place where there is such a fire in each and every student that we are rated one of the best student sections for spirit out of thousands of colleges across America. It is unfair to think that firing our head coach, what Penn State stands for, wouldn’t cause an uproar. If news of Paterno’s firing came and students just sat in their rooms and then decided to continue on like a normal night and finish their homework then I would be ASHAMED to call this school my own. What makes people fall in love with Penn State is the sense of pride that comes along with being a nittany lion. It’s the people who scream “WE ARE” at you when you’re still in highschool on a tour of our campus that represent what penn state is all about. It’s the 25 student leaders who lead thousands of students to dance for a cure at THON that proves what Penn State is about. It’s the football players that play with all their heart every weekend and practice everyday to uphold the Penn State name that this school is all about. It’s the students that strive everyday to make Happy Valley one of the happiest places on earth that proves what Penn State is about. If we would have sat back and let the board of trustees fire Joe Paterno and had no reaction, then this wouldn’t be the school that each and every person is proud to call their own. WE ARE a spirited, motivated, PROUD, and an unexplainable force as Penn state students. It was nothing but acting in our true Penn State nature to act out and show the world what a tragic week it was for this community. Judging us is up to everyone else, but no one is capable of understanding unless they are a part of this amazing place we are proud to call Penn State.

To some, hiring illegal immigrants may seem extremely wrong and offensive. I have a different viewpoint on this situation. Illegal immigrants are normal people trying to make it in America just like you and me. I feel like it’s definitely wrong of them to pass the border illegally, but many of these poor people are just in search of better health, income, living situations, and ultimately a better life. Though it may seem hypocritical of Americans to accept hiring illegal immigrants, I feel like it’s no different then hiring the average low-wage citizen.

Though it may sound horrible, illegal immigrants would probably work for much less than the typical American because they don’t know any better. As a business owner, though it’s selfish, it’s most beneficial to hire people that will work for a low amount of money. With this comes the risk of getting in trouble for hiring the illegal immigrants in the first place. I feel like speaking as a student, I would claim that hiring the illegal immigrants would be my plan of action, but I don’t know if I would actually do it if the opportunity presented itself.

Since I’m not a selfish person, my intentions for hiring the illegal immigrants wouldn’t be to benefit myself. I would hire them solely to allow them to work and work their way up from the low conditions they came from. As a levelheaded and sensitive person, I believe that all people deserve an equal opportunity to be successful whether they’re here from another country or not.

I also feel like it’s more of an accurate question to ask whether or not you would hire an illegal immigrant if you weren’t a business owner but even just a house owner. Many people hire cleaning ladies in their home and some of them are vary aware that the people they allow to live under the same roof as their family are illegal immigrants. One of my closest friends in high school had a live-in who lived with them for over 10 years. Though it wasn’t outwardly spoken, it was known that she was here illegally The thing is though that this lady was so Americanized and even had a family here of her own. If I had the option to hire her and knew she was illegal, I feel like I would have done the same thing that my friends mom did when she hired her live-in nanny. Sometimes it’s considered “un-American” to do things like this, but I think it looks better on your character to accept someone and give them a chance before judging them from where they came from. Overall, as you can see I’m not that involved with the hype about immigration and its policies, but I can say with confidence that I would hire someone regardless of whether they are here illegally or not. We are all human.

Who you hang out with should in no way determine what kind of person you are. Demographics, and living environments greatly contribute to the type of people our peers choose to hang out with. This question reminded me a lot of a conversation I had in my discussion group this week. A boy Brandon was talking about how he has a big group of friends and some of them are white, while others are black. He is black himself, but says that he gets along with both friends equally. Though he feels like he needs to talk to his black friends on certain issues, he never thinks of race when choosing his friends.
Being a poser is pretending to be something your not. If you are white and hang out with all black people and go around acting like you have something to prove to them, or start acting completely unlike yourself, then I can see how someone would call you a poser. Race isn’t a divider. It shouldn’t be taken into account when choosing friends or significant others. You cant be considered a poser by hanging out with someone that has different color skin than you because, unless you’re like Michael Jackson and are “posing” as a different race by dying your skin color, then you cant necessarily “pose” as a different race.
When I was younger I lived in Queens and went to a very diverse elementary school. I was friends with lots of black, asian, and biracial children. After a few years, I moved to Long Island, New York where there wasn’t one mixed race child in the entire school. I went from having racially diverse friends to have a predominantly white and Jewish group of friends. If you would have come up to me in third grade and accused me of being a poser for hanging out with a mixed group of kids, then that would just be ridiculous. Posers are people who act out of their natural element to fit in with a different group of people. As long as you continue to BE YOU when you hang out with others, then you are steering clear of the “poser” accusations.
Being a poser can’t only be applied to racially mixed groups of friends. I know a lot of boys and girls that I would consider posers because of the culture change they make when choosing a group of friends. A lot of my guy friends in high school were from a town that was considered extremely “skater” A majority of the boys would skateboard, have long hair, and smoke weed. When other guys from different towns started hanging out with them, we would all joke how they had changed and become identical to the “skater” boys. As you can see, there are many different aspects one can consider when accusing another of being a poser, but it isn’t just limited to race.

I think that it's outrageous that women have to go around constantly feeling like they need to dress a certain way to impress men while men can wear whatever they want. I can’t say that I don’t contribute to this because I definitely do. It’s difficult to feel as if you don’t need to be wearing short skirts and high heels in order to be beautiful in a world that constantly emphasizes the way women look.
What I’ve learned from being at college is that men are the way they are. The shallow guys are constantly going to go for the girl that’s wearing minimal clothing and could give a s**** about her reputation. Guys that are actually “keepers” are ones that don’t care what you’re wearing and can see beneath all of the stereotypes about the way women should dress.
As Sam said in “The Needy Penis” lecture, this is a men centered world. Guys can go out wearing just about anything they please while girls slave over their make up, color of their eyeshadow, and length of their high heel shoes. What many girls fail to realize is that guys don’t notice all of the effort they put into getting ready each day. I think that in order to stop this cycle, women should stop putting as much effort into dressing a way that men perceive as sexy. Sexy isn’t the girl wearing the least clothes in the room. To me, sexy is being confident in the way you look and feel and not being manipulated into looking like the Barbie doll every guy in the room expects you to be.
In order for girls to be able to do this without feeling stupid, guys need to stop treating girls like objects. Many guys I know go around talking about girls as if they are a slab of meat. All of my ideas I’m writing in this blog are pretty much hopeless because guys and girls are stubborn in their ways and the extent of how they perceive themselves. In a women centered world, guys would be doing all the work, but a women centered world isn’t the one we live in. Though it’s wishful thinking to think that one day things could be switched around or even the opposite, it’s extremely doubtful. For now, we need to accept the way things are. Girls need to be confident in who they are rather then what they look like. Not every night should be about going out and looking your best to impress others. It should be about dressing up to feel confident in your own skin. Girls should feel no need to act any different then themselves when around men, otherwise we’re ultimately giving them the power to manipulate us everyday.

Growing up in Queens, New York made me a experience a lot of situations where I felt white guilt. I went to a predominantly black elementary school and was always labeled as "smart" and "well-behaved" but a lot of times, I felt like people labeled me that way because of the others around me. The situation where I felt the most white guilt was when my mom landed a job in Harlem as a second grade teacher. I loved pretending to be sick so my mom would bring me to work with her and I could spend my day with the kids in her class. The school in Harlem had children that were not as privileged as people I'm normally surrounded by. My mom would come home telling stories about how she thought some of her kids in her class were abused, and not taken care of well. I would always feel really guilty and helpless as a young kid myself. Sometimes my mom and I would bring in my old books to give to her students but I never felt like anything I did was enough to truly help.

When the parents came in for parent-teacher conferences, my mom would always express how guilty she felt that her students weren’t receiving the proper care at home that she knew she could provide as a mother. Many of the parents really wanted the best for their kids but didn’t have the proper resources to do so. Having guilt isn’t always the best way to deal with these types of situations. My mom would always tell me that we need to do something to help them. I always did my best to make sure that I helped out as much as I could when I went to the school with my mom. I would always pick out new supplies for her classroom, bring in old toys and books, help the kids out with their work when I was there, and just be an overall positive person to be around. When I went into the school I was only in second grade myself, but the amount of difference in our education levels was very noticeable. A lot of these kids came into second grade unable to read properly which is a basic skill at that age. I felt really guilty that the only reason I was probably so ahead of them was because of my family and their willingness to teach me things at such a young age. When I moved to long island, things were very different. I was no longer the smartest kid in the class and I was constantly surrounded by wealthy people. My sense of white guilt disappeared because I wasn’t around many people less fortunate then me.

Being gay in no way defines who you are as a person. If I found out at my son was gay I wouldn’t let it change the relationship we had. I believe that sexual orientation isn’t something you can control. I feel like people are born a certain way and it’s beyond their capacity to change something like that. As I shared with my discussion group, my stepbrother is gay. His mom has made it so he is beyond terrified to “come out of the closet.” She makes it very apparent that she doesn’t approve of that type of lifestyle that makes my stepbrother conceal his identity even more. As a parent, I feel as if it is your job to accept your child under ANY circumstance.
If I found out my child was gay, I’m not saying that I would have zero reaction. It’s unrealistic to think that a person could have absolutely zero reaction and continue on with their day when finding out news of that magnitude. I would obviously want some time to talk to my son and understand where he’s coming from, how he’s feeling about the situation, and if he’s confused. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t take a lot of adjusting, because it would.
Once a parent denies the rights of their son to come clean about their sexual orientation, they create a whole new magnitude of problems. A parent could lose their relationship with their child, alienate them, and even worse make them feel as if they have to change in order to be accepted. Coming from a society where anyone who is slightly different is labeled as an “outcast,” a parent’s job is to make sure their child always feels accepted. Gay teens and children have so many problems when dealing with everyday things like school, friends, and relationships. The last thing they need to feel is that when they come home, they wont be accepted either.When rumors started circulating that my stepbrother was gay, his didn’t put any thought into how she would address the situation. Instead of thinking it through, she picked up my stepbrother from a friends house and immediately said, “ So, I hear you’re gay.” Caught completely off guard and embarrassed, my stepbrother denied everything because his mother made the situation so uncomfortable. Ever since, he hasn’t talked to his mom, or even his dad about what he ‘s experiencing. It’s so sad that a child has to feel like he can’t even be himself in front of his own parents, the people who gave birth to him. Overall, I think it’s a parent’s duty to his child to be there for them in any situation. A parent is a guardian, and you can’t stop protecting someone because of their sexual orientation.

The video that got to me most this week was Clorene Blaise’s apparel business. I love clothing myself so I was really excited to watch her video. I couldn’t believe the type of clothing that her small business was manufacturing by hand. These individuals have so much talent to be able to embroider and stitch each of these materials by hand and still have as much exporting as they do.
It’s unfortunate that there working conditions are so harsh. I can’t imagine working in a room with no air conditioning, such a low amount of resources, and little motivation for income. I think that helping out these people could pose to be a very challenging task. I think that there are much easier ways to get materials to Haiti then for Clorene to have to trouble to the Dominican Republic. I think that companies here should make payment plans with her where she pays a certain amount of money a month and gets a certain bulk in during that month. This is a good idea because Clorene is unable to front enough money to pay for all of her raw materials at once.
Another thing I found interesting was that Clorene didn’t have her own labels for her clothing. It’s something so simple that most of us don’t even bother to read when we purchase a shirt, but she is so desperate to have access to it. I think that iron-on labels are a cheap but slightly effective way to go about labeling her clothing. I feel like she should appoint someone in her workshop to be in charge of making a logo. After this I think they should make an iron on stamp that is reusable. Instead of making a tag, I think that Clorene should iron her logo onto the back of her shirt. I have shirts in my own closet that don’t necessarily have a tag, but just a company name or logo on the inside back of the shirt where consumers can see it.
The last thing that blew my mind about this video was the fact that the bag she made would sell for twenty-five dollars in the US. I feel like our clothing companies are so innovative that no one would even consider paying twenty-five dollars for a bag of that quality. Clorene definitely has a lot of talent, but not the right resources to make quality items. If she had a innovative machine instead of an assembly line her company could accomplish so much more. Though it’s difficult for me to think of ways for her to expand off the top of my head, I feel like after she starts making getting more resources, she’ll be able to figure out the rest.

The SATS are different then any other test in the fact that you can prepare for them mentally months before. It’s not the type of studying that goes into taking a normal high school exam. The SAT has a certain technique to it that must be learned. The types of questions are ones that you must get used to and obtain a comfort level of answering before going in and taking the actual test. People study the nature of the SAT as a living and even go as far as being professional SAT tutors. The fact that there are SAT tutors out there prove that people are capable of being “trained” to perform better on these tests.
From experience, I know that SAT tutors are extremely expensive. Some go as far as costing over one hundred dollars a session. I think it’s very believable that income level affects your score on the SATS because people that get SAT tutors have to have a decent amount of money. It is also said that schools with more wealth provide better education for their students. If this is true, then if you live in an impoverished neighborhood, you’re less likely to go to a prominent school and receive a good education. There are of course exceptions to this rule. Every bad community has its bulk of naturally smart students, but for the most part low income areas, have low income schools, with poor quality education for their students. It’s also proven that low income households have a higher percentage of children who don’t strive to succeed because it isn’t what they are taught to do.
I think that other then income, there are many factors that affect high school students SAT scores. I think that hours of preparation is huge. If people put in at least a few hours every week then there SAT scores are bound to increase. On top of that, if schools offer an SAT prep class, which is an entire class period devoted to learning tricks to succeeding on the SAT, then scores will increase as well. Another factor that probably affects students SAT scores are their test taking abilities. There are many students that are naturally smart, but aren’t good test takers. For example, I had over a 4.0 average in high school but just couldn’t grasp the concept of the SAT. It’s difficult for some people to adapt to the type of testing that the SAT is. Lastly, I believe that family values play a huge role in SAT scores, which many people fail to think of. If your family believes in going to college and higher education, then they are more then likely motivating you to prepare for the SATS, but without this type of motivation, some students think that the SATS are nothing but a joke.