By: Billy Gault On Monday, February 27 I attended the deliberation titled: “School Spirits: Regulating Drinking Culture At Penn State.” While I was required to attend another deliberation, I found this one piqued my interest. The topic is very controversial and something that I feel strongly about. The setup was unique, and something that I had never experienced before. The entire group had one big deliberation with about 30 people sitting in a circle. Each attendee introduced themselves before the discussion began. Then, we began discussing the first approach.
The beginning approach was to regulate drinking at Penn State from a more relaxed standpoint. We decided that this approach could be very effective because it limits the “badass” mentality that many young adults have. Super strict rules can cause student to go out with the purpose of breaking these rules. On top of this, the most effective way to learn how to drink safely is by experience. Learning your personal limits is only possible if you reach those limits. Instead of deterring kids from drinking, the rules will give students a way to learn how to safely drink. In addition these relaxed rules can create a safe environment for students to drink. Many students are harmed by alcohol because they don’t want to get in trouble by asking an RA for help. A relaxed approach will make reaching out for help more appealing. Students won’t feel threatened by asking for help which can cause safer drinking with less alcohol related injuries. The next approach was a very strict regulation of drinking. This means no drinking at all, and, if drinking was discovered, the punishment would be extremely harsh. As a group we decided that this approach has many drawbacks. College kids are bound to drink. It’s just the way college is. This means that kids will be drunk and definitely less likely to reach out for help. Also If administration completely bans alcohol, students will transfer. College students want t drink, and if they can’t do it here, they will do it somewhere else. The Penn State student body will completely shift to students who have no inclination to drink. Instead of strict rules, more education on drinking can be more effective. However, like I said before, it all depends on the individual. If that individual wants to drink, they will. If they don’t want to drink, they won't. Finally we discussed the current regulation of drinking at Penn State. Many people decided that the current system is fine how it is. However, others saw it as problematic being the recent events and death. Many people described this event as a “freak accident” and it could have happened anywhere. One student brought up how the fraternity where the tragedy occurred was an on campus “dry” house. This means that technically there was not supposed to be alcohol at the house. This proves that the choice is up to the individual. If he/she wants to drink it is possible. Making stricter rules will only deter students from asking for help instead of teaching them the proper way to drink safely. I learned a lot from this deliberation and how to better myself as a deliberator. The deliberation was one big group. This made it very awkward for one person to speak. Thirty people were listening to one person which is often very intimidating. On top of this, one person speaking limits the flow of ideas. My deliberation group decided to break our audience into smaller more intimate speaking groups. This not only made the discussion less intimidating, but it also allowed for more ideas to flow as many people could speak at the same time. Discussing issues is the point of a deliberation and I feel as though our approach is more effective in doing this.
0 Comments
By: Billy Gault On Thursday, March 2, I attended a deliberation titled: “Take Back Our Campus: How Can We Prevent Sexual Assault at Penn State?” This deliberation was aimed at the rape culture that has been emerging on many campuses, like Penn State, around the nation. The deliberation began with the moderators welcoming everyone for attending. Then, the main moderator began with several broad questions for the audience members to answer. This was an effective way of getting the audience involved from the get go. Unlike the alcohol deliberation that I attended, this deliberation was broken up into smaller groups, like my group’s deliberation. The format of the entire deliberation went like this: introduce the approach, discuss the approach, summarize the approach. This layout was interesting and, I thought, worked very well. It allowed for everyone to discuss their individual thoughts, and then share them and collaborate with the entire group. The three approaches were alcohol, help available, and bystander intervention. I felt this deliberation was both important and relevant in society today.
The main idea behind the alcohol approach was that alcoholic beverages inhibit decision making, which ultimately can lead to sexual assault. There were many opinions on this topic as most of the students in my group had drank alcohol before. We decided that while sexual assault and alcohol had a correlation, there was no causation. Meaning one cannot say that alcohol causes sexual assault. The decision is ultimately up to the individual. Blaming alcohol is not an excuse because the alcohol did not make the decision, the person did. No matter how drunk a person is, there is always a small voice in the back of your head telling you if something doesn’t feel right. One way that alcohol related sexual assault may be combatted is by having harsher punishments for the crime. This may deter even the drunkest person from taking advantage of another. Next, we discussed the help that is available to students at Penn State. We began by thinking that there was an abundance of options here, but once we began speaking, it became clear that the only thing we could think of was Penn State’s safewalk program. This program is set up to so that individuals, who may feel threatened, have a buddy to walk home with at night. While this may seem like a great idea, one of my group members point out the flaws. She once tried it but was told that there was a 20 minute wait, which made it extremely inconvenient. We also began speaking of ideas that campuses can implement to prevent sexual assaults, and one of the better ideas was “Angela Shots.” If someone walks up to the bar and asks for an “Angela shot,” this means that they feel unsafe and the bartender should call them a cab to get them out of the situation. While this idea has already begun, spreading it across all college campuses could be extremely helpful in preventing sexual assault. The final, and most important, approach discussed was that of bystander intervention. This is arguably the best way to prevent sexual assault. Bystander intervention can range from calling an uber for a friend, to physically separating two people that seem to be in a bad situation. Bystander intervention is incredibly important because anybody can stop sexual assault from occurring, it just takes the courage to step in and say something. The confrontation doesn’t even have to be direct. Many girls in my group were discussing that they often go to the bathroom together and how this can be used to get a friend out of an uncomfortable situation. I, personally, have seen some very uncomfortable situations and have had to step in. For me intervening is not a problem, but for others it is. If everyone had the courage to step in and say something, sexual assault would be greatly reduced. By: Billy Gault On Wednesday, March 1 I attended a deliberation on a subject that I was not very familiar with. This subject was women’s reproductive rights. Titled “The Nation, The State, and You: How do we handle women’s reproductive rights?”, this deliberation taught me a great deal about something that I was not overly familiar with. The deliberation group began with a very captivating introduction. One of the group members told a story about how her eleven year old sister was already on birth control. When asked what this made us think, many of the audience members replied by saying that eleven is very young to have sex. It turns out, however, that her sister was not on birth control to prevent pregnancy. She was on birth control because of her ovarian cysts that needed to be hormonally regulated with the pill. This introduction was extremely effective in getting the audience involved in the discussion. We then broke up into smaller groups to discuss the three approaches: the nation’s view on reproductive rights, the state’s view on reproductive rights, and how the individual handles reproductive rights. This deliberation format allowed for many people to share their ideas simultaneously, and then collaborate with the larger group.
National regulation reproductive rights is a very controversial topic which lead to some great discussion. Almost every state in the US has different rules regarding women’s reproductive rights. I know that in New Jersey, if you are above the age of 16, you do not need a parents consent to get an abortion. In fact, you do not even have to tell your parents. However, in other states, if you do not want your parents to know, you have to go before a judge and plead your case. My group felt that national regulation would be unfair to women in the US. This is because if a woman desperately needs an abortion, all states would have the same laws. If the states controlled it, a women could travel and have whatever procedure she needs to get done. One solution to this issue was the federal government could set a minimum, and then the states can decide how much further the want to go. Another issue we talked about was the availability of birth control. While men can buy condoms, at any age, over the counter, women need a prescription to purchase the pill. This seems to be very unfair We could not come up with a solution, however, since the pill is a chemical that is entering the body, while a condom is and external contraceptive. We also discussed state funding. Some people may not want to pay taxes for another person’s contraceptives, but isn’t a baby on child support and food stamps more expensive than the pill? This is an extreme gray area that needs to be addressed by the government. The discussion of national and state kind of mixed together, but the individual discussion was separate. One of the biggest individual controversies was how late is too late to get an abortion. While many conservatives say that the baby is a “person” at the moment of fertilization, others say that it is not a human yet. This is another topic that doesn’t seem to have a correct answer and how can it? Individuals also see almost a sexist approach to reproductive rights. It is the woman’s job to buy birth control, but why? Isn’t it unfair how expensive it is? One way to address this problem would be to tax. As I said before, taxing people on birth control would be a much cheaper alternative than taxing people on food stamps to support a child. This topic seemed to have the most questions with the least answers. While it was interesting and enlightening to discuss, it seems very difficult to come up with a solution to this problem. |
Categories
All
|