In my opinion, I do not think a Christian god would support the current wars that the United States is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was brought up to believe that Christian values included that of peace and loving others, not invading foreign lands for natural resources and to spread your style of government. Something that kind of goes along with this well-asked question, is the fact that religion, for some reason, plays such a large role in our country’s political system, and I just do not get it. I understand that religion is very important to many people in the United States, but I just don’t understand why so many people judge politicians, or other people for that matter, by who or what they believe in or worship. If someone has good values, is a good person, and would make a great politician, why the hell do people care so much about religious affiliation? A while ago, a bunch of ignorant people claimed that current president Barack Obama was a Muslim. Obama is actually a Christian, but the point is that so many Americans got very upset because they thought their president wasn’t a Christian. Why does it matter? I just don’t get how people can judge other people on something that most people are just associated with mainly because how they are raised. Getting back to the original topic, if I had to guess, I would say that most Christians would agree with me on my stance that a Christian god would not support the current war in the Middle East. Also if I had to guess again, I would say that most people that voted for George W. Bush for president in 2000 and again in 2004 were Christian. Bush is the man who started the current war. Bush is a known Christian, and I would love to know what his response would be if someone asked him “do you think a Christian god would support the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan?” Unfortunately, we probably will never know the answer to that question, but I will answer the question and I am sticking by my original response of no. There were some reasons that made it seem necessary for the United States to enter a Middle East, but there weren’t enough reasons to send thousands of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. And I would think that a Christian god would not enjoy seeing a country going to other nations uninvited to spread their idea of how a country would run and also to obtain oil. Again, it would be nice to be able to ask a Christian god how it feels about the war, but that is also probably not going to happen.

Throughout this whole scandal, I feel like I have learned a lot. One of the most important things I think I have learned is that you should always try to make a situation right, no matter what your boss or people in charge tell you. Though all the facts are not out yet, and I will retain my judgments of everyone involved until I know more, it appears that some people met their legal obligations; they did not do what was right morally. There’s no way that I can put myself in the shoes of anyone involved in this mess, or know exactly what they knew, so I don’t know how I would’ve responded. But after seeing this develop, I like to think in the future, that if I see someone doing something anywhere close to as wrong as what Jerry Sandusky was accused of in those showers, that I would not only stop it, but made sure that he was punished for what he did. I know that the incident was reported to someone in charge, but somehow it was not reported to police. So another thing that I think I have learned in the past two weeks is that you should not scared to go around someone who is in charge of you, so that justice can be served. On a different note, I feel like I’ve learned to try and not to stereotype an entire group together. All over facebook and twitter, I’ve seen ignorant people make stupid comments about Penn State. There have been posts that make it seem like people think that everyone that goes to this university rapes children. Obviously, this is about the furthest thing from the truth, but it’s made me realize to not judge an entire organization by one scandal. For example, Syracuse is now finding itself in a similar situation as Penn State because one of its assistant basketball coaches has been accused of molesting the team’s former ball boy. A few weeks ago, I may have looked at this situation at Syracuse and think that everybody involved with Syracuse basketball had something to do with child abuse, much like some people are thinking now that everyone involved with Penn State football has something to do with child abuse. So after being around Penn State for this whole situation, I know that claim is totally untrue. It’s completely unfair, especially to the current players. So I have not jumped to any conclusions about Syracuse because I do not know much about the situation and don’t want to ignorantly comment on it. I wish people would do the same with the Penn State scandal and stop ignorantly commenting on it, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon.

There is no doubt that the past week’s event will change Penn State forever, and in turn it will probably change the views on how people see the university and the people associated with the university. And that includes its current students. I’m not sure how employers will now treat how they look at possible employees and see their Penn State diploma. They have basically two options. Cunt first of all, they could see that Penn State is on your resume and treat it like the institution that they would’ve a month ago and not let the recent incidents have affect on the resume. Their other option is that they could look at the recent scandal, and judge Penn State because of it. In my opinion, I do not think that doing so would be fair, but it could happen. People all over the country have most likely heard the news of the Penn State scandal and everyone probably has their own opinion on it. Employers, probably no doubt have an opinion on it too, but it may or may not affect their view on Penn State graduates. They might look at the whole situation, and say ‘Penn State’ is a terrible place because of what was revealed in the last few days and not want to hire Penn State graduates because of it. This scandal also affects current students, and it affects them more than graduates. As a current student, I’ve had many of my friends and family call or contact me to get my thoughts and find out information about the whole scandal. People do this because they want to know the latest news. Another way that the whole mess affects me and other current students is that everybody has their opinion on the situation and on Penn State. I saw things on facebook from people who were very ignorant to the situation and I saw statuses that angered me on how people would comment on a situation when they were so in the dark about it. Though facebook angers me sometimes, another source of social media, Twitter, is actually been very helpful in getting news during this scandal. Every morning in the last week, my routine has basically been the same: wake up and check Twitter for Penn State news, and it’s definitely been a helpful tool. I’ve learned a bunch of news via Twitter, like the announcement of Joe Paterno’s retirement. But regardless of how I or anyone gets the news, one thing is for sure: this scandal will change people’s views about Penn State. Even if it’s just for the time being, things people will think of when they hear ‘Penn State’ are this case and a Joe Paterno with a stain on his legacy.

I was pretty surprised to learn that over 12 million immigrants are currently living in the United States illegally, but I was not that surprised that many Americans do not want to do the jobs that those same illegal immigrants are doing. Most of the work that illegal immigrants do is hard, demanding work for not-so-great wages, and obviously not many, if any people actually want to do it. But most immigrants are more willing to work these tough jobs because they want to support their families in their home countries. Most Americans are not willing to do these jobs, and there are some reasons for this. For one, most people in America have too much pride to work the job of a foreign day laborer. Most Americans see themselves as “better” than working in fields or in gardens and want to get high-paying jobs with an office. This may because that many people in the United States grow up being told that “they can be anything they want to be” and this image gets in their head that they should be well off when they grow up. And then when these people get older, they feel like they are too good to do any other job then the one they set their minds on years earlier. Also, most Americans don’t have the will to do the demanding jobs that many illegal immigrants do in the United States. For example, a lot of Americans feel like they are better off looking for better work, than to take a job in the hot sun picking tomatoes all day long. A lot of these immigrants come to the United States solely so they can feed their families back in their home country. These immigrants not only have the willingness to get into the United States, but also have the will power to work all day in rough conditions and send most of the money back to their families just so they and the people they love can have enough money to have food on their tables. It’s not like some workers in America do not care about feeding their families, it’s just that they do not want to be reduced to doing the job that they feel an immigrant should do and would rather look for work elsewhere. Workers that were born in the United States are also to have better opportunities in the country than illegal immigrant workers. People that were born here may have family or friends in the United States that can help them get work. Either way, I find it funny that people are trying to kick immigrants out of the country and then don’t know what to do when nobody is there to step in and do the jobs that they’re doing.

Right now, the way I feel about white people being the minority in the United States is filled with different thoughts and emotions. It’s really hard for me to envision living in a world in which white people are not the majority. It’s tough to imagine, because the only world that I know is the one that I live in right now, which is one where white people are the majority, not the minority. It definitely would not bother me that white people will no longer be the majority in 30 years, but I just have a difficult time imagining what that world would be like. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania where most of the people I knew and interacted with were white and I didn’t start really learning about and understanding other cultures, so living in a world that has less white people would be a very different experience than what I’m used to. I feel like it will definitely be an interesting experience though, to live in a country that is not dominated by white people. As years go by, race and the color of a person’s skin seem to be getting less and less of an issue, so in thirty years who knows what kind of effect or how much of an issue race and/or skin color will be, if any? It’s obviously impossible to tell what the world and the United States will be like in thirty years, but I think it’s very interesting that if I have children and possibly grand-children, that they’ll be growing up in a much more diverse world. Also, just because the country will be more diverse, it does not necessarily mean that it will seem that way depending on where you live. Obviously, if you live in a city or a more populated area, that area is going to be pretty diverse. You could be like me, and live in an area that is predominately white. Just because that white people will no longer be the majority in the United States, does not mean that there will not still be many rural areas that have much more white people than others. For example, I don’t see my small town become all-of-a –sudden more diverse in thirty years. There may be a bit more diversity in small, rural areas, but in my opinion, I do not think that there will be much change in smaller areas that are currently mainly populated with white people. So in thirty years, it’s really unsure on what the world or the United States will look like. It definitely will be more diverse, but who knows what type of implications it will have.

When a person hangs out with a bunch of other people that are a different race than they are does not make that person a poser. First of all, a person should mostly be defined by who they are personally, not who that person hangs around with. Secondly, I don’t understand how a person who hangs around with people of a different race is a “poser”? To me a “poser” is someone who acts a certain way on the outside, but on the inside feels a different way. The top urban dictionary result for “poser” is “someone who pretends to be someone whose not.” I agree with this definition. For example, if a white kid typically hangs out with a group of black kids because they share the same interests of him and they become friends, is the white kid a poser? No. He is not pretending to be someone he is not. Sometimes a person has no choice but to hang out with people that are a different race as they are. I went to a small high school, there were about 400 people in the entire school and only about five or six were black and almost everyone else was white. What choice did those black kids have but to hang out with at least mostly if not all white kids? Pretty much none. If all of the black kids in the school hung out together and just by themselves, everyone else would be questioning why they were not hanging out with white kids, but if they hang out with mostly white kids, are they posers? Of course not, the black kids don’t really have much of a choice of who they hang out with, and they are certainly not posers. A person should hang out with people that they like and can associate with. People may be more comfortable hanging out with people of their own race or nationality, but your race and nationality certainly does not shape your interests or who you hang out with. I’m sure if I was in another country on a trip and there were only a few other Americans on the trip with me, I would associate with those other Americans, because they are similar to me. But this is different than race, I would associate with these people are very similar to me and I am in a foreign place. As far as people in their native country, skin color should not be an issue when it’s looked at as who hangs out with whom. If you like hanging out with certain people, you should continue to hang with them because you like them and share common bonds, not because of what your race is.

For me, I find it hard to put myself in to one of the exact stages that we talked about in class yesterday. I find it hard for two reasons. The first reason is I feel like I don’t really know enough about the stages to put myself in one. The second and more important reason is that I feel like I don’t really feel like I fit perfectly in to one of the stages that we discussed in class on Thursday. Right now, I feel like I am somewhere between stage two and stage three, but if I had to choose just one stage, it would have to be the second stage. I say that I am in the second stage because I think that I am aware that race exists but I do not fully understand other cultures other than my own. I blame a lot of this on the fact that when I was a kid, I grew up in a very “white” area and that there was not a lot of diversity in my hometown or in my school. I lived in a town of less than 2,000 people and went to a very small high school. There were about 400 kids that attended my high school and if I had to guess, I would have to say that at least 385 of them were white. I myself am white, so I knew a lot about my own race and culture, but not much about other races or other cultures. In high school I knew there were other races, but the way I mainly viewed other races was from what I saw on TV or in movies. But things changed when I came to Penn State. Coming into college, I understood that there were going to be people on this campus from all over the world and I knew that being on the campus here would be a lot different than being at home. It really is different being here, though most of my friends at school are still mainly white, I now interact with blacks, Asians, Jews, Middle Eastern people, etc. on an almost daily basis, which is much different from my day-to-day life just two years ago. As far as being a little bit towards stage three, I do kind of understand the “white guilt” and do feel it occasionally. There will be times where I do have a little sense of guilt when I realize some the benefits that I do have because of my skin color in today’s society. But for the most part, I still feel like I am still starting to understand more and more about other races, which I is why I consider myself more in stage two. I don’t know when I will get out of this stage, but I feel like the process of moving stages will go quicker while I’m at college.

If my roommate told me he was gay, I like to think it wouldn’t have any effect on our relationship. As long as my roommate is up front with me about and understands that I am straight and doesn’t hit on me or something of that nature, it would not make much of a difference to me if he was gay or not. I’ve never had a problem with gay people or gay culture, so I really don’t think living with a gay person would be a problem for me. I feel like I’d treat my roommate the same whether he was gay, straight or bi-sexual. If my roommate told me they were gay on the first day we were living together, I would give them the same respect that I would give my roommate if they were straight. If my roommate wants some “personal time” alone with another person in the room, I’ll let it happen, no matter if it is a guy and a girl or a guy with another guy. Also I would try to be very respectful to my roommate if I knew he was gay. Now, I, like many college kids throw phrases like “that’s gay” around without thinking about it too much when I’m describing something that I don’t like. If I had a gay roommate, I would definitely avoid using language of that nature so I wouldn’t offend him. On the other side of the coin, I also don’t think that it would make a difference to me if my roommate told me he was gay after we had lived together. Depending on what my roommate was like when we lived together would show how surprised or not surprised I am with him revealing his homosexuality to me. If my roommate had gay tendencies when we lived together and I always kind of thought that they were gay when we lived in the same room, I would not be too surprised if they told me they were gay after we stopped living together. But if my roommate acted really “straight” when we lived in the same room, I would definitely be surprised if he told me he was gay at a later date, but I would not treat him or our relationship any differently. After we moved out, I would judge an old roommate by how they acted and how we got along when we lived together, sexual preference would not have any effect on the relationship between us. If my roommate and I got along great and had a tremendous relationship after living together, and then he told me he was gay after we stopped living in the same room, our relationship would still be the same.

The main reason I came to Penn State is because it’s something I’ve been associating with my whole life. Over ten members in my family, including both of my parents and my brother went to Penn State. My parents would often take me and my brother on trips to State College when we were kids and we’d go to football and basketball games. I live less than two hours away and Penn State football is a big deal where I’m from. All my life it’s been Penn State this and Penn State that, I couldn’t picture myself at any other school. For most of high school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to go to school for, but I knew I wanted to go to Penn State. To answer the question that was asked, race really did not have any influence on why I came to Penn State. However, you could say that social status and connections made an impact on why I’m here today. I’m lucky enough that my parents can afford to send me to a university like Penn State and obviously the connections I have are my family. My parents met in the HUB, and as I was growing up they always told me great stories about Penn State and every time I visited, I liked the town and the campus more and more. I also have grandparents, aunts and uncles that all went to Penn State. It’s not like I felt like I had no other college choice other than Penn State, but going to Penn State just always felt right to me. Going back to the race and social status issue, I would be interested to know how much that it affects other people’s choice to attend this school. At a school like Penn State, there are people of every race and creed and even students from all sorts of economic backgrounds. So I’m not really sure how much a person’s race influences their decision on what school they attend, unless, a person is applying to a predominantly black or white school. But at a big state school like Penn State, race does not seem like a big issue. On the other side of the coin, social status, at least economically, does come into play when talking about why people are at Penn State. At over $20,000 a year without scholarships and even more for out-of-state students, some people can’t afford to attend a school like Penn State. Like I mentioned earlier, I am fortunate enough to have a family that can afford to send me here, and for that I am thankful. I am very happy with my decision to attend Penn State, and just like I did as a kid, I love being in State College.

To me, classifying yourself depends on what context you’re being asked to classify yourself. If someone is talking about work, and they ask you what you are, you’re going to answer with your profession. If someone is talking about religion and asks you what you are, you’re going to respond with your choice of religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. So basically whenever I am asked the question what are you? I am involved in a conversation about religion or jobs. But it would be interesting if somebody just blindly asked me on the street what are you? First of all, I would be taken aback by the question, but after I thought about for a while I think I would most likely answer with my profession. I think I would turn to profession first because to me it’s the answer that I would expect other people to answer with their job if I asked them, out of the blue, what are you? I think they would answer this mainly because jobs are much less of a touchy subject than say race or religion. Another way people could answer the question of how they identify themselves is by what they are the most proud of. If someone is a doctor and they’re Catholic, they might classify as a doctor first because being a doctor is an esteemed profession and they obviously had to work hard to become a doctor, whereas they are most likely born into being Catholic. So they might make a bigger deal out of being a doctor than being Catholic to make them look good. The same thing can go for nationality and race. If someone is very proud of being Brazilian, the first thing they might identify themselves as is Brazilian. This might especially hold true if that person is in a foreign country. Now on to the question of do people classify themselves or do others do it? This is an interesting question, because I believe the answer is not black and white. People can define themselves as they choose, but other people classify people too. These other people may not even know the person they are defining, but they’ll do it from the appearance of the other person. For instance, if somebody sees a guy who, from a distance, looks Asian, they might ignorantly immediately call that person Chinese. Obviously, there is a good chance that this person is not Asian. They could be any other Asian nationality, mixed-race, or a race that isn’t even from Asia. So why some people do classify people without even knowing them, it’s not fair. Every person should have the choice to classify however they want, be it by race, religion, nationality or profession.