Living in a house this year, with dishes to clean and meals to cook, each one of us in the house has had to learn to work together in order to make sure that everything gets done and that everyone is at least decently happy with how things are going. We do several different things to ensure that things are going smoothly. First of all, at the beginning of the year, we all sat down and created a "Kenwood Konstitution" which outlines how we will do things like buy groceries and when we will eat meals together. At times it was difficult and tedious. We all had different ideas, for example, about what kinds of food items should be community. Even though we were able to create a set of guidelines at the beginning of the year, we have also been able to be flexible and adapt so that things might go better.
Each Sunday night we have a house meal, which is supposed to be mandatory; however, it is quite difficult getting 9 peoples' schedules to correspond. At the house meal, we often discuss problems within the house or things that we may need to keep in mind. For example, the past several house meals have been spent trying to plan an open house "Kristmas at Kenwood." Despite all of our busy schedules, I thought that we did a good job of planning this event. We formed three committees, each with three people in order to pull off this event. We also have nonmandatory house meals three other times during the week, which are also times that we discuss things that are happening within the house or just have fun together.
At the beginning of the year we also formed a chore wheel so that our house could stay relatively clean. Each week, the wheel is spun so that we get a new chore. Theoretically, if you did not do your chore for a particular week, you are supposed to contribute 25 cents to a "fun fund" which we haven't actually established yet. Despite the lack of punishment for neglected chores, we have also done a decent job at keeping up with the housewo
rk. One snag that we ran into regarded the cleaning of our two bathrooms. The plan was that one male and one female would be on bathrooms for each week, though as the wheel was spun, this didn't always work out. Then one bathroom or the other was not being cleaned. So around midterm, we formed a new chore chart, which has separate options for bathrooms to ensure that both the male and female bathrooms would get cleaned.
Even though living with so many people can sometimes be frustrating, it has definitely been a good experience to learn how to make decisions as a group and to adapt plans that may not be working as well as they could.
In light of the recent election and current interest in the individuals that President-Elect has chosen to include in his cabinet, I have chosen to critically examine his cabinet thus far, paying attention mainly to gender, racial identity, and age. The likelihood that an openly same-sex oriented individual would be selected seems to be quite low, at least in my opinion. There would be other groups that would traditionally lack representation in positions of power.
First of all, I am tremendously excited about the appointment of Hilary Clinton to the position of Secretary of State. To have two consecutive women in such a powerful position is perhaps indicative of our country's willingness to accept well-qualified women for these kinds of jobs. While most Democrats have gotten over their bitterness following Obama's nomination as the Democratic candidate, I think that this is still a good move that may help to increase party unity.
Only three posts, as of this point, will be filled by white males. Personally I find this to be rather impressive. I do not know much about Robert Gates, who will remain in his post of Defense Secretary when the Bush administration vacates office in January. Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner appears to be a good choice based on his experience and knowledge of the bailout. Tom Daschle, Health Secretary, while he has extensive experience as a House Representative, I'm not sure of his qualifications for the position of Health Secretary.
The remaining four posts will be held by a woman, a racial minority, or both. African-American, Eric Holder, will serve as the first African-American Attorney General, after also serving in the Clinton administration. Janet Napolitano was chosen for the position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, given her experience on immigration as Governor of New Mexico. While her appointment to this position is of course notable, unfortunately Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, belittled this achievement by saying that she is perfect for the job since she has no family, thus she has no life. As if the only measure of someone's life is whether or not they have a family. African-American Susan Rice will occupy the position of UN Ambassador after working in the Clinton administration for a few years as the youngest assistant secretary of state. After running for the Democratic nomination, Latino Bill Richardson will join Obama's cabinet as Commerce Secretary. Announced this week, Steven Chu, of Chinese background, was nominated to the post of Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his work with alternative energy and global climate change.
Given the diversity of our nation, I think that it is only appropriate for the leadership to reflect the population. Of course a better job could always be done, but I think that this cabinet is looking pretty good. Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7716467.stm
For the past several months I have been an avid reader of feministing.com, a feminist blogging site. I first discovered this website as part of taking the course Introduction to Women's Studies last fall. I had kind of forgotten about it until a friend was telling me about something that she had read on it. Over the summer, I added it to my quick links bar and I have been ultimately using it as a procrastination tool ever since, one that I find to be much more beneficial than facebook, for example. Feministing includes eight female bloggers who each post several times a week (or even several times a day) and a community page, where readers can post. In the past few months, the community blogs have become more and more interesting as more readers contribute. Many times the posts are simply pointing out the sexism present in typical news articles and advertising. Other times, they are praising gains that women have made in different areas or publicizing different feminist events. There is also discussion of a variety of issues. Oftentimes posts will be followed by dozens of comments.
Overall, I think that it has helped me to become much more critical of advertising and the slant that the media imparts. If this were to be my only source for news, yes, I would be receiving a quite biased view of reality; however, I think that this blog heightens my awareness in of possible biases in news stories and helps me to consider more careful my participation of certain cultural practices. Being critical of society is beneficial. People who blindly accept whatever they are told will not do well in life. Feministing is presenting a particular lens through which to be critical, but it happens to be a lens that I agree with (usually) and is important to me.
I will conclude with a final comment about feministing's logo, which may be seen by some as utterly ridiculous, counterproductive, or downright offensive. The creators of feministing sought to take a traditionally sexist, objectifying image and to alter it to represent their mission. I see this as being analogous to other feminists working to reclaim the terms "bitch" or "cunt." Though it may initially turn some people off, I think that the logo promotes conversation and ultimately does achieve the creators' goal of undermining "the sexist beauty standard she is supposed to represent" (http://www.feministing.com/faqs.html).
This year marks my first opportunity to ever vote in a presidential election. International enthusiasm for the event was also running quite high. After growing up in a family where politics were rarely discussed, it felt quite out of place for me to be at a college where politics were of great concern. I had formed quite a poor assumption that since my family wasn't very politically active, Mennonites as a whole were not. I now know that while there certainly are Mennonites who consciously choose not to be involved in the political process, there are plenty of Mennonites who believe that it is their duty to be involved in electing the officials of our country.
I watched portions of the first debate, moderated by Jim Lehrer, with friends. I must say, my friends' witty comments criticizing McCain were much more interesting than the actual content that either candidate covered. While it certainly wasn't perfect and was even annoying at times, I appreciated Lehrer's attempts to have Obama and McCain actually discuss the issues together rather than talk at the audience or TV cameras. At the time of this debate, I wasn't quite sure on what the financial crisis consisted of exactly, so I didn't really understand either one of their fixes. Since then I have learned about the financial crisis and subsequent bailout.
During the second debate, which was the vice presidential debate, my feelings about Sarah Palin were confirmed. While she was good at sounding smooth, I did not feel as it she had a lot of her own ideas to contribute to the conversation. To a certain extent, this is what the vice presidential debate felt like as a whole, each vice presidential candidate regurgitating their candidates' views and opinions. While each vice presidential candidate obviously comes from a quite biased position, I appreciated that both candidates were constantly comparing their party's position to the opposing viewpoint.
The third debate I was able to watch very little of, but the few segments I did see did not portray John McCain very positively. One article that I read following the debate questioned McCain's penchant for the town hall format because of his struggles with following this format during the third debate. This debate was also in the midst of the negativity that the McCain campaign pushed particularly as November drew closer. I did not appreciate the attacks from either side because I felt that they just created further separation along party lines and continued to mask the real issues at hand.
The debates were interesting to watch with friends here because of the partisan feelings of the majority feelings of my friends. I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall at other debate viewing parties to see what criticisms may have been suggested about Obama. Our country is at an interesting crossroads and I sincerely hope that despite the divides that this election has caused that we can come together behind President-Elect Obama in order to pursue the path that will be best for the country.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/debates/ge/index.html
Over the past several months, I have had my homepage set to the BBC. Sometimes it makes no effect whatsoever; like when the internet is so slow that I 
just stop it to get to what I really need to do or when I am just in a hurry. Even when I do not take the time to actually read articles, I still find it beneficial to at least glance at the headlines to see what has been going on the world. Then when I do take the time to read the news, I have a better background to know what kinds of things have been going on for a couple days or if they just happened.
For instance, over Thanksgiving weekend, I was not on my computer very much, but the few times I was, I noticed that something was going on in Mumbai, India. I was busy during that time, but when I returned to school, I was able to take the time to read up on the issue. If I hadn't known that there had been an ongoing hostage crisis, I probably wouldn't have taken the time to read several articles about that subject. Now that I am more well read on the issue, articles on this topic are more likely to pique my interest. 
Just today, I saw an article entitled "Are Mumbai attacks a chance for peace?" Even though the article is above my head in terms of the background knowledge needed for the article to be of much worth, I believe that the more you know about news, the more you will continue to find out.
Another one of my favorite features on BBC is the "most read" or "most emailed" stories. Sometimes they are quite indicative of major political events that are transpiring, other times, they are much more trivial. For example, the third most read article today is "Google tells us what we look for." Is this article critical to the functioning of the world? No, but it is interesting. Another nice feature is that when there is a news item that has been covered multiple times, BBC includes a column of stories that help to provide the reader with background information and other articles that were previously published. For someone like me, who struggles to read the news on a daily basis, this feature helps me to catch up with what is going on before I read the day's events. Though reading the news is something I am interested in, it is not always something that is placed as a high priority.
Back in October, I had the opportunity to attend a talk lead by Tim Roemer, a former Indiana House Representative. That wasn't really why he was on Goshen College's campus though - he was here to campaign for Barack Obama. The whole experience was rather interesting, beginning with a disclaimer that the Church-Chapel was simply being used for the facility and it did not indicate in any shape or form that Goshen College was backing Barack Obama. I suppose that it makes sense that the college shouldn't back any particular candidate; however, given the overwhelming consensus on campus this semester, I guess I wasn't really thinking about what the official position of the college should be.
I would sum up my overall experience as rather disappointing. His discussion of Obama's policies was not very specific. He repeated that he did not want to represent Obama's opinions or positions on any given topic, which I suppose is fair, but I did not feel like I learned very much from the experience because of the vagueness of his answers. Additionally, when some college students and community members attempted to make him firm up his answers and take a side, he was quite evasive. I found the afternoon to be typical of what I would stereotypically associate with politicians - evasive and smooth talking. Of course it was interesting, though I was disappointed with how little I felt that I learned about Obama.
This semester, one elective I am taking is called "Personal Violence and Healing" taught by Regina Shands Stoltzfus. Our final project is a research paper on a topic of our choosing. While much of the literature that the class studied involved violence against women, I tried to choose a topic that was perhaps a bit more applicable to my area of study. For the past several months, I have been researching child abuse and specifically looking at the academic effects of child abuse and how schools can learn to address the issue. Not only is the topic of personal interest to me, there are definite professional applications. Another component of the project is leading the class in a 30 minute presentation on the topic. While I was not explicit in my intent, I formed my presentation as if I was presenting to a panel of new teachers. Perhaps this presentation will be something that I can utilize later in my career.
While I have not found many effects of child abuse that are specific to the academic arena, it has been amazing to see how most of the "typical" effects of child abuse would also then affect a child in the classroom. For example, something like low esteem will not only affect how a child interacts with others, but low self-esteem also causes students to believe that they are incapable of completing their schoolwork. It has also been interesting to see how the different types of child abuse affect children in different ways; for instance, the academic effects are certainly most pronounced for students who have been physically abused. Students who have been physically abused are 25 times more likely to repeat a grade in school and are also suspended the most often (Briere et al., 1996).
Schools are the number one reporter of child abuse and I believe this is rightly so - teachers have the most daily access to children than really anyone but their parents. However, there are still a tremendously high number of cases that go unreported. How can schools work to make sure that more cases are being reported? Thus far in my research, the answer seems to be a resounding call for teachers to be more educated on the topic. For one reason or another, teachers, first of all, may not be aware of their role as a mandated reporter of child abuse. While laws do vary from state to state, in every state, teachers are required to report suspected cases of child abuse. Secondly, teachers may not be aware of the signs of child abuse. There are obvious signs, such as strange or constant bruising; however, there are many types of child abuse that do not have such outward displays. Neglect and emotional abuse are most likely to go unreported.
This is a tough issue for teachers to deal with because the report of a suspected case of child abuse may serve to damage the already tenuous parent-teacher relationship.
Comparing the consequences of a damaged relationship versus an abused child should make the situation quite clear. Of course, further complications ensue when school districts do not support their teachers. Though it is a difficult topic, I am glad that I have chosen to examine this area because I feel that it is quite relevant to my future career plans and will only further my pursuit of helping all students to be successful in the classroom.
Briere, J., Berliner, L., Bulkey, J.A., Jenny, C., & Reid, T. (1996). The APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Living in a house this year, with dishes to clean and meals to cook, each one of us in the house has had to learn to work together in order to make sure that everything gets done and that everyone is at least decently happy with how things are going. We do several different things to ensure that things are going smoothly. First of all, at the beginning of the year, we all sat down and created a "Kenwood Konstitution" which outlines how we will do things like buy groceries and when we will eat meals together. At times it was difficult and tedious. We all had different ideas, for example, about what kinds of food items should be community. Even though we were able to create a set of guidelines at the beginning of the year, we have also been able to be flexible and adapt so that things might go better. 
rk. One snag that we ran into regarded the cleaning of our two bathrooms. The plan was that one male and one female would be on bathrooms for each week, though as the wheel was spun, this didn't always work out. Then one bathroom or the other was not being cleaned. So around midterm, we formed a new chore chart, which has separate options for bathrooms to ensure that both the male and female bathrooms would get cleaned. 
