Author: Vaneza Vega

Tenure Conclusion

Tenure is not a suitable solution for bettering college education because it limits the modernization and quality of education that students receive and it fails to show that tenured professors teach more than other professors. In fact, there is not sufficient evidence that proves that a tenured professor is a better teacher than an non-tenured one. Perhaps the purpose of tenure isn’t to enhance education, but more of an excuse for professors to use to secure their job for their own benefit.

Gentrification

http://ny.curbed.com/2016/5/9/11641588/nyc-top-15-gentrifying-neighborhoods-williamsburg-harlem-bushwick

This article defines gentrification as neighborhoods that once had low average household incomes and within the last recent years they have started to become high-income neighborhoods as rent has increased. Warerkar used the State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods 2015 Report to show what neighborhoods have seen an increase in rent and are gentrifying. The study categorized areas as gentrifying, non-gentrifying and high-income, so it makes me think about how much higher the rent is in the high-income neighborhoods in comparison to these other neighborhoods and how its affecting residents.

Drugs

Thesis & Body Paragraph

Researchers say that in the past five years opioid drug addictions among Veterans have increased by 55 percent (Childress, 2016, p. 5). There are factors that are influencing this number to grow. As Lawrence has stated, doctors often prescribe opiates when troops get hurt and are in severe pain (2016, p. 3). This has become a problem because when troops need a quick fix, they jump to opiates as their first option. According to Szalavitz, addiction is considered to be a “maladaptive way of coping” (2016, p. 13). Therefore; as troops gets hurt often, their way of coping with pain are with opioids and that can lead to addiction. In the United States, Veterans are susceptible to drug addictions because of their vulnerability to physical and mental stress and they have easier access to opioid prescriptions that civilians do.

Drugs

Article post with Quotes

The opioid epidemic in the United States has worsened as treatment and drug rehabilitation centers have become difficult to have access to. Treatment and rehab services can be expensive, therefore not everyone, especially the poor that have opioid addictions, can have access to treatment. For example, in the New York Times article Medina (2017), states that people without adequate insurance, like the less privileged, can have difficulty obtaining a room in a drug rehabilitation center in Los Angeles which can total to about $50,000 (p. 3). It is clear that treatment is not cheap and those that don’t have proper insurance would be most affected by it. However, this issue is becoming apparent as it has caught the attention of the government officials. According to Governor Maggie Hassan,”We know we need to….increase access to treatment in New Hampshire, and that really boils down to making sure we reauthorize our Medicaid expansion program (as cited in Woodruff, 2016, p. 24). Not only are people aware that it is a problem, but they are seeing that accessibility is an issue and they need to figure out a way to fix this.

Drugs

The Lockdown

In the article The Lockdown, one main focus is how the criminal justice system

has put so much stress on the war on drugs that it has given law enforcement facilitation

to violate the Fourth Amendment. There have also been exceptions that revolve around

this amendment for the sake of the war on drugs. The Fourth Amendment basically states

that people have the right for protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. As

the war came about, the Supreme Court has made “drug exceptions”. For example, in

California v. Acevedo (1991), searches were being made without warrants or defective

warrants and the court stood by it and supported it. Another example of the violation of

this amendment was in the case of Terry v. Ohio (1968). This case influenced the start of

the stop and frisk rule because the Supreme Court stated that if a police officer believes a

person is involved in some kind of suspicious, dangerous criminal activity, the officer is

entitled for the “protection of himself and others in the area” to conduct a search for

“weapons that might be used to harm” others. This just gave them more power for

searches as long as they gave “consent”. The Supreme Court has even given law

enforcement the ability to conduct “consent searches”, so all they have to do is ask the

person if they could talk to them and if they could put their hands up for a search. Most

people would comply and hardly ever say no, so this is how police says they “ask” for

consent. Police has even taken it a step further by using “pretext stops” in order to hunt

for drugs. Pretextual stops are basically stops that the police conducts to any motorist (in

search of drugs) and use a minor traffic violation as an excuse to search their vehicle. If a

person refuses to be searched, they could be put in jail, not for the minor traffic violation,

but for the fine or, they could even bring out the drug sniffing canines to smell their

vehicle because according to the Supreme Court, drug sniffing canines are not considered

as an actual “search”, therefore it is not a violation the Fourth Amendment. It is clear

that the “exceptions” being made for the Fourth Amendment have a strong tie to the war

on drugs. As police have less restrictions, it means they could easily arrest people and

accuse anyone of a drug crime.

summary

Why I Write Summary

In his essay Why I Write the author, George Orwell, opens up about his conscious nature of being a writer and not only talks about his evolution as a writer, but also tells readers the reasons why a writer writes. Orwell talks about how he started writing at a young age and as he got older, he played around with different literary activities. For example, at age five he was writing poems, at age fourteen he wrote a play and as he got a little older, he started to make up a “story” about himself in his mind, almost as if he were self-narrating. He then goes on to explain some of the motives of why a writer writes. Orwell lists four reasons; Sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political impulse. He addresses that he does partake in each of these motives; however, he cannot determine which one of these is the strongest motive. He states that even though all writers have different motives, what they do have in common is that even under their own motives, there still “lies a mystery” and writing itself can be difficult process.

General

Empathy

Empathy and writing are related because both revolve around coming to an understanding. When we think about empathy or apply it to a situation, we have to understand the issue first before we go any further. One has to grasp the issue and try to comprehend it well before coming up with a solution. When it comes to writing, we have to understand what we are writing about. We could easily write down anything without it making sense, but in reality what we write down (especially in college with essays and such) has to make sense. So how could we comprehend what we are writing about? Not only through research, but using empathy as well.

Empathy holds significant value because when we deal with any issue, we should try to understand it to the best of our ability. If we deal with an issue and try to come up with a solution without fully understanding the problem in the first place, we wouldn’t be able to come up with the best solution. It isn’t logical to deal with an issue that one doesn’t fully understand. That’s why we use empathy to try to comprehend something better, including putting ourselves in other people’s shoes to get a better understanding.