State of the Union

This year's state of the union was interesting to watch. It seemed like Obama was trying intentionally to make the speech bipartisan. The Republicans and Democrats usually sit on opposite sides of the room from each other. They always stand and applaude at different times, when something their party likes is said. But this year it was different. The Republicans and Democrats seemed to mix this year. What I connected to most from President Obama's speech was what he talked about with the future and educatoin. Obama said, "Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school." As a soon-to-be high school graduate this related right to me. Fortunately for us, we live in a nice area where many students don't drop out of high school. There are a few, but it is definately not 25% of our students. I am fortunate that I am able to complete my high school education and go on to further my education at college. Unfortunately many others are not as lucky. If students were to stay in school and at least finish high school, they would see that the education is all they need to start a good life. Then maybe they'd apply for higher learning. This country needs to do something to work on our youth's education. There has to be a reason why all these students have decided to drop out of school. We need to do something to figure out why these kids don't want to finish their education and fix it. If we start by fixing the education system then maybe we'd be able to have these newly educated young adults help generate ideas to help solve other problems this country has.

Mock Trial Response

I worked on the case of Elyse Roberts. I was arguing on the side of the District Attorney's Office of the District of Columbia. My job with the case was to prove that Ms. Roberts was not sexually harrassed. Unfortunately, we were not able to prove this. In the end the jury decided that Kevin Murphy had sexually harrassed Elyse Roberts and the District Attorney's Office of the District of Columbia did nothing to stop it. At first I did not believe this was the right the choice. I did not think that Elyse Roberts had been sexually harrassed. However, after discussing the verdict a little bit in class I saw that I was wrong. I was looking at it all from the viewpoint of an eighteen year old, male, high school senior. The things that Kevin Murphy had done or said to Elyse Roberts just seemed funny to me, because he was acting like he was my age. If it were me, I wouldn't have thought of it as such a big deal, but now that I look at it from the point of view of a mature business person I can see how wrong Kevin Murphy was. Even though I still feel like Elyse Roberts was overreacting a little bit, it is clear that what Kevin had said was wrong and in the eyes of Elyse, it made her working in environment feel hostile and unworkable. Based on that alone it is fair to say that she was sexually harrassed.
Sexual Harrassment is a very tricky thing to describe. There is no clear defination of what is and what is not sexual harrassment. There are only a few guidelines of what it is and whether or not the woman is offended even if the man did not mean to offend her. Sexual harrassment, I feel is not a big deal at DHS. I think that in high school sexual harrassment isn't as prominent because for the most part, there are boys who are too afraid to do anything to mess with a girl because they are afraid of what it will do to their reputation. The problem of date rape, like in the second case, might be a little more of an issue. I haven't heard of any cases in our school where that has happened, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear about it at a high school. Boys think that because they are dating a girl for a while that means that he is entitiled to have sex with them or sometimes he will pressure the girl into having sex with him. He might not think it was rape, but if she didn't want to have sex with him, then she can call it rape at any time.

Libyan Uprising

After a few weeks of headlines, I finally dove into what is actually going on in North Africa. I originally came across some headlines on Google News about something going on in Tunisia but didn't think it was a big deal so I didn't think much of it. Then came the protests in Egypt. Those caught my attention because of how close Egypt is to Israel. Everything seemed relatively peaceful there though so I didn't read into them too much, but kept track of what the headlines said until Mubarak stepped down. Now my AOL.com homepage is plastered with headlines about Libya and the violence going on in there. After gettin' some background and a timeline of what's gone down in Libya, I feel I have a bit of an understanding. The thing that draws me into more details about Libya than Egypt is that the government in Libya is fighting back and killing the protesters. In Egypt this was not happening. Right now the United States and the European Union have put sanctions on Libya in an effort to keep the violence from continuing. This didn't happen until two days ago. Now it's time to see how long it will take for the unrest to stop or to see if we need to get involved. Since this all started in Libya gas prices here have sky rocketed. If they keep goin' up like they have been, I wouldn't be surprised if the United States got involved to settle things down. The Navy is already stationing warships in the area just in case we need to go in for any reason. I never thought that uprising like this could happen in that area of the world since it is generally very Islamic and they are led by the laws of Allah and don't seem to change. However, of the past month the whole area seems to be in unrest. I would understand if this had happened when we originally invaded Iraq, but now that there are no more combat troops there, it is interesting to see that the area erupts. I am just nervous to see how this all turns out because I don't need gas to cost anymore than it already does and I would hate for the uprest to spill into Israel and destroy everything we have there.