The American dream, in my opinion, definitely still exists. I think the American Dream will always exist as long as there is the constitution protecting the right to grow and create your own life for your self and your family. The American Dream is the fact that you can go and work as hard as you would like and earn as much as you would like. All Americans still have the opportunity to do this today. We all just need to realize that it's not an entitlement, it’s not promised, or given to you, it's something you have to work for. Countless Americans have busted their rear ends capturing their american dream. The opportunity to follow your dream, any dream, is still there, and will always be there, just as it always has. But... you have to be willing to sacrifice for it. The “American Dream” is not just going to land in your lap because you come here to America or live here in America. The “American Dream” will never be handed to you, it has to be taken.
Looking back upon what I have experienced so far in my life, my life was extremely easy. I grew up in a nice house, with loving parents, friends always around, good schooling and teachers. It was the textbook childhood. I watched my parents do well in their careers and was told that if (or when) I go to college and work hard, the world is yours. That anything is possible. That as long as you put your mind to it and pushed for it and busted your back side for it, that anything was possible. That the “American Dream” was available for anyone who wanted it bad enough.
There was a time when some places absolutely refused to hire African Americans. To a slight degree, this still exists in certain places. Affirmative Action was necessary only to get to ball rolling; to force those that would not hire blacks to do so. Now, Affirmative Action is no longer necessary. What was once a tool to break a social barrier has become a weapon in the hands of those that feel that their relatives were oppressed to seek some sort of vengeance or entitlement. As far as affirmative action relates to this topic, I feel that in the beginning of its existence, it helped the under privileged get considerations that they never would have before. It helped them be able to maintain their quest of the American Dream. Now, however, I feel that AA is becoming a possible burden to the idea of the American Dream. As mentioned above, I feel that I makes people feel entitled. Which detracts from everyones desire and hard work.

What lessons have I / we all learned from all of this? There are so many ways to go about this, so many things we can all learn from this. You can target so many lessons, so many virtues: honesty, respect, loyalty, honor, trust, being able to do the “right” thing, what to look for to get people (especially children) help with abuse, to now be careful and cautious of positions of power, to not listen to everything that your told and to be skeptical of those things, to be proactive, to take charge: the list is endless...

In my young career so far here at Penn State, this is the major life lesson teaching situation that I’ve encountered. Of course there is the growing up, and balancing drinking and school, and yadda yadda yadda, but this scandal is much more immense and impact-ful than any of those other things were. Coming here, you’re expected to have honor and loyalty and pride in yourself and in your school. You’re expected to trust your fellow classmate, your teacher, your counselor, your head football coach. Through out every branch of command and every branch of friendship, these key virtues were always stressed and warranted. But this situation shakes our foundations and I thoughts toward everything. Now I can say that I learned not to trust the system (since it was a key member of one of the biggest football programs in the nation that this scandal is all around), or that I learned that you can’t always trust your peers (due to the violent riots and stupid acts that took place after the firing of our beloved Joe Paterno), or even that you can trust people in positions of power (since it was Joe and his staff that the scandal engulfed.) But instead of naming one of those things as the main thing that I’ve learned, I was to flip the script a little. I want to say that the biggest lesson I’ve learned throughout this scandal is faith. Not toward Sandusky at all, for all of the terrible things he did to those poor children, or not Joe Pa, McQueary, Spanier, or anyone else that was involved in the cover up. (I know we still don’t know we have all of the facts. I still feel Joe is completely not responsible, but we’ll see what comes out.) But faith in this establishment. Faith in our brilliant university to right itself again, and once again establish us as one of the cleanest and best universities on this planet. Right now we are in the middle of a giant mess, but by the end, as the dust clears, I have faith that we will once again be the school we once were.

Even since the news of allegations being re-brought up against Gary Sandusky hit the news, it has been the number one thing on the docket on every tv show, in every paper, on every radio show, on twitter, and on facebook for the past week or so now. It has been absolutely impossible for someone to open a paper or turn on the tv and not see a story that has to do with Penn State, or an update to the Penn State scandal story. And the kicker to all of the coverage is that it was all negative. Every story, every interview, every opinion was negative which lead to the quick decrease of the Penn State name, as a football team, as a community, and as a university overall.
One of the major reasons why this is such a terrible story and why it spread like bonfire was because was one of the only “squeaky clean” universities left in the nation. Penn State has always been known for integrity and respect and honesty and tradition. Joe Paterno and his staff were always known to lead a team, putting those honorary aspects first. We, as a team, as a coaching staff, as a town, as a community, as a university, WE were respected by everyone. But now our slate is no longer clean. We now have to deal with all of the back lash that this great university has coming our way. And that back lash only became worse with the rioting by the students that occurred down town after the annunciation of the Joe Pa firing. As we talked about in class, we understand why the students were there, we understand because we are part of this university, this community, this town; but the other 99% of people that do not go here or do not understand what it is like here think that we are all monsters for supporting this man. And those thoughts have lead to a further decline of the view of Penn State and its students.
(On a quick personal note, I was absolutely devastated. And yes, I found it unfair and over the phone to be extremely unprofessional, and still do, but taking those emotions to the street and wreaking havoc is not what this university needed AT ALL. It just continued the back lash and the jokes and taunts and lengthened the road to recovery. Also, why is McQueary still on staff!?!? But anyway...)
But we need to face this all head on. We as the students of this university need to show the world that we are still worth their time, and that we stand united under our school and stand united in the fact that we are what we are, and are proud of who we are and the school we go to. We are the future... and WEstillARE Penn State.

If I was a business owner in the America and had to make the decision between hiring illegal immigrant workers, who are willing to work for lower wages and who are willing to work where ever and whenever, in whatever conditions and during whatever hours, or hiring legal American citizen workers, who will demand more money, shorter hours, and better conditions, I’m not 100 percent sure of which I would choose. When taking each into consideration, even thought it is against the obvious and cheaper option, I would choose the American workers. I would make sure that all of my workers were legal for a few main reasons. One is that I am a man that believes in the American public as a whole and the passion our workers have behind them. We are labeled as lazy and fat, but I believe other wise. I believe we need jobs and people will take them. Our economy is in a down turn and these people with out jobs will take these menial jobs for the money. People who hire illegal immigrant workers are screwing over his or her fellow citizens by hiring an illegal because he or she is cheap and easier to manage and can be treated less respectfully. From my perspective, thats the bottom line. I don’t under stand how business owners claim that legal workers are too “expensive" in their eyes. Of course, a big part of that expense is paying a living wage, all the taxes and benefits associated with the wage, regulatory compliance costs for government, from local to federal, paying for equipment, overhead, etc. But if I was a business owner in America, I believe I could be very profitable in my business if I didn't hire illegal immigrant workers and just stuck to the all legal all American worker.
Paying a "cheap" illegal is taking an opportunity away from a legal American worker and a legal business practice. It is also depriving local, state and federal government of tax revenue as well. Hiring "cheap" labor has a steep price for our society.
Overall, I feel that illegal immigrants should not be hired. Taking this argument a step further, how can we stop this from happening? How can we stop business owners from making the more sensible choice of hiring illegal workers and saving money, but at the same time hurting his fellow citizens by depriving them of jobs and also depriving his government from money it deserves? Personally, I think the only thing we can do to prevent this from happening, I think we need to raise the fines and penalties for hiring illegals. Maybe the employers of illegals should look at jail time or something more severe... Just something to think about.

How do you really feel about the whites of the world becoming the minority... Hmm, such a loaded question. I’ve hear many people of color say the world will be a better place without the “white” people being “in charge” of it anymore, when they become the minority. They say that white people take over everything and invented rape and murder and crime and racism. They claim we do nothing good and only bring bad into this world. I would beg to differ. When hearing these statements, I feel very hurt. I guess I feel very hurt when I hear that because, and it might not be proper to feel this way, but I guess I somewhat feel hurt because they are kind of “biting the hand that feeds them” in some sense. Being classified as an “evil” or “bad” white man, and having people not being able to wait until we are a minority is just strange and for lack of a better term hurtful to me. This may be very one sided or very naive, but wasn’t it the white man who invented electricity? And wasn’t it the white man who invented the computer? And wasn’t it the white man who invented the car, and industry as a whole? Wasn’t it the white man who has provided high standards of living and jobs and governments and laws and democracy? In my eyes, these don’t seem like such terrible things to have an evil or bad label placed upon our white race? From my view and from my perspective, it is america that has the highest standard of living? And it is america that has made them most significant growth over the past hundred or so years. And it is america that has the most steady growth year in and year out. And the fact of the matter is, who “runs” america? The white people run america? Who founded america? The white people founded america! I dont want to come off as a dick or a racism, but when people make such stupid arguments against me/ “us”, I feel the need to fire back. Sorry...
Going a different route from that, white people will still be the number one majority race in the future, will they not? White people will still individually outnumber other races, the blacks, mexicans, asians, etc. To come to this conclusion that whites will be a minority in the future is a true statement, but isn’t that conclusion drawn from adding up all other races and comparing them to the whites? And people claim that it is the white people who are racist, don’t you find this stat racist in itself?

How does your race shape the way your view the world? This is such a loaded question. Even though it is a terrible thing to admit, race definitely effects how one views the world. It all starts from when you are young. The way your raised, where you were raised, what you were raised up believing in, language, everything has an effect on how you view the world. If you’re white, black, brown, whatever, and grow up in a rural, slow moving neighborhood, where everyone is friendly and nice, and education is pushed, then that greatly skews your view of the world. For kids like me, that is how we were raised. That was for awhile, all that we knew of the world, to us, that was the “world.”
On the other side of the spectrum, there are the white, black, brown, whatever people who grow up in a inner city environment, your “world” view is so much different. Violence and survival are much more prevalent than the push for education and other things of that nature. Your view of the world is much different than the other view described previously. To me, the majority of how you view the “world” as a CHILD comes from where you grew up, not what race you are. As we grow, the more that race comes into the picture and shifts and shapes our view of the “world”.
As we grow and progress, and see outside of our local surroundings, and grow to think and learn for ourselves, we our views of the world become much much more effected by color and race than they did when we were young children. As we move on with our lives, we see how differently people are treated, and how differently groups of race interact with one another. As we grow and learn and see and notice these things, race becomes much more prevalent in our lives. Even though these race issues should not be a huge factor in shaping our views, they definitely do, which is very very sad. As teenagers and young adults, race plays way too much of a “world” view shaper than it should. As we grow older, the race again fades to the background. They are now lost in our minds as we slowly get over of stupid teenage year preferences and ideals. Usually by this time in ones life, religion, no matter what it is plays a much more major role in ones life as well. By the time we reach old age, race is a thing of the past. In my opinion, race definitely shapes ones view of the “world” in all stages of life, but it just varies from year to year and stage by stage.

Over the years, many have screamed about the inequity of this system! Sadly, the disparity in the numbers continues to grow... There are going to be the comments that if the blacks and latinos didn't commit the crimes, then they wouldn't be arrested and have to be sentenced. But that is not the point. The point is, that in my mind anyway, without a doubt there are some sort of racial factors that play key roles in how we as a population view criminals and also how the justice system views criminals. This is and has been a major problem in our society throughout the past few centuries. So question really is, hmmm, what do we do about it? I think we should reduce the prison population by assuring the minority prisoners do not exceed their percentage of the general population, if Blacks represent 13% of the general population then only 13% of the prison population should be black. In order to achieve social justice we must incarcerate more whites, or release a great many minorities. This does not relieve the underlying problem of racism, so never mind, forget that suggestion. That would make it plausibly more fair, but at the same time it does not relieve racism. Hmmm, what to do? We could look inward. We could examine the sentencing record of every judge in America, if they have sentenced members of the minority community to prison in excess of their numerical population representation, then they should be looked into more throughly. If there are some facts or things that are found out and lead to the assumption of favoring one race or another, then that person could possibly be removed from their position of authority. But again, this wouldn't really solve the problem though. Hmmm what to do!? Do we punish the police if they arrest a disproportionate number of minorities in relation to their population representation? This still won't solve the problem though. Hmmm what to do? The answer is nothing. There is nothing really that we can do. We just have to hope and pray that the system is doing the best they possibly can and that at the end of the day, racism is set aside and the true criminals, no matter their race, are being sent to prison as they lawfully should be.

First things first, I personally know at least 6 kids from high school who were personally affected by the tragedy in Haiti. The stories they told me and the things they said about their family members who lived there still to this day were crazy. The hardest thing they were going through at that time was just trying to figure out if their loved ones were even still alive. All electric and communication was out, so it was basically a guessing game. Could you imagine not knowing if your loved ones/your family was alive or not? And basically all you could do was watch on the news for details and pray? Besides personal stories, we also hosted a live talk TV show from our school that was actually broadcasted on live television. It consisted of the haitian teens from our high school conversing with the older members of our local community about the tragedy to further understand its destruction and to further understand their personal ties and feelings on the situation. Through those two experiences, I experienced first hand how this massive earthquake changed the lives of these individuals forever.
Branching off of that tangent I just went onto there and onto what I’m actually supposed to be discussing, the article/group/piece that I found the most interesting was the Christian partners church article. It amazes me how all of these people show up to worship in a church that only has one wall and no roof. Being brought up with a semi-strong church background, I see why and know why they continuously show up to praise and worship. You need to have faith, and keep your faith, especially in times like those.
As far as how we can partner with the Christian partners church, I feel that we could effectively help them in a few ways. First and foremost, we could have a fundraiser to raise money to rebuild the church itself. A new, safe building of worship would work wonders for a group/organization like that one. We could also possibly, although it might be hard or impossible, put together some sort of mission team, or help group to send down there to help rebuild as well. Yes, I realize that that would be quite difficult, since we all have school, but maybe instead of sending Penn State students, we could possibly link up with a near by church, or someones church from back home and see if through them we could run some sort of mission group down there also. I don't really know, I’m just throwing ideas out there. I’ve just personally seen how this tragedy has affected so many lives, and it would be nice to do something helpful for them.

When it comes to classification, there are many different ways to classify people and there are many different reasons to classify people. As stated in the video, there are many many ways to classify people. Classification in general is a very broad and indefinite topic. Classifications can be based on job, gender, race, religion, income, popularity, hobbies, etc. So when one bases decisions off of classifications, or studies classifications, which one or group of classifications do they use? Also, along with the broad range of classifications comes initial judgements as well. When one immediately feels the need to classify, they immediately judge as well. And even though we all know that this is not the proper thing to do, we are all extremely guilty of this...
As far as classifying oneself, I feel that people use things that they are good at and things that are very prominent (physical appearance) to be the main things they classify them self as. As far as me classifying myself, I would say that I’m a middle classed, athletic, white male. Since sports and social standing are things that I find prominent in my life/things that are important to me/that I’m proud of, I use those things in the classification of myself. As far as other people classifying me, I feel that the white male part would definitely be apart of my classification as well, since that is a prominent feature of mine.
The last question the kid in the video asks “Do you pick your own classification, or do people pick it for you?” was the most interesting comment he made. When thinking about this, I feel that you can answer either way. Looking at it from a “I pick my own classification” stand point, the individual is still basing his classifications off of other people/compared to other people. Whether it is race or gender or religion or whatever it is, you’re basing your own personal classification off of other people. Now looking at it from the “Other people choose my classification for me” stand point, again, instead of comparing yourself to them, they are just comparing you to them and the others around them. And again, it all depends on what classification you’re looking for or wanting to be classified by or classified in. To me, its a slippery slope. Do you want to classify yourself compared to others, or do you want others to classify you compared to others? It seems to me that either way classification is pretty stupid and unreliable. I see the purpose and the need for classification, but overall, the entire subject of classifying people and making lists of classifications seems to be so subjective....

The subject of interracial dating is a very touchy one, but it is also one that seems to be very prevalent in todays society. Being a white male, I guess you could say that I’m supposed to be attracted to white females. To be honest, for the majority of the time I am, but there are still plenty of girls of other colors/races that I personally find very attractive as well. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with interracial dating at all. I feel that people who have problems with interracial dating are very surface level people. If you can’t see past race/color, then I feel that you are in a very sad state of mind. The whole purpose of dating and being in relationships has much more meaning then just what people look like on the outside, so whatever the race/color of the person you fall for, as long as they make one another happy, what difference does color make.
As far as the second part of the questions, would I feel weird/awkward (however he worded it) dating someone of a difference race, my answer is no. Again, to me, relationships are much more than a surface level undertaking. As long as I find the girl attractive in all aspects (looks, personality, beliefs, etc.) then what does it matter what color/race she is?
What I find really interesting about this topic is how the outlook upon the interracial dating issue seems to have under gone great change over time. Looking back to the generations before ours, Interracial dating used to be illegal. As the times progressed, interracial dating was still greatly looked down upon. It seems to get better and better over time, and when you get up to today, I feel that the younger generation (us students) find interracial dating more acceptable than even our parents do. I think that it is a great thing that interracial dating is becoming more acceptable, but at the same time, it is still very sad to see how much of the worlds population still does frown upon the issue.
My final major thought on this issue is the types of people that are most commonly found to be an “issue.” Most of the discussions on interracial couples we hear about or seem to talk about the most or people find the most strange often focus on the interracial pairings between white people and someone of color. As we discuss a lot in class, being “white” is what seems to be preferred around the world. So why do the majority of the interracial dating issues come from these couples, and from what side do they come from? Form the white perspective, is it because its a perceived “down-grade” and other white people look down on you, or it is “jealousy” of the colored perspective? Or, are either of these two “perspectives” true at all!?