Into the Blogosphere assignment

1.
In summer before my junior year of highschool, my parents went out of town for 5-6 days to visit some family on the east coast. They left me at home alone with instructions to feed the cat and lock the door whenever I left the house. They also said I could have some friends over to the house as long as there weren’t too many people. The day after they left, my friend Mike and I had the great idea that we should throw a party in my now vacant house. We created a MySpace event and invited lots of people. More people ended up coming than we had imagined, and my house and backyard were completely packed. At the peak of the party’s attendance, I received a call from my father. He effectively told me that he knew what was going on, and that I’d better get everyone out of the house immediately. Someone had apparently tipped him off. I quickly declared the party over and rushed everyone out of the house. Mike and I spent the rest of the night (early morning) cleaning up the house, and returning it to its former condition.

By the time my parents arrived the next day, there was no evidence that any large gathering had taken place. The house, carpet, and furniture were just as clean and in the same arrangement that they had been when my parents left. Regardless, my parents were still very upset with what I had done. They argued that I had violated their trust.

I argued that there was no reason for them to be angry. I said things like, “The house looks the same as it did when you left. I didn’t get in any trouble. Its as if it never happened. You would not be mad about this if someone hadn’t called you and told you about it. There are no negative consequences stemming from this party whatsoever, therefore you have no reason to be upset.” They disagreed because they didn’t base their anger not on whether or not the house was clean, but rather on whether or not I had obeyed their warning not to have too many people over.

This is a level 3 disagreement because different evidentiary weight is given to what ought to constitute being upset in this situation. I believed that the most important thing that should factor into their emotional response upon their return to the house should be the state of the house. I thought that as long as the house looked the same as it did when they left, there should be no reason for them to care what happened in-between. They gave less weight to what the house looked like, and much more to whether I had obeyed them or not. This disagreement could have been resolved by my using some common sense and acknowledging that my parents had appropriate reason for being upset, but that would have meant admitting guilt. Instead I took my punishment acting as if I still had no idea how my parents were upset.

2.
Mario Savio’s analogy, “Sproul Hall is to student rights as Mississippi is to civil rights,” serves to shed light on the similarities between two situations that may at first glance seem unrelated. In 1964, Mississippi was the epicenter of the civil rights movement; a movement led by mostly black citizens who sought to end discrimination by whites against blacks. The discrimination came in many forms including barred participation from voting for public office, segregation of schools based on race, and “whites only” signs on many public businesses and establishments among others. On Berkley’s campus Savio says that students rights have been violated by university bureaucrats issuing “edicts suppressing student political expression” and then refusing to discuss the action or take student opposition to the edicts seriously.

Savio’s analogy seeks to relate his situation as a student in Sproul Hall on at Berkley’s campus who is unable to express himself politically or have any bearing on the rules at his school because of unwilling university bureaucrats, to that of a black person living in Mississippi who is unable to vote or go to most restaurants because discriminatory laws and attitudes. One way that Savio sees these situations as similar is the fact that neither the Berkley student nor the discriminated Mississippian, is allowed, “to participate citizens in a democratic society.” A democratic society must, among other things, have laws “arrived at legitimately only by consensus of the governed.” Since blacks in Mississippi were barred from voting in many instances, they were are unable to participate in the shaping of many laws they had to follow. In the instance of students at Berkley, they were unable to voice their opinions freely and therefore unable to have any say in regards to university regulations they are governed and ignored by.

Savio describes the situation at Berkley as “Kafkaesque,” which can refer a situation, which is needlessly hard to understand or complex. I believe he is referring to how difficult and complex it is communicate with administrators and get responses from them. He specifically describes meeting with the Dean of Students and the difficulty he had in trying to get her to give a straight answer about student’s rights. The situation can be identified as “Kafkaesque” because no matter how hard or forcefully students have tried to have their opinions and voices recognized by the university administrators, they have not been able to get through to them. That’s definitely hard to understand.

If I were a university administrator listening to this argument, I would disagree with his analogy. I would say a University campus is not a good comparison to an entire city since they are both governed by different rules. Mississippi is under the jurisdiction of the United States and all citizens living there are entitled to the rights promised to them under the constitution. On the other hand, students on a university campus are also citizens of the United States, but by enrolling in a college they agree to abide by the rules of the university; even if that means curtailing some of their aforementioned constitutional rights. Therefore I’d come to the conclusion argument is not valid.

The disagreement is definitely on level four. It seems as though students like Savio believe that the quality of a university should be judged on a school’s ability to act as a nation following the U.S. Constitution and the ability to which it allows students to question “the conditions of their existence.”
According to Savio, the school administrators believe the duty of the college is to “turn out people with all the shard edges worn off, the well-rounded person.

3.
Robert Bullard uses past history to show how the government has responded hurricanes in areas populated by African Americans in the past, and how that might show how the government will respond to Hurricane Katrina. He uses examples such as the response to hurricane Betsy in 1965 to predict what the response to Hurricane Katrina will be like.
By arguing in the stasis of cause, he gives legitimacy to his argument and has real facts and instances from which he can base his predictions on and point to if challenged. A detractor might argue, “Bullard, your predictions are ludicrous. You are biased to sympathize with African American populations because you yourself are black.” If Bullard was arguing from the stasis of value (black people are important too and need to be protected just as much as white people do) then this detractor might be able to make a valid case against Bullard. But since Bullard is basing his is predictions and judgments on prior events and history rather than solely personal bias, he is protected from such attacks.
Savio could construct an appropriate ethos for his audience by maybe providing more specific violations of students’ rights at the beginning of his speech. I think that by giving the audience specific examples of what has happened in the past, they may be more likely to follow him when he begins vilifying the university administrators and comparing the university to a “machine.” These are strong claims to make without much evidence.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett already does a very good job of outlining the history of lynching and provides many examples from history to underline her argument.