Cam's Blog

This week, we were challenged to find and evaluate an organization that accepts public donations in support of a cause or viewpoint that we may personally not agree with. I decided to go full throttle for this blog post (because why not) and find an organization that I have fundamental different viewpoints than. I found a website for an organization called ProLife Across America, self-described as a “non-profit, non-political association dedicated to changing hearts and saving babies lives”. They were founded in 1989, and for the past 29 years have been spreading their Roman Catholic beliefs through the medium of billboard, radio, and newspaper ads.

It seems like a legit organization with an acknowledged presence in the public sphere, and I was excited to observe and analyze the logical appeal of PAA (ProLife Across America) with an outside, perhaps even skeptical, eye. I began on the “Who We Are” page of the website that basically outlined their mission statement that is quoted above. One thing that I noticed was that there were mostly positive phrases. There were statements such as “Babies deserve to live” instead of negative phrases usually seen in the abortion controversy like “Abortions are a sin”. I think that this was a conscious decision made by the website organizer in an attempt to not drive people away, but instead invite them to consider another opinion.

In search of logical appeals, I clicked on a tab labeled “Get The Facts”. Up at the top there was a short video that went through the development of a fetus while in the womb. Before I clicked on it, I assumed that it would be scientific and lay out the factual evidence. Instead, the video was basically a person holding a super cute baby and talking about when specific body parts develop in the womb. It was a pretty good emotional appeal, as the video showed more adorable shots of a baby playing dress-up than actual facts to back up their argument. There were actual facts in a lengthy paragraph below the baby, but it looked long and hard to read so I kind of skimmed it.

Then I noticed a tab in the corner titled “Get Help”. I clicked on it, and it took me to a page where women could receive help post-abortion and also some information on alternative options to abortions. This is where I found the most logical appeals of the whole website, as the organization provided (with factual evidence to back it up) other solutions than having an abortion.

Unlike what I was expecting, I wasn’t very put-off by the site, even though I disagree with the values and viewpoints that the organization holds. Some information was presented in a logical way that could appeal to  many different types of audiences.

For our upcoming persuasive essay, I am grappling with the idea of writing about the debate on whether or not college athletes should be paid. The only problem is that I could fully argue both sides of this controversy very persuasively, but I don’t know which side to pick.

I believe that the current state of the NCAA is faulty and corrupt because universities are profiting insane amounts of money every year off of the success of student-athletes who don’t get to see a penny of that money. For example, Louisville’s strong basketball program generates over 45 million dollars of annual revenue, with each player having an estimated worth of over $1 million.

It is unfair that schools, coaches, and even newscasters are able to make money off of the labor of the athletes, while the athletes don’t get to see any of that revenue money. A monthly paycheck could really help some athletes who are relied upon to send money back home, especially because they are too busy with athletics and school to get a job. The amount of weekly hours demanded of a student athlete is considered as a job itself, but without monetary reward of a job.

There is certainly a strong counter argument that makes this issue so difficult and controversial. Obviously, there are many logistical problems that would arise if the NCAA was required to pay athletes. Would they have to pay all athletes, or only a select few? Nobody argues the fact that Saquon Barkley deserves a paycheck for all of the revenue he alone generated for Penn State, but if he gets paid, does that mean all 100+ members of the football team get an equal paycheck? Bribing recruits with a loaded check of money is a very slippery slope that would be hard to regulate and standardize between schools. Wealthy universities already have the upper hand in athletics because of the facilities and resources they are able to provide their students, and adding athlete paychecks into that would further complicate that.

Another important question to raise is whether or not all teams deserved to be paid, or only sports that generate money. At Penn State we call them “money sports”, that include football, men’s basketball, and men’s ice hockey. These money sports already have special benefits that other teams don’t receive, like training table meals after practices and the ability to use the chartered plane out of the State College Airport for travel.

Title IX brings up more issues concerning this debate, and overall it is a very complicated topic with no clear answer, and I am hesitant to actually make this my essay topic. If you have any opinions please mention in comments

On Monday night I attended and participated in another RCL deliberation nation event. The topic of the deliberation was road and traffic safety in State College. The deliberation began with the overview team giving the standard introduction to the event and topic. Then, to my surprise, they asked every single person to go around the circle, introduce themselves, and state their personal claims in the issue by answering the question if they had ever had a scary close call with a car or bike while traveling around class. This differed from our group’s since only our moderating group stated personal stakes.

There was a very substantial turnout to the deliberation, probably about ten kids from the class who were moderating and then an additional fifteen people in attendance, so going around for introductions and stories about close calls in traffic took a very long time. Most people identified as pedestrians, and none of the Penn State students drove a car on campus (since most of us are freshman). There were a couple of tense moments during the introductions where people told accusatory stories about almost getting plowed down by a biker on campus, only to have the person next to them be a biker who criticized students for jaywalking in front of bikes. There were already some back and forth shots happening, but the moderators didn’t step in at all to shut anything down, so the bikers vs pedestrians groups had already formed before the discussion began.

There were four adults attending the conversation, while our riot discussion didn’t have any adult voices in it. Similar to what happened during the homelessness group’s deliberation, the adults dominated the conversation with their own knowledge and opinions about what could and needs to be done. Like Betsy, the representative from the traffic safety department at Penn State informed everyone about how much legislation and educational programs are already in place, but people just don’t know about them.

Instead of this being a positive thing, the adults seemed to treat the deliberation as trivial as though the issue had either already been solved (this was the traffic safety department guy), or as if it would never be solved at all (this was the police officer). I understand that it is their job to think about these kinds of issues everyday without making headway all the time, but it took away from the conversation us students were trying to have.

It made me grateful that our deliberation only consisted of students. Our outreach team was initially slated to have a State College police officer attend, and I remember somebody from our group saying afterward that they were so glad that there wasn’t a police officer at our event because that would probably hinder students from expressing their true opinions and perspectives because they would have been worried about what the officer would say.

Overall I think that the deliberation I attended was successful, just in a different way than ours was. There was more representativeness, and the moderator team did a good job staying on track for time. The biggest complaints I had were about the dominating adult presence and the awful handwriting of the recorder. Honestly, I couldn’t read what he had written on the sheets, which doesn’t seem like a big deal but it really is.