Furman Engaged

I am really not sure why they call it Furman engaged. That is certainly not the adjective that I would use to describe my time today. I went into the PAC with some players on the soccer team because we were told that we could get out body fat and bone density calculated in the BodPod and the DEXA machine. It is always interesting to see your body composition as an athlete, so you can see what you need to work on to stay healthy. So we get to the testing room and spend thirty minutes listening to how the device works, as if we would ever need to operate it. Then two demonstrations are done, and the show is over. I was super disappointed that I had just wasted my time at a terribly disengaging explanation of two health science machines. The tests themselves were not even that accurate. The machines combined cost $200,000, and they have a %2 margin of error. So essentially, one student paid Furman over four years for those two machines through tuition, and they can't even get a completely accurate reading? Furman should really have spent that money better because skin folds cost significantly less than that and only have a %5 error. Basically what I learned today was that money was not well spent and health science is really boring.

SAE Ban

I am a pretty big proponent of the Bill of Rights, and all of the rights that we were given because of it. The first one, the amendment that allows for freedom of speech, is a cornerstone of the United States and separates us from many other countries around the world. People often get confused however, on exactly what freedom of speech entails. Basically, all case law after its inception aside, freedom of speech means that American citizens can say whatever they want and cannot get punished by the United States government. This does not mean that you can say whatever you want and not get in any trouble from anyone in the United States. Unlike the United States constitution, universities and fraternities do not have a First Amendment that allows for you to say anything that you want. This is because universities and fraternities have set core values that one usually cannot go against, as it will generally result in a removal from that institution. One of these values is anti-racism. Students cannot go around promoting racism at a university because can create a hostile learning environment, plus it makes the university look bad. They can do this because you are not being forced to attend this school or pledge a fraternity by the government, and they only accepted you in these institutions because they thought that it would be beneficial for the school. The same concept applies for jobs; if you work somewhere, they have every right to fire you if you do something that go against what the company believes in. Therefore, this is not at all a first amendment issue. Now, if the government were to detain these two individuals for the racist remarks, then it would become a first amendment issue. That's the beauty of Freedom of Speech; you can say whatever you want, and the government cannot punish you, but any non-governmental organization that you are apart of sure as hell can.

Daniel Butler Rebuttal

I am really not sure where I stand on the topic of abortion. I think that maybe I would be for abortion in event that the mother has been raped or has no other option because the quality of life for the child is going to be so poor. The rape argument for me is the strongest; if a woman is impregnated against her will, I think that I would totally understand if she wanted to abort the pregnancy to get rid of any possible tangible memory of that horrible event. If she believes that the quality of life is going to be horrible for the child, she does possess the option to put the child up for adoption, which seems like a pretty good idea to me, especially when you consider the growing amount of gay couples in America and people that cannot physically have a baby. The problem with this is that the adoption system in America is not great; it is very expensive and time-consuming, not to mention the fact that there is a real chance prospective parents could be turned away.
I say that I have all of these opinions on abortion, but I am not sure that they would hold if I were required to decide whether to terminate a specific pregnancy or not. I want to say that I would keep the same beliefs, but the topic of abortion is just not important enough to me to actually have strong beliefs on it. It very well could be the case that I would flip and decide not to go through with the abortion in the moment, because at that moment it becomes real. For me, even if I were to believe that aborting a pregnancy was not killing a prospective life in theory, I think that I would feel like it was while in the moment.
To be honest, I hope that I am never placed in a position where I would have to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, because I do not know what I would do. This is mostly because abortions have never directly affected me, and I hope they never will (knock on wood). Therefore, I just simply do not care enough about abortion

Isaac Response

Education is an incredibly important part of every civilization, as it helps it move forward and advance, but what is the best way to educate? Personally, I love hands on learning. I love doing things that are fun and learning at the same time. A good example of this is soccer. Each day on the training field, I am learning what works and what doesnt, but at the same time I am having fun. Sometimes this can get frustrating, as all learning does, but overall it is quite enjoyable. That being said, not everything can be incredibly fun while you are doing it. Take math for example; the best way to teach math is to learn by doing, but doing math bores the hell out of some people. Math is a great skill to have, but many people never learn it because it is so boring. The only way to get good at math is to get over the boring parts and just do it. This concept can be hard to grasp when you are really young, which is why so many people are unmotivated.
Having really good teachers is a great idea in theory, but in practice, it is going to be quite difficult to find that many people who are enthusiastic and good at teaching people that actually want to be teachers. The main reason being the salary; teachers make horrible money, and yet they are vital to progressing society. The simple solution would be to pay them more, but where would this money come from? The government isnt just going to put a ton of money simply into teachers' salaries, so that is a just a dream.
I do agree that we should be focusing more on education and an easy way to do that would be giving teachers more money, but I just dont see that happening.

Kat Response

Studying abroad is a great opportunity for many people, as it does help you learn a new language and develop new relationships, but is it really worth it for everyone? I say that it really depends. If you are going to major in a foreign language, then studying abroad in that country is definitely worth it because you will become exponentially more proficient in that language. I do not really get the point in only majoring in another language to begin with, as you can just as easily go and learn the language in the country and major in something else. This would be much more helpful in the job market, but this is an entirely different issue. If you are going to major in international business, then studying abroad is a really good thing to do, especially if you can get an internship while in another place. I am sure that I am missing some majors where studying abroad is incredibly beneficial, so I am sorry. But other than those two majors, studying abroad is not quite that beneficial for you. That being said, studying abroad from what I have heard is an incredibly amazing experience. There is a really big difference studying abroad being super helpful and being super cool. College is a time unlike any other where you can do things like studying abroad, so if you have to opportunity I would do it, but it may come with some consequences.

Hana Response

As a kid, I was never spanked. My parents were not the type to physically punish me, instead they opted to grounding me. If I did something wrong, I would get privileges taken away. These punishments ranged from no television for the day to being totally grounded for weeks on end, depending on the egregiousness of my acts. I was the type of kid that got grounded a lot; I was always doing something that merited a punishment. I wasn't a bad kid in the general sense of the phrase; I didn't get into fights or get bad grades. Instead of that, I would do one little thing wrong, and then dig myself into a deeper hole from there. For example, I would call my older sister a name, and lose television privileges. Then I would ignore my mom and continue to watch TV. I would then lose the TV for a week but keep ignoring my mother. The punishments would pile up, and the next thing that I knew I would be grounded for an entire month. It isn't that I didn't fear these punishments or think that they would not hold water, I just refused to think ahead to think about how these punishments would actually affect me in the future. Then after the interactions with my parents were all over, I would sit and think about how stupid I was being and regret my actions very soon after it was all over. Despite these emotions, the next time I would get in trouble, nothing changed. I never really learned how short-sighted that I was being. This still is a problem for me today, as I will still get into altercations with people of authority and lose horribly. This happens to me in soccer with referees, and used to happen with teachers in high school. I am working on it though, and I'm getting better.
As you can see, every type of punishment is going to come with some negative effects. Aversive conditioning can cause people to be cripplingly fearful of people with authority, while the ways that my parents punished me may have caused me to have not enough fear for authority figures. I think that the best way to condition children is to understand the child and simply know what they will respond to the best.

Athletes

The amount of money that athletes receive in sports is ludicrous. Millions of millions of dollars go into paying players to let them play a game, and the money keeps going up. The baseball example that Jack gave was a very good one, with people earning over thirty million dollars a year to pitch less than thirty games. These numbers are insane, and they are not exclusive to baseball either. In soccer, things are probably much worse. Based off of pure salary, the best baseball players make on average more than the best soccer players. For example, the world's best soccer player, Lionel Messi, makes 20 million euros per year, whereas the best baseball player makes 50% more than that per year. However, most of the money in soccer does not go players' salaries like in baseball. Unlike American sports, most soccer players do not get traded for someone else or go into free agency. Instead, they are transferred for cash. In other words, if one team wanted Messi, they would not trade a bunch of their own players for him, but would instead offer money to Messi's club, Barcelona. Every player in the world has a price tag, and these tags can be incredibly high numbers. The world record transfer happened last year, with Gareth Bale going to Real Madrid for, at the time, roughly $150 million dollars. That was only the money required to get his former club to sell him and does not include his $15 million salary. While this amount seems crazy, some players have even higher "buy-out clauses," or the amount of money required to terminate the player's contract to allow him to join another team. Cristiano Ronaldo has a rumored buy-out clause of $1 billion dollars. This number is incredibly high, but that is for a reason. It is an amount above that that any club would pay for him. This brings me to my point. Although the money that is thrown into sports is absolutely insane, this is really not an issue. The reason that there is so much money in sports is because people are willing to pay that much. It may seem unfair to people that were not born with these athletes' talent, but it isn't like these people are being forced to pay their own money to support these sports. They can either choose not to patronize them, or spend their own money supporting something that they like. Yes the amount of money is crazy, but it is simply a response to the demand from the fans and the supply of money that they have.