Varun's Rcl Blog

Link to site: https://rainwaterv1.wixsite.com/portfolio

 

The “artifacts” that I chose for me e-portfolio were the ones that I thought best represented my work in this class throughout the semester. I used assignments from this class specifically because I am a STEM major my other classes do not have many written assignments. The artifacts I chose consist of three essays and three blog posts; the blog posts being from my civic issue blog about gun control and the essays being of varying topics (although one of them is my policy brief: also about gun control). The reason I didn’t use any form of multimedia (such as a video) is that the only one that I did this semester that I think is of high enough quality would be my public controversy video. However, that assignment was also done on gun control, and since I didn’t want to overuse a single topic I chose only the best artifacts about gun control.

The target audience of the e-portfolio is future employers. To that end, I tried to make the e-portfolio fairly concise, without many of the frills and laces that I would have used if my audience had been friends and family. The artifacts that I chose needed to fit two main criteria to make it on to the portfolio. First, they needed to be some of my higher quality work. But the second criteria was a little more specific. Oftentimes when I do work in a class, especially in a class like this in which politics comes up frequently in our assignments, my writing can get opinionated. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, I tried to avoid my most opinionated writing for the e-portfolio considering that my target audience is future employers.

The speeches which I analyzed where the second speech, Vetting Vets, and the fourth speech, Financial Literacy of Penn State Students. The first speech was pretty good. The opening was perhaps the strongest part, with a gut-wrenching hook about the abuse that two specific dogs went through. From here, the speaker moved straight into her policy proposal, which is a federal law that mandates veterinarians to report signs of abuse to the police. To clarify, the speaker mentioned that this is currently in place in certain states, but not all of them. In addition, this law would remove the client privilege that vets are currently bound to in certain states.

The speaker did a very good job of building an emotionally based argument; after all, advocating a policy to reduce animal abuse is an easy sell on that front. In addition, her feasibility argument seems to describe this new law to be mostly self-sufficient in terms of money. She proposes that the fines levied against abusers go back towards the appropriate law-enforcement agencies. She also mentions that Congress has a “soft spot” for dogs, suggesting that this proposal could have bipartisan support. This part of her argument was strengthened when she cited a prior law regarding animal abuse which enjoyed the bipartisan support of Congress.

However, there were some problems that I found with the speech. First off, and this might be a minor gripe, is the title. “Vetting Vets” sounds as if it is veterans that are being discussed, and I had a completely different expectation of what this speech would be about. This led to some minor confusion in the beginning (at least for me) that could have been avoided. In addition, the speaker says how her policy would remove the onus that is currently on vets, who have to decide when to report signs of abuse by making it mandatory to report these signs. But that does not seem true, since “signs of abuse” themselves are subjective; the vet would still be responsible for identifying what would constitute such a sign and then reporting it.

Overall, this speech was good but it had certain aspects where the reasoning did not add up.

The second speech was, in my opinion, much better. First off, I need to say that the speaker held himself with remarkable poise despite some technical difficulty involving his mic. The intro section of this speech was excellent, by asking the audience a series of rhetorical questions the speaker was able to have us lead ourselves to the conclusion that he wanted, namely that the financial literacy of PSU students is fairly low. This is a much stronger tactic than if he had just stated that to us, since by having the audience draw the conclusion ourselves we are much more likely to believe it.

The policy that he was proposing was to implement a personal finance tutorial online for Penn State students, similar to the AWARE tutorial that we are currently required to do. After explaining the policy, the speaker jumped into a personal anecdote in which he shared a story that highlighted the financial illiteracy of a friend of his that goes to Penn State. While this story definitely strengthened his speech, the placement of it was a little strange. I think it would have made more sense to discuss the policy more in-depth right after he introduced it to the audience.

In any case, that is what he did after the personal anecdote. The speaker remarked that his proposal is an amalgamation of two existing plans that are used at other colleges, one of which is Ohio State. This increased the credibility of his plan by showing that some variation of it has been successful in the past, but also showed that he knew his audience by using the rivalry of Penn State and Ohio State as a reason to support his plan.

Finally, the ending of this speech related the topic back to the individuals in the audience, which is always a strong way to end a speech.

Overall, while both speeches were good, I would have to say that the second one was significantly better. The reasoning was sound throughout, and the speaker did a great job of making sure that he related the topic to the audience throughout the speech.

It has become a commonly referenced fact in today’s society that gun violence and mental health are closely intertwined. After all, who but a madman would walk into a school with the intention of killing innocent children? But the connection may not be exactly what you think. In fact, the actual data to support this line of reasoning is minimal.

Research shows that 1 in 5 Americans actually suffers from some form of mental illness in any given year. However, the number of people who are mentally ill and also commit some form of violence is extremely rare. In fact, new research shows that those with a mental illness are actually less likely to commit gun violence than their healthy peers. On the other hand, people with a mental illness are 11 times more likely to be the victim of gun violence; this is especially true when regarding police shootings.

This runs directly counter to the NRA’s history of blaming mad gunmen instead of the weapons that they had access to. The fact is that mental health, barring extreme cases, is just not a good predictor of gun violence.

Yu Lu, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas, conducted a study that shows that many common mental illnesses do not actually correlate very strongly with an increased risk of violence. Some of the illnesses that were tested include PTSD, stress, anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder. All of these are commonly thought to be predictors of violence, but Lu says, “Counter to public beliefs, the majority of mental health symptoms examined were not related to gun violence.” On the other hand, those with easy access to a firearm were more than 18 times more likely to threaten another person with a gun.

This study is far from the only one that leads to this conclusion. Past research indicates that the number of mass shooters who were suffering from a mental illness ranges from somewhere between 15 and 23 percent. Given that around 20 percent of Americans have a mental illness in a given year, this indicates once again that mental health is not a strong predictor of gun violence.

The policy implications of these studies, and many more, are clear. We need to bring the focus back to the guns themselves and how to make these weapons of war less accessible. Only then can we hope to reduce gun violence.

Everyone knows that gun violence is a massive problem that plagues America. When matched against individuals from other countries with similar socioeconomic standing, Americans are 25 times more likely to be shot. And when discussing the number of guns per capita that are owned in America, the numbers are even more staggering. Out of the entire world, the U.S has the most guns per capita, at around 89 guns per 100 people. Second place goes to Yemen which only has 55 guns per 100 people. This is striking enough on the surface, but in addition to any other problems that Yemen may have, it is also in the middle of a civil war. And it still only has less than two-thirds the guns per capita as the U.S

Oftentimes it can seem like those in power are putting in minimal effort to rectify this, and oftentimes that is true. Guns have been part of the foundation of this country since its inception, and in the modern day, this has manifested itself through the NRA. Most failed efforts to increase gun control can trace their failure to some action on the part of this organization.

However, in recent years even the NRA has been having more trouble glossing over the reality of the situation. The vast majority of Americans support stricter gun control regulations; for example, 92 percent of Americans want universal background checks and 82 percent support increasing the legal age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21. There has been a consistently growing sentiment over the last few years that some action is necessary to moderate this epidemic. This current situation is fragile; something has to give.

In future posts on this website, I will discuss some of the different facets of gun control, both in terms of problems and potential solutions. I will also look at some of the alternative solutions that have been proposed, such as the idea of a “good guy with a gun,” and why they may not be feasible.

For my project, I am going to be advocating for gun control. I have written a lot about this topic over the course of this semester, and feel like it is comfortably in my wheelhouse now. To go about advocating for gun control, I know that I would much rather do so through some written medium as opposed to a spoken or recorded one. To this end, I decided to do two main things. First, I will make a website (either through PSU or some other platform) on which I will write about the various facets of gun control. Second, I will send a letter to Pat Toomey, the current Senator of PA, in which I will ask him to bring up Manchin-Toomey (or some variation of it) once again in Congress. For those who are unfamiliar, Manchin-Toomey was a bipartisan gun control bill that was proposed in 2013 but never passed which tried to enforce background checks on private gun sales. The timeline of the project would be as follows:

 

1. Create a website and have a handful of posts already on it. Once this is done, start trying to drum up foot traffic by posting the link into various group chats I am in. I will try to invite people to discuss in the comments section, especially those who I disagree with since those will probably be the most productive conversations. This should be done by April 5th.
2. From this point onward I will aim to have a new post every 3-5 days that is 500-700 words. Every other new post will be accompanied by another message in the group chats. In the group chats that I know people better I may advertise more often.
3. Write a letter to Senator Pat Toomey detailing why I think Manchin-Toomey needs to be brought up again and why it is an opportune time to do so. One thing I might mention is that even if the bill doesn’t get passed it will still raise awareness about the “gun show loophole” which seems to have fallen under the radar as of late. This should be done by April 15th.

The idea for this project is fairly simple so I don’t see any logistical issues with it. However, there is one potential problem: getting people to actually come to the website I make. I am not very active on social media either, which means that I can’t reach people as easily. Luckily, I am in a few group chats which easily total a few hundred people as well as some smaller ones with friends. In the larger groups, the sheer volume of people hopefully means that some of them will take a look. In the smaller ones, I should definitely be able to get some people who I know better to join the discussion.

1 – The Problem: The gun-show loophole. Essentially, guns that are sold on the secondary market (between private individuals) are not really subject to much of the regulation that gun sales usually are held to.

2 – Causes: “Causes” may not be the best way of describing this – it is easily addressable. But because of the lobbying power pro-gun organizations such as the NRA possess it is much more difficult than it should be.

3 – Policy: Some variation of Manchin-Toomey. Manchin-Toomey was once proposed (although it did not pass) and basically tries to utilize background checks and similar mechanisms to keep track/regulate the sale of firearms between private individuals. To compromise a little bit, this proposal did not do anything about the sale between family members. Therefore it could appeal to a wider range of citizens.

4 – Reasons: Obviously gun violence is a massive problem in this country. As of now, a large portion of gun sales are between private individuals and therefore are not subject to many regulations that they really should be.

5 – Oppose: Many people don’t think that it is the place of the government to infringe on what they see as a basic human right, the right to defend themselves.

I should preface this by noting the numerous differences between the deliberation I attended and the one that I helped facilitate. Due to the fact that my own deliberation only had one attendee, it drastically limited what we could do. This also affected the flow of the conversation itself, as many of the aguments and proposals were ones that we had already thought of when brainstorming approaches.

This was not true for the deliberation I just attended. The topic was designer babies, and they had around twenty people show up by my estimation. This made for a completely different dynamic where those facilitating where not really active members in the discussion at all. Overall I would say that the facilitators handled the large number of participants very well. There was also an evolutionary biologist present which was certainly interesting (especially for me, being a biology major myself). From the very beginning they made the participants feel at home by greeting us and offering us free food (the surest way to a college studnts heart). They started off with a few broad questions during the opening that were posed to the entire group. After maybe 10 minutes or so of more general discussion they moved on to the approaches. The first approach was also discussed by the group as a whole, before we were split into two smaller groups to discuss the second two approaches. While it was a good idea to split such a large group, it seemed weird to me that they didn’t do it for all three approaches.

Another thing that I should mention, their approaches didn’t actually seem to e approaches. Instead they were questions long the lines of, “Is research into genetic enhancement worth the ethicals risks and financial investment?” Broadly speaking their approaches seemed to be about whether we should genetically enhance children, only genetically edit them to prevent diseases, or eskew genetic enhancement entirely. However, this was not communicated clearly until after we were already into the discussion about the approach.

Regarding their use of facilitation techniques, generally speaking they were very good at sparking conversation using thought-provoking questions. The place where I felt that they fell short was when a small group was dominating the conversation. There was one point where two people seemed to be on the verge of yelling at each other. Even though the facilitators did prevent that from really breaking out, the escalation to that point was gradual enough that it should never have been allowed to happen. In the same vein, the group seemed to go off on large forays at times that only tangentially related to the actual topic. At one point there was a five minute conversation about the carrying capacity of the earth and how close our population is to exceeding that capacity.

Overall I would say that they did a very good job. Especially given how many people there were it could easily have gotten out of control, at which point they would have a lot of trouble reining it back in. Despite this, there were a few points at which the deliberation would have benefited from a little bit of a firmer hand, which wasn’t always there.

This I Believe

Varun Rajan

 

As I have visited India over the years I have become increasingly aware of the extreme poverty that is widely evident there which is less visible in the U.S. It is tangible in the tailor who sets up his little collapsable stall in the broiling heat out front of my grandparent’s house every day, and the “untouchables” who sit at the sides of the streets like unwanted chaff. It is apparent in simpler manifestations as well. The sun-baked skin of the residents or even the lack of height brought on by malnutrition.

Once, when my family was visiting my grandmother I learned that we were going to be visiting an orphanage for handicapped children. It turns out that we funded a sort of special meal for the kids of the orphanage that day, something a little fancier than their normal dhal and rice. We were visiting the orphanage to serve the meal to the kids and interact with them. I am ashamed to say that ten-year-old me was not the most empathetic of individuals. I imagined a boring visit to some people I didn’t even know and who I didn’t share a language with and immediately pulled my mother aside and told her I didn’t want to go. However, my mother did not give in to my pleas and soon we were off to the orphanage.

After we arrived we watched the kids trickle in for lunch, and my attitude changed somewhat. As they arrived at their cafeteria I saw first-hand what they had to overcome every day. A little girl whom the others carried around because her legs were incapable of moving herself. A young boy missing an entire arm. Immediately my outlook changed from boredom to guilt. What gave me the right to stand there, with all that life has afforded me, and act like this was a chore?

As my sister and I walked around and served the kids I noticed how similar the dynamic between them was to that of my own friends. These were children whose parents abandoned them at birth because of how they looked. Who overcome life-changing disabilities every day, yet are still able to laugh and smile like my peers back home.

In the U.S we hear about these things but rarely experience them and take them to heart. This is not because we are apathetic, but because we only learn of this in the abstract, which makes it difficult to care. To truly understand something you must experience it, and poverty is something that many of us, thankfully, have little experience with. While I may have never lived in abject poverty, I have interacted with those who have. This has broadened my world view, and because of my experiences in India I live my life that much different. I am much more likely to tip a busker by the side of the street or give a man a dollar on a Philly subway.

I believe in the power of experience.