I am not really sure if sacrificing State Patty's day would do anything for us. There are so many students at Penn State that claim State Patty's is their "favorite holiday" which is funny since it is a holiday that we totally made up. I don't think there is a way to get every single student to not celebrate this year. This would especially hurt seniors, like myself. Seniors look forward to their last State Patty's Day. This is their last really "big" party day with everyone they know. I know for a fact that the seniors especially would keep the holiday going. Also, why would we sacrifice this? It really does not make sense to me and I personally do not think that it would help us in any way. After everything that has happened the past couple weeks I think it is important for the student body to get back into everyday life at Penn State. By sacrificing traditions, we are keeping this whole scandal over our heads and somewhat keeping the mood change on campus going. I think we need to get back to "normal" or whatever can be somewhat normal for us now. People all over the world are not even going to see that we made a big sacrifice so there really is no point. I think there would be a bigger effect if we did something useful that the world could see. For example, the vigil that occurred on Old Main lawn. I know that the media concerns itself with more of the negative than the positive. However, by doing things like that the world can see what we are trying to do here. And as a side note, State Patty's Day and the scandal that has occurred are not related whatsoever. There is no point to bring something into the mix when it has nothing to do with what has happened here on campus.

If I was a silenced victim what would it take for me to speak out? This is a really tough question to answer. First of all I think what I am a silenced victim of would depend on how I would come about speaking out. If I was a victim of sexual abuse I am not exactly sure. It would also depend on the specific situation I found myself in. I would like to think that I would speak out right away about being sexually abused. However, You really never know what you are going to do until you are in that specific situation. We can all sit here and say "I would do this and that", but we never will know unless we were put in that exact situation. If I was afraid to speak out I think it would take the support of the people I trusted the most to speak out about abuse. Even if they never knew about it in the first place. It would depend on if I had a group of supportive friends and family. If i did not I am not sure if I would ever speak out against it. It is an extremely hard thing to do. There are so many cases where the victim blames themselves for what happened. If you are blaming yourself, would you really come out and say someone abused you? Probably not. You would not want anyone to know because you believe that you were the one at fault. People still think this when it reality it is far from the truth. The victim should never be at fault for what has happened to them. It really just depends on what kind of person you are to weather you would speak out or not. For me personally, I think that it would take knowing that I had a very supportive group of people behind me that knew I was not at fault for the actions of the abuser to speak out. Other than that I really cannot say what I would do until I am in the situation.

I think that only 12% of White think that they will do better financially than their parents because its probably true. I think that the economy is not that great today and it is affecting many people. Our generation is the one who is going to get hit really hard the the struggles of the economy. We are the ones thats are going to have to work harder just to get by everyday. Most of our parents have made something for themselves. Personally, I know both of my parents really came from nothing. My mom dropped out of college to move away with my father then got pregnant with me. My dad continued college, but was a full-time student with both a full-time job and a night-time part-time job. He worked extremely hard just for us to get by pretty much on the bare minimum. Today we are the average, middle-class family, but I know it took a long way for my parents to get there. I am pretty sure that I will not be better off than them in my life. It is probably important to note that I am White. From watching them struggle and hearing how they made something of themselves really speaks for itself. And how the economy is now somewhat makes it more impossible to work your way up on the chain to say.

As a white person I think I would for sure be different to be part of the minority in the future. However, I actually think that it is a good thing for people to be in a minority at some point in their lives. We as a culture have always praised white people. Especially white males. If you are a white, middle or upper class male then you pretty much have it set for life according to our society. You have all the rights in this country and you get fairer wages and benefits even compared to white women. For white to suddenly become a minority, a lot of these people would probably change their views on many things in the world. It might change what kind of jobs they hold, or if they get a fair chance of getting a job. Just because white people become a minority does not mean that everything has to change. I personally think that there should not be a change at all. Just because someone is classified as a "minority" does not really affect how they live their lives. We as a society should learn to appreciate people and understand them for who they are and not for their skin color. I know that if whites suddenly became the minority then a lot of white people would be unhappy. I do not think that this is okay in any way. We are all people and we are putting ourselves in categories that do not need to be there.

I think that for the most part all of my friends are at different stages than me and even different stages from each other. Many of my friends are probably in stage 2. The majority of my friends are white and do not venture to other racial groups very much. When they interact with other groups I can tell that they sometimes feel uncomfortable and do not want to say anything wrong or offend anyone by what they say. Then there are our 2 friends from other racial groups, Hispanic and black, who they know will not get offended by anything that they say because we are very close. They are very comfortable around these people. However, whenever they meet someone new of a different racial group from them they suddenly have a filter. They filter everything they say so they will not offend anyone. They are just uncomfortable.
I think that I am in one of the later stages. I do not have many friends of different racial groups, but I think that white people kind of suck. By having this filter on them when around different people they are basically treating people of different racial groups different. As if we are not all just people. But then I do not hat white people. Like I said, the majority of my friends are white basically because that is just who I am gravitated towards. Not because the color of their skin, but because of similar interests that we have as people, not a racial group. I think that people are just people and everyone should stop caring about the color of someones skin and see them for who they really are. I am not really sure what stage I am in because as we went over them in class I felt like I did not exactly fit into any of them. I felt like I had qualities of a few so it is hard for me to say where I fit in at this moment in my life. I do know that I am in different stages than my friends however, because I know that most of them get uncomfortable around different races. They see people as belonging to racial groups instead of just seeing them as a person just like them.

I think that I both agree and disagree with this statement/question. I disagree because I know many girls who do not care if they dress in sweatpants or jeans and a sweatshirt as long as they are warm and comfortable. Also after reading through some of the postings already it seems like many people disagree. I think that people disagree because they think that everyone has free choice about how they want to look. This is partially true, but partially not. We do obviously pick what our style is and what we want to wear. However, I think that the media influences these decisions for us in some ways. We are influenced by the male driven media about what we should be wearing to feel sexy as a women. It is implanted into our minds at a young age that women should wear short skirts and low cut tops and heels to attract a guy a feel good about ourselves. This is true and false I think. As a women I know that these things are not needed at all to attract a guy and guys that think this is a priority is not someone worth being with. However, I know that dressing in heels and smaller clothing is essentially the woman's decision and a lot of women are saying that they are doing this for themselves. I think that they are doing it to attract men because that makes them feel good about themselves. Being able to get and keep a guys attention is important in our society today. This is all due to the media being driven by males. Young males that rule this industry are driven by their fantasies and they want to turn these fantasies into reality. I just think that there are real problems in our society and these problems are likely to never be solved.
Another thing is that guys get to pretty much wear whatever they want without being criticized by the other sex. Guys never have to wear uncomfortable clothes and shoes so that they can look a certain way. In our society it is all about comfort for men and trying to be sexy for women. If men can wear comfortable clothes in any situation then women should be able to do the same.

Before we watched the whole video I somewhat knew what the outcome of the study would be. I had a feeling that the people in the park would react more negatively to the black male trying to steal the bike. I just did not know that the people passing by the white male would not really react at all and would not even try to stop him. I think that I guy even helped him get the bike off the pole to take it. Both the white and the black male made it very clear that the bike was not theirs and that they were attempting to take it for themselves. When the black male started him turn stealing the bike, the results happened almost immediately. The very first person that passed by the situation asked the actor what he was doing. I think that the video said that 20 seconds had passed by and someone was already trying to stop the black male from taking the bike. It took an extremely long time for anyone to try to stop the white male. This really shows something about our society as a whole. We are more easily convinced that a black male is a criminal than a white male. For some reason we are programed to think that whites are innocent and are not criminals.
An interesting thing happened when they had a woman try to steal the bike. Not only did no one try to stop her, but many guys actually tried to help her steal the bike. She also said that the bike was not hers and she was basically just going to take it. The men that were helping her did not really seem to care that she was a criminal. They thought she was young and attractive and wanted to help her no matter what she was trying to do. This is showing that our society really does not think that a woman can be a criminal and men will do whatever they can to help a struggling woman.

The Haiti Group Project is something totally different any project I have done for a class in the past. We are looking at actual real people who are having real struggles in trying to create a business to support themselves and their families. I was actually not that well informed about the details of Haiti before I read through the website and started to watch the videos of the entrepreneurs. These people are trying so hard to make a living that seems impossible to achieve. I watched some of the videos about the entrepreneurs who are making bags and clothes. It seems like the supplies they need to make their products cost more than the finished product itself. They are then selling their products at a higher price to create an income. The only problem here is that many of the Haitian people cannot afford this increase in price. It seems to be somewhat of a circle that has no end. The entrepreneurs have to spend money to make money, but they cannot make a steady income because others cannot afford their products. It is like an endless loop. Another problem these entrepreneurs face is the imported goods from other countries. This is just like the video we watched in class about rice farmers not being able to make enough money because of all the rice being imported from the United States. We should not send products to Haiti that they do not need. This is costing many Haitians their own jobs and not allowing them to create an income for their families. Instead of sending them things such as rice, we should be helping in other ways. For example, why not help them advance their technology? This can help the entrepreneurs run their businesses. Or we could even help fund a new Haitian business. Also, if we provided technology to this country, the entrepreneurs could expand their business in ways of the internet. They could then provide the option for Americans and other countries around the world to purchase these products online. This would open up a whole new world to these people, especially the entrepreneurs who are creating clothes and bags and products of this nature.
I know that many people think that it is important to donate to Haiti and try to give them the resources they need. However, this could be one of the worst things for us to do because it is destroying the businesses in Haiti and those who are trying to make a living. If we really want to help Haiti we actually need to go to help. I think providing morale support is extremely important and seeing Americans actual go to Haiti to help would make the people of Haiti feel like we are trying to help them instead of take their resources from them.

I have two thoughts about gender and sexual orientation. Regarding gender, I think that we both do and do not get to choose our gender. We cannot choose how we are born. We are either born a male or a female. However, I do think that we pick how we fit into being either male or female. As young kids we are taught how to fit into a certain gender role. Boys are supposed to like sports and cars while girls are supposed to like clothes and dancing, etc.. But what about those people who do not fit into these stereotypical gender roles? Some boys find to enjoy more activities that are considered more feminine while some girls enjoy more masculine activities. For some reason this is not socially acceptable in our culture. I think that we choose our gender in a way. Some people grow up feeling that they were born the wrong gender. People that feel this way have the option to get gender reassignment surgery when they are older and I think this is very important. If someone feels trapped in the wrong gender then they should have the right to pick their gender. We also pick our genders culturally. We choose to me male or female by subjecting to the social norm and taking on stereotypical gender roles. This is not a bad thing, but it is what most of society does.
Sexual orientation is also an interesting topic to discuss. I do not think that a person has the ability to pick their sexual orientation. I believe that you are born a certain and you cannot change that no matter what. If you like men you will always like men. You will not wake up one day and just decide that you now want to change sexual orientation. However, there is a lot of grey are when it comes to sexuality. I do not believe that sexuality is just black and white; gay and straight. I think that sexuality for most people lies more in the grey area than on one of the extreme sides. I also do not think you can pick where you fall on the spectrum of sexuality. You are born a certain way and you cannot change the way you feel.

What religion am I? I think this is a very interesting question. I feel like our society today has this need to "belong" to a certain religious group as a way to describe themselves. I disagree with this. I personally do not identify myself with any religion. My parents grew up in a strict Catholic church and when I was born they did not want me to being to the church they did. I was baptized Methodist. My parents said that they felt in that time it was necessary to get a child baptized. However, I never grew up going to church or having views pushed upon me by my parents or anyone else. My family wanted me to find my own way and sometimes they would not even view their own opinions when I asked a question about God or anything to do with spirituality. They told me I needed to figure out these things for myself and form my own opinions on them. So that is what I did. I personally think that this was one of the best things they could have done. I often feel that people identify themselves with the same religion as their family because that's what they grew up on so they do not know anything else. I think sometimes parents or parental figures push their views onto their children which I do not agree with at all.

I recently started researching Buddhism. I do not see Buddhism as a "religion" but more of a philosophy. When people think of religion they think of a belief in a god or a supernatural being. This is not something that is central to Buddhism. I personally do not believe in God. I think that is why Buddhism appeals to me so much. I believe in being a good person and learning how to better yourself. In Buddhism there is no god that watches over you. You are responsible for your own life and how you want to spend it. Meditation is present in the Buddhist culture to help an individual look inside themselves and learn how to better their lives. I think this is a very important and useful practice. In general I do enjoy learning about different religions and why people believe what they do. I think it is important to understand other people and try to put yourself in their shoes. Now, do not misunderstand me here. I do not consider myself a Buddhist. I believe you need to fully commit yourself and your life to call yourself a Buddhist. I do agree with a great deal of Buddhist beliefs and practices I just know I cannot fully commit myself and I do not want to devalue those who have fully committed their lives to this religion/philosophy.