Persuasive Essay Draft

It happens every autumn Sunday. Some poor receiver running a crossing route over the middle of the field goes up to catch a pass only to take a shot to the head from the nearest safety or linebacker. While many fans get excited over plays like these and for years plays like that were just considered hard-nosed football, nowadays the players, fans, and league are increasingly aware that these hits are causing irreversible damage to the players that take them and occasionally the ones that deliver them. Sadly, for years the league knew of the effects these hits could have and for years they swept that knowledge under the rug to avoid player and fan backlash. Now, the league is drastically increasing the rules to ensure player safety, forbidding any types of blows to the head of defenseless player and most recently forbidding use of the helmet while tackling. Football is obviously an incredibly violent sport and many fans of big hits argue that all these rules should go away because the players know what they’re signing up for, but it is the league’s job to ensure player safety to the best of their ability and head injuries are their number one concern.

Paragraph 1: Summarize a brief history of the NFL CTE cover up controversy. Timeline, important figures in both the cover up and the exposing of said cover up. (Pretty much a summary of the movie concussion.)

Paragraph 2: Science behind the concussion and cte issue and what preventative measures are being taken by the league and the players.

Paragraph 3: Opposition from owners and fans to rule changes as well as argument as to why this opposition is not only wrong but borderline sadistic.

Paragraph 4: Closing as to why it is the National Football League’s duty to protect its players to the best of its ability and make sure they limit the long term mental effects of the game.

Conclusion: Summary of argument and closing statements on the matter.

Deliberation Reflection

Our deliberation focused on the topic of sex ed from the perspective of 3 different issues, those issues being mental health associated with sex ed, social stigmas about sex, and sexual respect. Each topic was discussed at length among the group and those who came to listen in and voice their opinions. While we had some idea of where we would try to drive the conversation after presenting each topic, we were surprised with how the discussion went sometimes. People obviously have a variety of views and knowledge on this topic and some of them, especially from the ladies who worked in this field. I think we got a lot more discussion and legitimate education out of our deliberation than anyone was expecting, certainly more than I was expecting myself. There was disagreement, as was expected and pretty much necessary for the deliberation to be effective, but it was entirely respectful and informative and more importantly never got to a point of contention. With so many people in the room it’s nearly impossible to reach a conclusion as a group, and it’s difficult to even reach a legitimate consensus, but for the most part it seemed we managed to do this. In terms of mental health, most people in the room seemed to agree that steps should be taken to ensure the mental health in children and young adults in any way possible, and it seemed to be the consensus that teaching sex ed more in depth and positively would only help this matter. The social stigma part of the discussion had more disagreement than the other two. This discussion unsurprisingly circled mostly around stigmas about sex between genders, which naturally led to people disagreeing very strongly. The final part of the deliberation was far less controversial. It was generally agreed upon that sexual respect should be instilled in children from a young age. Overall this felt like a very successful deliberation that will hopefully have a positive impact on the community.