Cam's Blog

It is widely acknowledged in society that each individual has a responsibility to somehow better their community through their actions. In this class we have delved into the importance of understanding what it means to uphold civic responsibility through deliberation about how to solve problems. An important question regarding civic responsibility is who has the responsibility of teaching young citizens about how to become civically responsible.

Many believe that educational institutions should play a part in fostering an environment that teaches kids to care about fixing problems in their community. I agree that schools should bear a large portion of this responsibility because I believe that schools have the most standardized environments, and will provide the most equal opportunity for kids to learn about civic responsibility (although it’s not even close to perfectly equal since many regions lack resources and funds compared to other communities). I also believe that education about how to life in a civically responsible manner should start from a very early age, even if it begins simply, for example teaching kids about issues such as climate change and what can be done to fix it. It may sound cliche, but if we shield young kids from “grown-up problems” for too long then we might be missing out on future deliberators coming up with approaches and solutions.

Obviously, this is idealistic, but an important belief to have if we collectively believe as a society that we can eventually fix serious problems. I also believe that the teaching of civic responsibility will become clearer overtime as kids grow up and approach more complex curriculum. It is important for civic responsibility to be taught over a long period of time and through experiences rather than just an academic concept. Through multiple teachers with different personal ideas of what it means to be civically responsible, students can shape their own identity as someone who is an active member of their community.

Americans in 1928 held a very similar opinion as I do regarding civic responsibility. I was actually pretty surprised since I started writing this blog post before I read the old New York Times article we were assigned. This is a direct quote from the article:

    “Whatever the form of government of a nation, that nation can only endure when there is clear recognition that the government of tomorrow is being provided for in the schools of today.”

The belief is that schools are responsible for the introduction of civic consciousness in America’s youth. The New York Times article preached values of civic engagement, government, and patriotism in the sense that it will take the effort of the collective citizen population to ensure that American values stay relevant. It is impressive that this set of ideals has stayed consistent for almost a century, with modern variations obviously (such as who is included in the public sphere and expected to be civically engaged). Overall, reading this article supported my understanding and belief about which institution is responsible for educating young citizens about civic responsibility.

The first article that I found pertaining to the mock deliberation topic is a New York Times article in which multiple writers commented on how diversity in television shows has grown, and how it’s making TV better. Link here 

The second article that I read in preparation for this blog post was from UCLA, and it presented data that supports the fact shows with higher percentage of diversity have higher ratings.Link Here

Both of these articles agree with the fact that although minority representation in entertainment is too low compared to the actual demographics of the American population, television has recently progressed towards increased diversity than other forms of entertainment, especially Hollywood. Both of these are fairly recent articles, published within the past two and a half years, and most of the shows that they reference are still on air, and still popular. The prompt for our mock deliberation is “Do TV programmers have an ethical responsibility to present diverse casts?” The New York Times article in particular answered this question with the belief that there are many reasons for TV programmers to air programs that represent a diversity of people, some of those reasons being moral obligations, others being money and increased viewership. While researching this topic what I learned was that casting minority actors is no longer done as charity or “token minority friend” as it used to be, because shows with higher levels of diversity both in the onscreen cast and the screenwriters tend to have higher ratings and popularity. The reason for this recent trend is the fact that the demographic of TV viewers is diverse, and viewers want shows and characters that represent real-life demographics. Shows like How to Get Away With Murder, Master of None, Scandal, Empire, and The Mindy Project are all extremely popular programs that millions of people of all races are watching, and they all feature a minority lead actor.

As we approach the deliberation about this topic I question what exactly the usage of the word “obligation” means. It seems to me that if TV programmers are halfway smart than they will keep airing shows with increased diversity of cast members without needing any form of obligation at all because it is clearly what the viewers want. What is interesting is if the movie industry will learn from the more progressive model of the television industry, but I guess that doesn’t apply to this deliberation topic. I also wonder what importance type casting has in this discussion. There have been many takes on the either the beneficial or discriminatory nature of type casting.

I had a hard time finding a string of Facebook comments that 1. Made sense, 2. Could be passed off as at least a form of deliberation, and 3. Weren’t painfully stupid to read through. I wanted to stay away from a political article because I have already exhausted myself before this assignment, back during peak election phase, reading through Facebook comment wars, and I couldn’t bear to attempt to analyze any more of those.

Finally a Buzzfeed article https://www.buzzfeed.com/christianzamora/dumbledore-will-not-be-explicitly-gay?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bffbbuzzfeed&ref=bffbbuzzfeed&utm_term=.lnpxYdJql#.mi0KEmM5D           caught my eye, and it produced a real gem of a comment section. The article is about how in the upcoming Harry Potter movie prequel, the second Fantastic Beasts movie, will not portray young Dumbledore as “explicitly gay”. The comment section was so interesting because it featured both hard core HP fans and a passionate portion of the LGBTQ rights community.

Here are some photos of the comment section.

       

I loved this whole comment section because almost every single comment is longer than two sentences, which really helped in expression of viewpoints, which aided in my search for deliberation. People were passionate about both a beloved book series and progressive social beliefs.  Usually on social media a majority of comments are just a statement of opinion with no reasoning, so it basically just becomes a forum of people speaking without them understanding or caring what others around them are saying.

When I first started scrolling through the comment section for this particular article I began to notice two distinct sides, one where people disagreed with the article, saying that it isn’t necessary that Dumbledore be portrayed as “explicitly gay”, and one where people agreed with the article, saying that it was insulting that the movie is shying away from presenting a major character who has been confirmed LGBTQ as gay. This is typical of a highly opinionated article, which this specific buzzfeed article was.

What was more interesting was when I clicked on the “view replies” button under a comment. This is where people were actively responding to one another.

The major exchange that I was interested in here was between Savannah and Grace (the stuff about Alex Weaver is just an example of all of the stupid exchanges on facebook). Savannah and Grace have a good exchange where differing beliefs are presented civilly and responded to with logic and education. The only thing that held me back from congratulating myself on finding real deliberation on social media was because I remembered back to the boring Gastril reading about what deliberation really is. It is the process of debating the process of how best to solve a problem. Savannah identifies what she thinks is the problem, while Grace then disagrees that it isn’t a problem. So this specific exchange falls short of true deliberation.

My conclusion after completing the research for this blog post is that social media is just not a good environment for deliberation. There is very little communication with other people, and rarely are people committed to actually trying to solve an issue rather than express how they feel about an issue. This comment string was one of the most intelligent and insightful that I have seen, and yet I still had a hard time finding examples of deliberation.

So most kids and faculty at Penn State had a nice, long and relaxing winter break stretching multiple weeks. However, while everyone else was still in a Christmas Comatose, Penn State women’s ice hockey team was back on campus on the 27^th ready to grind through some Christmas break hockey! I was originally really bummed out that we had to arrive back on campus so early, but once I got back I realized that Penn State during Christmas Break is actually my favorite version of Penn State. The dorms are quiet, the walkways are empty, there are no classes to go to, and the dining halls were closed so we got to eat downtown every meal with stipend money!

After a blissful week alone on campus (jk we had to workout hard to get back in shape quickly) our team headed over to Ohio State to face a team that is basically our mortal enemy…and we beat them! Proving that even a little time off will do a team good, we came out firing scoring 5 goals against the 6^th best team in NCAA. The second game didn’t go as well, since Ohio State was able to pull themselves together and play a really solid game, shutting us out 2-0. We were bummed that we couldn’t pull off a series sweep, but we were proud of the way that we played as a team. It was a little disorienting coming back to campus and realizing everyone had returned in the span that we were traveling; suddenly the hallways of beaver dorm were rowdy again.

However, we didn’t stick around long because just four days after returning from Ohio, we packed up our travel bags again for a long travel weekend to Lindenwood, Missouri. Yes, you are right in thinking that Missouri seems a bit random for a hockey destination, but Lindenwood, MO is home to the southern-most Division 1 women’s ice hockey team in the NCAA. (Fun fact, my dad originally wanted me to look into Lindenwood’s program because he thought that it would be the closest place to my home, North Carolina, and he wanted to be able to come see me play a lot. We realized later, after I committed here instead, that Penn State is actually closer to home! You’re welcome, Dad.)

Anyway, this trip was our second plane ride of the year, meaning we had to bus to Baltimore first and then fly to St. Louis. Despite the travel, our team showed up ready to roll as we beat Lindenwood 3-1. One of my fellow freshmen, Katie Rankin, had a buzzer beater empty net goal to secure the win. For the second weekend in a row we were really pleased with our first game performance, but struggled to come out hard in the second game. Along with dealing with a few injuries, we couldn’t find the right grove on Saturday and ending up losing (embarrassingly) 4-1. So after 11 straight games on the road with a record of 4-3-4 we will finally get to return home and play a game in Pegula again! We are looking forward to hosting a home weekend series against Syracuse University next weekend.