The Experience

Is this really our last blog? Well, I am not going to try to get emotional but I just realized that this was one of the better learning experiences in my entire education. I can honestly say that I have learned far more useful things than anything involved in my undergrad. It was not the type of learning that I am used to, however. I can really see how the format of the class can be very impactful and successful in letting students learn about meaningful topics. And, it was as simple as writing blogs on a certain topic and coming in to discuss about them. There are so many viewpoints and it was very refreshing to hear them all from the class as well as hearing the amazing stories from our leader, Sparky. What a great class and I want to thank you Sparky. I also wanted to thank the rest of the class for enlightening me on your personal experiences and opinions. This is a great way to not only learn about the people surrounding you, but the way they feel about the program that your in. We are in the business of developing students and I now have a greater understanding in what it takes to impact the lives of students and specifically college students.

So, what did I learn about in this class? Well, what didn't I learn about in this class? First and foremost, I was introduced to this thing called blogging. This is a great way to express opinions and concerns that an individual is feeling or thinking. I believe that this saved so much time and energy than actually writing a paper every week. Also, this was more of a conversational aspect of learning, which made the atmosphere in the class very comfortable. Again, I want to thank Sparky for letting the class be as low key as possible with the greatest amount of education and learning. We learned about today's college student where I focused my discussion on the motivation of a student actually doing their part to get an education. My experience was somewhat different than most college students as I was blessed to have giving the opportunity to have the full time job of being a student athlete. So in turn, I was very interested in hearing some of the stories from different students. With that, I was amazed with the stories that have developed in Sparky's carreer. With this topic, I really wondered about the motivation that students had for going to class. For me, this was not an option as I was forced to do alot of things. I enjoyed hearing about the freedoms that students had and how they handled it. We then dived into the issue of free speech on campuses. The most interesting thing about this discussion was that aminstrators such as Sparky, are forced into letting certain people or groups have their way in this particular topic. It is something that is very real because it is the law. I went into the technology side of this discussion and wrote about the regulations that website had with students from many different colleges posting about their college or different students on a website. I wrote about the workshops and the overall encouragement for students to stray away from this nasty situation. I wanted to know the limits of free speech and the right to harm others vocally and on the internet.

The next topic really hit home for me as I don't understand how individuals can have a certain mindset and actually want to do something as terrible as shootings in schools. I remember the discussion we had on this matter and it is something that is very real in our society. We talked about prevention methods as well the way these individuals go about doing something like this. I mentioned Columbine High School and how the day of their massecre was described in detail on the internet. The events are described to the minute of that terrible day. How do we prevent something like this from happening and what steps need to be made on informing others what to do if something like this ever happens? The next week, we had a deep discussion on restorative justice and how we are looking to move foward in this process. Honestly, I wasn't aware of this process and was very much enlightened when we discussed about the approaches of going about punishing students in a way that is meaningful for them as well as the victims of their wrong doings. I looked at this topic in an athletic viewpoint and posed the question of when is enough, enough. We looked at student protests where I considered the tuition costs rising in the state of California and more specifically, the University of California. We found that student protests are as successful as the Adminstrators reactions to it. We found that there are certain limitations regarding this issue and is something that needs to be looked at the more our economy goes down.

We then looked at the spiritual side of Universities and talked about faith of many students and the impact of secular campuses. We looked at their challenges as people tend to believe what they want to believe and might not be taught in the college of their choice. I know this was certainly true for me as I went to the same Christian school my entire life and was taught something extremely different in college than what I knew my entire life. This happened as soon as I stepped foot in Geology 101 for my first class, freshman year. I looked at two approaches for professors to go about teaching class in this area. Banishment and Confrontation are the two approaches where a teacher is given the choice of teaching something without regard to certain individuals and their beliefs or if they should let the student have some sort of say so. We then moved into the idea of sex and drugs on campuses. In this blog, I talked mainly on the drugs that we see every day in college and some prevention methods. I talked about how students are very free when they reach this type of atmosphere away from there parents and what they grew up knowing. I gave the many types of drugs and ways of preventing the misuse of them in my opinion, of course. We went to "Greenville" and discussed the many inovations of colleges actually going green. We looked at many different ways that would be the best improvement into letting students know about this situation. Personally, I talked about disadvantages as well as the inovations that I see working. A great learning experience indeed as we are seeing this issue spread very rapidly today. We followed it up with the student unions and how they should be a major part of a college students lives.

So as far as I am concerned, I found out what Sparky thinks about every day of his life. I found this class very useful and meaningful in what I plan on doing with my life. Again, I wanted to thank all of you and especially you, Sparky for making this experience as enjoyable as possible for me with the satisfaction of learning all about the current issues and great events and situations that involve being an adminstrator in the college atmosphere

Greenville

Going Green is something that is obviously spreading on college campuses today. If I look back to when I started college, I never heard or saw anything that resembled the programs and inovations that are being created today. With that being said, people and more specifically students are doing there part in increasing the effort to "Go Green." As I have seen on our campus, we are doing what I think is a large part in the effort of going green. An example of this would be the bags that were being handed out all over campus about a month ago. I was riding around in the Outreach golf cart running errand when I was bombarded with people giving out these Quizno coupons as well as a canvas feeling bag that is obviously recycleable. This bag was for nothing more than a few small items but made alot of sense to me as we are using so much unnecessary material little things.

So this would be the first step to going green. In the yerby center, there are two rooms with trash cans used for nothing else but plastic bottles. Others are used for nothing but cans. This is a major inovation that has proven to work for a number of years. I find myself throwing a coke can away in a normal trash can while looking over to the one used for cans only. I immediately make the conscious effort of throwing that can away in the proper area. The same goes for newspapers. There is an area where you can throw you newspapers away. Recycling goes far beyond paper, newspapers or plastic bottles at a college campus. there are actually many items that can be recycled on a college campus. this is especially true for technological products, such as computers, computer disks and printer cartridges. Light bulbs and batteries are just two of many items which need to be changed fairly frequently that can also be recycled on a college campus. Anything that can be recycled on a college campus should be recycled. this is one of the easiest and most important things that can be done on a college campus to go green. janitors should be given reminders about recycling and recycling bins should be placed in convenient locations all over campus.

Aside from the many offices on campus, the going green effort can be taken to the dining halls of college campuses. From what I have seen, one of the easiest ways of of this matter is for dining services to purchase their produce from local farmer's markets and to be organic. Obviously recycling cups, utensils, and plates would be an easy adjustment. Coffee is probably the most popular drink without alchohol and is served should be served in compostable products. Lastly, the detergents that are used to clean all of these items can be purchased in an environmentally friendly way.

Some obvious disadvantages of this would be that there are so many students living in a small area that it is hard to control their recycling habits. College campus are usually in cities where these students are forced to be crammed. Now probably not all students do this, I am going to assume that most students deal with a ton of gargage and are not able to do their part in a conservative recycling campaingne.

More invations are the public transits driving across campuses. This in my opinion is especially effective which keeps students from actually taking their cars to campuses. I believe that this is a great way to becoming more eco friendly and should be free to users. With that said, I have been seeing more and more bicycle riders on campus.
These are the main invovations in todays world.

The freedom, prevention, and types of drugs on college campuses

Let's face it, drugs are on college campuses across the country. They have been a major problem for a long time. For students on many different campuses, drugs can be looked at in many different ways. Drugs can be as simple as an experiment or as a lifestyle for many individuals that are enrolled in college. How do drugs come into the lives of these individuals? What are the temptations? Well from research, the majority of it talks about how a student has a sort of new freedom when entering college. These students finally realize the freedom when exiting the confines of their parents. Whether it be moving to a college in another state, or in an individual's home town, these students obviously feel that they are old enough to make decisions without the consent of their parents. So, I am going to talk about freshmen. They are just getting out of high school where their lifestyle has been somewhat planned with activities and extracurricular situations not found in college. The college atmosphere brings out a new lifestyle.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 35% of the new freshmen population will comprise the bulk of new drug users and potential drug abusers on college campuses. This statistic shows that the incomers are prone to "experiment" with something that has not been available to them in years past. Drug tests are expensive but effective in my opinion. Just the simple fact of knowing that you might be tested will do good in the minds of these students. I can not imagine being a parent right now with a child in college. Just thinking about what he or she does and does not do in their spare time drives me crazy. So I would propose that Universitys somehow educate parents the preventions of drug use. This could be a start. Also, for any scholarship sponsored, greek affiliated students, student athlete, ROTC, and any other student that is apart of a program in college should be tested in some sort of way prior to joining the program or accepting of aid. Again, I know they are expensive but should be neccesary.

"And rightfully so considering the fact that 43% of the overall college student body has either tried or is currently addicted to at least one of the top ten drugs found on college campus.

I found the list of the types of drug abuse on college campuses.

Alcohol would be the widest known type of drug. "The most prominent effect of alcohol is dependency and according to national statistics 15% of college freshmen are alcoholics or enrolled in an AA program ending their freshman year."

"Stimulants or uppers are both abundant and widely used among college students and are probably of the most volatile of the drugs available on college campuses. Most college students who abuse stimulants do it to avoid sleep and study for long periods of time but other reasons can include increased energy, heightened sexual stimulation and to lose weight." The most serious conditions that rise from stimulants are strokes, convulsions, and heart attacks. The four main stimulants are ampetamines, methamphetamines, sexual stimulants, cocaine, hallucinogens, and marijuana.

"Aside from alcohol, nearly 65% of student drug abusers smoke or otherwise imbibe in marijuana. Marijuana can be mixed with other controlled substances also commonly used on college campus."

Finally, I wanted to say something about steroids on college campuses. I see this more and more. It is not hard to tell if someone has been using steroids. Being in athletics, I use to see it pretty much everyday. Even in high school. These drugs are usually bought from somewhere outside our country. Or, at least made out of the country. This was definately not something that I was interested in. However, it was very present. Again, I saw this early on in college which backs up these stats above. Mostly when I was a freshmen, I either saw guys in my class or sophmores doing it from my school or just guys I knew from other schools. They had their parent's money and nothing else to do with it but buy these things. Any how, this was about the time when tests were really starting to be enforced. This put the thought in people's minds they might actually get caught. This was a good start because I rarely saw it when becoming an upper classman. Testing works and should be started early in my opinion.

Secular Campuses and Their Challenges

I am from Jackson Ms, where I grew up in a family of faith. We have been going to the same Baptist church even before I was born. This is how I was raised. I went to the same school from 4 year old kindergarden to 12th grade. The school I attended was an Academy school in south Jackson. The title was Hillcrest Christian School. As you can see, I am a Christian and have been taught nothing else. Since my early high school years, I really started to see what my school was all about. We had an entire class that was taught about the readings of the Bible. Every week, we as a school met in the basketball gym and had what we called Chapel. This was a time where our entire school which consisted of the 6th graders and up, joining in on a ministry that our administrators set up. This involved everything from Preachers coming to do a sermon, to Christian bands coming to do performances for us. This was a major part of my life and was somthing that I took so much pride in.

As far as my schooling was concerned, I knew nothing about the different "theories" that we are taught here at Ole Miss. For some however, these "theories" are truth to many individuals. This was something that I had to become aware of. From my first class of Geology 101, the things that were being taught made little sense to me as I was taught strictly from the Bible. I had to have the opinion of the material from the Geology class as being something was wasn't necessarily true but was a theory. I can see that many individuals were brought up in the teachings of the material that I was exposed to. However, for me this was not the case. I began doing some research to how a professor should go about teaching material that can be either accepted or denied.

I found this article that talks about the challenges that students face on secular campuses such as Ole Miss. By the way, I am amazing surprised of the amount of Christianity that I see in the college. From church goers to extra curricular organizations involving Christian Ministry, there is a widespread among this town. So, back to my discussion. How should teachers and professors go about conducting a class with the material being very opinionated. Well, from this article I found 2 ways. The 2 approaches would be Banishment and Confrontation. When looking back on my classes of Liberal Arts, the teachings would be better suited for me if it were in the approach of Banishment. "The banishment approach is, of course, the more venerable and the less aggressive of the two. A science professor will state at the beginning of the semester: "Science involves the gathering and analysis of data as the basis for forming hypotheses regarding the nature of reality. It must, therefore, exclude any reference to the supernatural as out of bounds for scientific inquiry. Whether or not God exists, or angels, fairies, pixies, goblins, or the Boogie Man is irrelevant to scientific investigation. Hold to your religious or superstitious beliefs if you want to, but don't bring them up in this classroom. It is off the subject; we don't have time for theological debates here."

This approach would be suited when the teaching would be of something that could be true but should leave the student involved in their own beliefs.

The 2nd approach is the confrontation approach where the professor will actually challenge everything that an individual believes in currently. It could be Christianity or any other belief but will teach under the assumption that the material is the truth. "A more recent and increasingly popular approach in the university classroom is to take the creationist bull by the horns and attack belief in the God of the Bible by any possible means. This is the strategy of journals such as Creation/Evolution and The Skeptical Inquirer. Professors claim the mechanistic/materialistic explanation for origins removes all need for God. Naturalists in the classroom are not above using illogical arguments to win over their students."

So the argument of why students are becoming Atheists comes about. For me, I didn't have a hard time because I chose to learn about and not believe in the different theories that are being taught. I can obviously see how students are guided in different directions that come from a different background as me. Honestly, I have witnessed it in a few cases. So this subject is very opinionated and will be studied for years to come.

Getting What They Wanted (kind of)

I have been doing a little research on the system of the University of California and how they are raising tuition costs as a response to their recent budget cuts from the state. Common sense would tell you that students and parents of students would get a little angry that their school of their choice is raising the price for the education that the students wish to recieve. Not only does this increase effect the incoming freshman as well as transfers, but the current students that are actively enrolled in the system. This is happening in the entire system of the University of California. And, you know how many regional sites they have. 23 to be exact. This situation is also effecting the faculty and staff of the system. As student enrollment numbers dropped recently over 40,000, faculty members as well as staff have been forced to take furloughs in the school year. A furlough is a mandatory work day without pay. This sounds a little rediculous as a student but I cannot imagine how an employee of the University would feel in this situation. With all of this said and done, students of the University feel that they are in need to do something about the situation.
As far as student protests go, individuals are granted free speech and would fall under this title when protesting an event. These events are happening across the sites of the University system.
"Student sit-ins and poetry readings. It seems like the 1960s, but these are common scenes today on California campuses as students continue to protest large fee increases across the state's university system." These scenes are obviously being compared to the 1960's protests about political speech across America and rightly so. The question would be is to how far these students are willing to go to make what they feel is right a certain thing. This would be the situation of the rising tuition costs. The article that I have found was in the Ebsco Host section of the J.D. Williams Library.
"Over at the University of California, Berkeley, students have amassed in Wheeler Hall in what they are calling an "open occupation." They're sleeping in the building and holding forums and workshops, though they have yet to completely take it over as they did in November, right after university regents agreed to a 32 percent fee hike." "On Thursday morning police arrested 33 protestors at San Francisco State University after students had barricaded themselves inside a campus building. That school is part of the California State University system, which is raising undergraduate fees by about $1,000 a year, cutting enrollment by 40,000 students, and forcing employees to take furlough days across its 23 campuses."
Were they in the right? What were their goals?
In my opinion, I believe that acutally protesting the situation would be the right thing to do. Now, I don't know if I would have gone down the road of actually barracading myself into a building to attract the attention of the administrators of the University. The article goes on to say that the adminstrators were going to regret drawing attention to this incident but what something that needed to be done. As we talked in class, a protest will be successful when the superiors recognize the actions and actually take actions of their own. Well, they did in this case. Their actions were the calling of the police to get the students out of the building. The police came and obviously arrested the students for taking over the building. These students did what they felt was right and payed probably the ultimate price of getting arrested over the incident. I can't say that I would not have protested but would have thought enough about my actions to not get arrested and caused more stress to my parents and myself.

What's Fair

Restorative justice is defined as:
… a broad term which encompasses a growing social movement to institutionalize peaceful approaches to harm, problem-solving and violations of legal and human rights. These range from international peacemaking tribunals such as the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission to innovations within the criminal and juvenile justice systems, schools, social services and communities. Rather than privileging the law, professionals and the state, restorative resolutions engage those who are harmed, wrongdoers and their affected communities in search of solutions that promote repair, reconciliation and the rebuilding of relationships. Restorative justice seeks to build partnerships to reestablish mutual responsibility for constructive responses to wrongdoing within our communities. Restorative approaches seek a balanced approach to the needs of the victim, wrongdoer and community through processes that preserve the safety and dignity of all"

When reading the topic, I had very little knowlege of the subject in question. Restorative Justice is obviously meaningful actions that help eliminate the harm that has already been caused. One example of this subject would be community service. This was also the first thing that popped into my head. It could be as simple as a direct apology from the wrong doer to the victim of the crime. Now in Higher Education, a University will have obvious limitations to how one should be punished. Some situations will be more severe than others. For incriminating crimes such as assault, violence, and in some cases murder, the obvious choice of expelling that person from the University and even the community will take place. It is hard to say however how one University should deal with the wrong doings of the lesser violations such as plagarism, vandalism, and normal petty crimes.

I wanted to look at this topic from an athletic viewpoint. I feel that all the cliche's and sayings that people should be given a second chance holds true. However, once a University starts to compete at the highest level of Division One athletics, their players should be accountable for their actions in the highest degree. In 2007, two freshman baseball players were expelled from the team immediately following their actions of stealing different items around their lockerroom and dormatory. There was no apology, community service, or any other type of meaningful dialogue with their victims. The simple fact was that if you committed an act that could hurt the physical and emotional status of the team, you were gone. I believe in this as I have been apart of athletics for a long time. There is nothing worse than a team member being lead astray by hurtful actions to the community around the team. For example, we see all the time how professional athletes commit crimes as well as harmful decisions in today's world. Can you imagine the emotional state of that team? Would you think a simple apology, or a meaningful dialogue will bring this team back together? I have found that once an individual chooses to do wrong, it is in the best interest for everyone if that individual is removed so that the other people can move on. In the interest of Universities, students who are in wrong doings probably should be punished in a way lets them satisfy their victims as they let them know that they are guilty of what they did. I wanted to make the argument that this is not the case when a small group or team are trying to achieve a goal where it is vital that the individuals on that team should be together.

Of course, incriminating instances should bar the individual from ever being apart of the team again. But the instances that are chosen by the individuals such as alcohol related situations and drugs should be grounds for dismissal. An example would be a DUI case. This person chose not only to danger his or her life, but the people around them. A simple apology wouldn't suffice. Little things can hurt teams and athletes in today's culture of athletics.

Should we have a class?

This will probably be one of the toughest discussions to partake in for me. First of all, when I found out that we were going to be talking about school shootings, I immediately thought about Columbine. I have read Wikipedia's posting about Columbine before but it was a while back. It is mind boggling to think about how these situations happen. Therefor, I pulled the website up again and typed in Columbine high school massacre in the search box. The very same, detailed article popped up and I found myself reading again, every word of this event that happened in 1999. This article describes in detail to the minute, the events that took place on this terrible day. It also describes the details that took place months prior leading up to the day. I have to say that I was as disturbed recently as I was the first time I read this article. it has pictures of the school and video images of these two boys in the school with students laying on the ground at the feet of these individuals. Again, it is very disturbing.

So, reading this article and how these individuals were planning this event through web postings and journal entries, it made me wonder what it takes to stop a situation like this from happening. In reality, I believe that is would be very tough to actually spot and prevent one individual from doing what they feel is the way out. With that, I am going to go another route with this discussion. After considering what it takes to actually stop these events, I want to ask the question of why we don't have a class to prepare students of these circumstances. This is a very real situation and obviously can never be overlooked. I honestly believe that it would be in the best interests of a student, if it were to be required that students take a mandatory class where they are taught about how these situations can occur and if so, what to do. I can't of think of any problems with this which is why I am bringing it up in this class. Again, this is a very terrible thing but a very real matter. Why not let students of this campus, as well as many other campuses know that this is a situation that can happen and can be somewhat prepared for?