Sam may have changed my view on the war a little bit, but overall he did not change the way I feel about the current situation that is going on right now overseas. For one thing, he did a good job of emphasizing the fact that oil is a prominent reason that we are over in the middle east, and a reason we have been occupying countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan for the amount of time that it has been. For one, it was definitely interesting to try and look in the shoes of an average Iraqi or Afghani and try to think about their point and view of the war. Clearly, they are very peaceful people and are misunderstood by the general American population and people should take more time to differentiate the radicals in the Middle East from the overwhelming majority. I disagree however that the only reason we are still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan is only for oil. It is absolutely a huge factor, but are you telling me that after the horrific attacks on American soil that were 9/11 that our country was going to be content with sitting back and doing nothing. Obviously yes, the overwhelming majority of people in Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks, but if that happens to be the country that the Taliban, Jihad, or whatever group was behind the attacks, our country needed to strike back. Iraq was a different situation. Before invasion there was a huge threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, yes now that seems humorous to bring up those words, but it did seem dangerous at the time. We had an evil tyrant leading a country that we thought was going to do some very dangerous things to surrounding and neighboring countries. It’s not as if Saddam Hussein hasn’t made threats and actually invaded other countries before (I.E the first Persian War when the defenseless country of Kuwait was invaded). It was not too farfetched in my mind for our country to invade. Did oil play a role in Bush’s decision to occupy these two countries? I believe it did. I also believe that there were other many factors swirling around that provided and pretty understandable justification for our country to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. Once Iraq was taken over by our country and out of the hands of an evil (yet stable) leader in Saddam, what is our next move? To immediately leave and let a weak nation available to an invasion by someone like Iran right next door? Clearly now we are left picking up the pieces to what is a pretty significant mess in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while oil plays a part, that is definitely not the sole reason we are in this mess. Don’t completely undermine what the troops are doing over there and have a narrow scope about what is going on

What have I learned from this scandal is such a broad term that I can’t even put it into words. This scandal has rocked me to the core, has made me sick, has made me question the core values of human nature. One thing I have taken away is, I simply will never be able to wrap my mind around the terrible and horrific things that a human can do to another human. I sat in my room, in near tears with my stomach aching watching the allegations be reported about Jerry Sandusky. How this went unreported for so long makes my bones quiver, to know that these victims suffered for this long without any help. The silence was not broken, and it is a damn shame the rest of the world is just finding this out now. I don’t want to sound like I lost faith in all of humanity, there is so much good that roams this earth, so many good people with good morals I can never fully lose hope. I have however, learned that people are always capable of sin. I am not an extremely religious person at all, but to watch such good people make poor decisions when people’s lives are at stake it brings light to the fact that people are so human, so mortal, and can mess up dearly without realizing the true harm they are committing. I have learned that people are going to be silent when horrific events such as the ones Jerry Sandusky committed occur. Being silent seems to not make sense, but think about if that happened to you. Would you have the courage to speak up against a person that you probably know very well? A little kid especially is going to keep silent on issues this severe and this horrific. I have learned to absolutely report an incident I know of right away to authorities and to stand by what I believe in. I don’t know all of the facts yet from the Penn State scandal, but the football program boasted a motto of “success with honor” which in this case they clearly did not stand behind their letters. I am in a fraternity and I stand strong behind my letters and what they stand for. When I wear a Penn State shirt I will do my best to stand by my letters and carry my life with success with honor. I have learned that the public perception of something is not always necessarily the truth. There are many eyes on State College right now, and a lot of bad things being said about Penn State students. Penn State students are not out of their minds. They are the proudest students in the country, and will stand up for their school in times of sorrow and grief. But most importantly I have learned that the events that occurred at Penn State are a human tragedy, and I hope we all can grow up and learn from this horrific event in our lives.

The world right now doesn’t think that it is a good time to be a Penn State student. And it is amazing how far from the truth that could be. The world thinks that Penn State students are completely out of their minds for supporting a man like Joe Paterno, who to many should have morally done so much more than report an incident to his superiors only in name. The world is wrong, it is not a bad time it is just something that they don’t understand. I don’t want to sound like the typical snobby Penn State student, but in this case it is necessary, no one can understand what is going on here accurately unless you go here. Joe Paterno is The Pennsylvania State University. When he started coaching in 1950 Penn State was a small land grant farmer’s school, now it is one of the top 15 public institutions in America, a world university, with research that is unparalleled in many fields. 44,000 undergraduate students go here, and on game days State College becomes the third largest city in the state with 110,000 strong in the Beaver Stadium. Penn State would not be what it is today without Joe Paterno, and for as long as the students here can even think back in history he’s been the force behind everything here. We study in his library, we wear his shirts, we camp out in tents with his name. It is very hard for me to comment on what he did right and wrong in the Sandusky scandal, because as of right now we don’t know all of the facts. Did Joe Paterno have a moral obligation to report what Mcqueary told him to the police? He probably did. Should he have got fired? I love Joe Paterno as much as anyone, but the public perception of him right now is that he should have done more, and as much as it hurts me to say he did have a part in this. The Board of Trustees did what they had to do to move on from this terrible mess. Yes the public may view students in a negative light, but this is the most unique case that has ever come about on a college campus. There has never been a school with such an icon to roam the sidelines and have so much say and power that goes on in the university. Joe Paterno is Penn State and I will always love him with all my heart. I grieve for the victims more than anything, and pray that their lives can continue and move on from this horrible tragedy as well. This is a horrific scandal from top to bottom and no good pieces of news have come out, but I think the students need to move on starting this Saturday. This current team had nothing to do with this scandal and they deserve our support for how much work they have put in this season. I will always be Penn State proud and love this university more than anything.

I think people have a very selective interpretation when dealing with immigration in our country. The most specific example I can think about is a small example but it goes a long way in describing how a lot of people think. Joey Vento owned Geno’s Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia a very popular Cheesesteak place. Philadelphia is a major city and therefore is bound to have a very diverse population in which people speak a lot of different languages. He got so fed up with people ordering in Spanish when they came up in line that he put up a sign that said “I love my country, when ordering please order in ENGLISH.” Some people might not find this very offensive since English is a very predominant language in America, but we have no official language as a country last time I checked. Joey Vento is a very Italian last name, and this man for sure had ancestors that came over from Italy into America, and most likely started in the food industry. I wonder if he would have that same hate and disgust if people walked up and started to order in Italian. People a lot of the time associate “immigrants” with Mexicans crossing the border and people that speak Spanish. People associate immigrants with people that are doing labor for cheap and are illegally sneaking into our country. There are a lot of benefits that legal immigrants can provide. One being the health of everyone in our country. Over half of the people graduating from medical school in the past 10 years are born outside of America. The influence of science and math from across seas is so much more advanced in other countries than America it is ridiculous. I’m not saying lets open the gates to anyone that wants to come into America, but please let us all stop being so narrow minded when thinking about what immigrants are bringing to our country. The positives in most cases outweigh the negatives. I would presume that your ancestors traveled from overseas as well. Yes if someone is coming in illegally and not contributing to our society at all, then maybe yes I can see why some people can be upset. Joey Vento is just one example of someone having an extremely narrow minded approach when it comes to immigration and I would hope that a lot of the country stops having such a narrow approach. We should be appreciating what they are bringing to our country. America was born on the principal of people coming from across seas to improve the way of life, and maybe we should be welcoming the people that are doing the same thing now.

No matter how kind and sweet it sounds, there is no way that we should be required to give back our current land to the indigenous people of America. While what our ancestors did was cruel, and goes against everything that is right in human nature, I had literally nothing to do with it. At this point, hundreds of years have passed and the way the culture has transformed is tremendous. While in theory it may sound like the ethical thing to do, how would giving these people the land back benefit them at this point? They already have their own culture (even though it is not very good, which I will touch on in a little), simply moving back to where their ancestors lived 300 years ago will not really help them out too much. It would be so complicated and controversial, plus there are millions of more people occupying the lands that their ancestors used to occupy, basically it would be a huge mess. A more pressing and realistic issue that should be addressed however, is improving the current life of the reservations and turning what is some of the worst living conditions in the west hemisphere into more livable and friendly conditions. The United States spends a lot of money and time in issues over the seas (Iraqi War, Afganistan War, the list goes on) while we have millions of people in our own country that are living below the poverty line. The government really does not pay that much attention at all to these reservations and we should create some sort of aid to make the conditions more livable and in a way make up for what we did some hundreds of years ago. Based on the video we watched in class today, it needs a lot of work, and I think one of the things that we could focus on a lot is the education systems, and improving the houses of the people in these reservations. The public schools systems are beyond subpar, boosting these and creating more alcohol awareness policies and classes would be extremely beneficial to this society. Around 12% of the deaths that are accumulated from that reservation are alcohol related. That is a tremendously high percentage that needs to be addressed. Like I stated above while in theory that it would be a nice thing to do to give back land to the Native Americans because it was there land a long time ago, it would just never work. We as a country should be focusing more on how we can improve the current lives of these people and do anything we can to help them and maybe save some of the bridges that we burned a long time ago.

There are many people who have a lot of pride in their race that may feel like a person would be a poser if they hang out with a large majority of people from another race. I think this is a very narrow minded way of viewing race and viewing how people get along with different people. For example, I am in a fraternity that is predominately white with over 80 members and only 3 that are black or brown. Are those 3 people posers because they pledged a fraternity with a lot of white dudes? Absolutely not in my mind. I am great friends with all three of those kids and I think they are great brothers to my fraternity and I hope in the future we get a more diverse brotherhood. The black and brown people while may be a different color still fit into our brotherhood just like all of the white guys in our house. Now, I have no idea what motivated them to pledge a majority white fraternity but there could have been a few factors. One may have been that they grew up in a predominately white community in the first place and were used to being around a large number of white people and felt most comfortable in a “white” house. The black/brown kids in my house could have been from the complete other part of the spectrum as well. Maybe they were from a predominately black community and wanted to try something different and make friends with kids not similar to the kids that they grew up with. Does this make them hate their race? Or make them a poser because they are not always hanging out with people that are just like them? When I was in high school I played on the basketball team my Freshman and Sophomore year and most of the people on the team were black. A lot of black people play basketball, does that make me a poser because I was participating in an activity with a lot of black people? There are many instances in which individuals will hang out with a large majority of kids from another race by choice and I think that is a good thing. I think this is very forward thinking and a step forward in the world of race relations. I think it is ridiculous and narrow minded to think that people are posers if they hang out with people that are outside of their race. If someone believes another person is a poser for hanging out with another race I think they need to look themselves in the mirror and really evaluate what level of the race spectrum they are on. People should be encouraging this, not poking fun at people who are trying out new things.

I think it is very difficult for someone to pin down exactly what stage they are in from the spectrum that we went over in lecture on Thursday. However I feel that you can gauge where you generally are and get very close. I would say that at this point in my life I am at stage 2. I am not oblivious to things going on around me in terms of race like people on stage 1 would be. However I have not reached the point where I am doing anything about the things that I see. I have never caught myself getting overly angry at other white people for being racist, or angry at the way things seem to be unfair in the world. I would say I am at the point where I am beginning to understand how things work, and am beginning to make myself a better person and try and be careful of the way I handle race issues. At home I was raised in a predominately wealthy area that was overwhelmingly white for many years. When I was in 7th or 8th grade a law was made in my township that we had to create lower income housing and have a certain percentage, while still small, of these lower income housing available. This brought an influx of black people into my middle school, and I had a few black friends before this, but a made friends with more after. None of my absolute best friends are black, and I usually surround myself with white people (i.e I am in a fraternity of over 80 brothers and only 2 are black) but I would say for the most part I really haven’t had any problems with a black person and simply blamed it on their race. But that’s where it stops. I really don’t make any strides to do anything about the racism I see in the world, I kind of just lay back and the people of color that are around me I treat with basically the same respect that I would treat any other person. When people around me are making jokes about black people or being disrespectful I kind of just lay back and watch, I don’t do anything to stop them. It most likely will take a long time for me to get out of this stage. I would hope by the time I get into my 20s and become more mature I will move on in these stages and become a person that loves everyone no matter where they are from and don’t have any hesitations when dealing with race. Race is an extremely touchy subject if you aren’t comfortable with it, and the older I get I would like to become more comfortable with it and expand who I am as a person.

If I found out my roommate was gay on the first day of school that would definitely be something that I wasn’t expecting to be some of the first news to here. My stance on gay and lesbians is, I have absolutely no problem with them being gay and lesbian, I just can’t wrap my mind around it and really have no experience having any friends that are gay. If my roommate was gay it would definitely be the first experience that I had with someone that close to me that admitted to be gay. I don’t think I would make too big of a deal about it, mostly because I don’t make a big deal about a lot of things. I wouldn’t feel too awkward about it, but I would hope that it is understood that I am straight and clearly wouldn’t want them to make a move on me. However I doubt that would even be an issue. The real big issue would be is how I would feel the first time he brought another gay back. I would most likely react in the same way I do when my roommate brings a girl back now. No one wants to be in the same room when your roommate is having sex with a girl anyway, and I would absolutely not want to be in the same room if my roommate was having sex with another guy. Honestly if my roommate was gay, I really don’t think it would change my day to day routine, or I don’t think I would feel too uncomfortable. It may take me a few weeks to fully get used to the fact that he was gay, but I would not treat him any differently or feel uncomfortable or anything of that nature. The tides would turn slightly though, if half way through the year he decided to tell me that he was gay. I wouldn’t think much differently about him, I would just be curious as to why he wasn’t comfortable enough to tell me straight up as opposed to keeping a secret from me for half of the year. I would be slightly alarmed because I would think maybe he was hiding this from me for a specific reason. Most likely he was just shy and wanted to establish a friendship with me so I didn’t view him in a skewed way just because of his sexual orientation. But since I don’t have too much experience dealing with gay people I would think maybe he was secretly doing things behind my back for a reason. All and all I would not feel threatened if I found out my roommate as gay no matter when he told me, I would just prefer he be up front with it and get everything out of the way in the beginning.

The way people view criminals and race plays a fairly significant role, a much bigger role than many people would suspect. As we watched in class when a white male was trying to steal a bike, no one really gave him any problems. When the black guy was trying to steal the bike however, that was an entire different story. Don’t even get anyone started on the good looking female that was featured in this video as well. She went the entire day with people actually guiding her to steal a bike that wasn’t hers. People seem to have some preconceived notion that if someone is black and doing something that comes off as somewhat mischievous that they must be a criminal. Personally I would like to believe that I don’t have this preconceived notion, but maybe I am just like everyone else. One of my thoughts is that a lot of people in our country associate a lot of crime and criminal activities with big metropolitan areas. More specifically poor areas in the city that are rundown. The statistics do show that these areas are overwhelmingly prominent African American areas. The more and more people see crime in the cities and see homeless people asking for money, that image is going to stick in their head when they approach situations. On all of the TV shows like cops, they will be in various cities across America in high speed chases and there are a fair amount of African American criminals that are featured. I’m not trying to say that black people commit more crimes that white people, or are worse people; simply that their crime seems to be highlighted and magnified more than that of white people. The statistics of American citizens in jail also highlight that there are more black people in jail than white people. Does this mean that black people are just worse people that white people? I don’t think it is that simple. Like I said it seems black people’s criminal activities are more highlighted. Who knows if the police forces in all of these cities aren’t keeping an eye out for black people more so than white people? It could be quite possible that are legal system has the same skewed interpretation. Now these are just theories I would like to think it is not as bad of the picture I am painting, but how can anyone know for sure? Who can explain the overwhelming statistics that lead us to believe that there could be some racism out there in our police force and legal system? Nothing paints the picture more than the video we watched in class, I am hoping as the years go by there will be more and more people that question that white male too.

It seems to me that while there are quite a few problems with Haiti, there are one or two problems and concerns that particularly interest me. As outlined in some of the articles I read and the videos I watched, it seems that one of the most important things is getting the economy and production booming from within Haiti as opposed to simply receiving aid from the US. The one article that outlined the Peanut Butter and shoes that were making their way into Haiti from the US illustrated how much it hurts the producers and home economy of Haiti when the US simply sends goods over. Yes, there are good intentions from our country and the people sending these goods over, but I think one of the big issues is finding alternative ways of helping these people out. I think it should be our goal to find more creative ways of putting shoes on the feet of Haitian children and also bringing in money and GDP to the Haitian economy. Even from the videos I watched the problem is not that the people in Haiti don’t want to help out themselves and the people in their country, it is just they don’t have the proper resources to do so. The Haiti entrepreneurs simply can’t compete with the constant influx of goods from other countries, and the economy continues to falter. One of my ideas is to not entirely stop giving Haiti goods from our country, but to decrease it dramatically. The United States could hire and pay our own workers to head over to Haiti and team up with the entrepreneurs in Haiti in an attempt to help keep some of the money in the Haitian economy. These hired workers would come armed with whatever that specific entrepreneur needed to help their company get off of the ground and get their product in the market. They could help with advertising, which I’m sure is not very prevalent in Haiti to begin with, so people know there is now an influx of goods available in their own country. They could bring the raw materials that there workers could simply not afford earlier when they were getting killed by other countries sending in goods for a lot cheaper. My main concern is keeping everything within the country. Encourage the Haitian citizens, though it may be difficult at times, to buy things in their economy instead of receiving the good from outside. If the United States but thousands of workers scattered throughout Haiti dedicated to designing, producing, and perfecting whatever product Haitians are trying to sell and get on the market; there is a very good chance this could eventually become a cheap option for the people of Haiti. While it may seem good on the surface that we are sending all of these goods in, we may have to reexamine how we are helping these people out.