Paper number two

Motivated by a recent conversation I had with some family, I'm posting a link to the paper I wrote as the final paper for my Philosophy course from last summer. The course was great and I'm pretty happy with this paper, which is more common with papers whose topics I create.

I tried to address this paper to my discussions about faith that I had been having with a lot of my friends and floormates at UPenn. My neighbors were two Orthodox Jewish kids, and one in particular did a really good job of articulating arguments for his faith. It was a fun and challenging summer, and there were a few times we stayed up very late (or rather, early) talking about religion and metaphysics. One of the major challenges that he presented me, and a question that has been repeated in a lot of subsequent discussions, is this: doesn't ultimately our acceptance of historical or scientific facts boil down to faith? This paper was part of my answer to that question, and came out of those late-night discussions.

Faith and Reason

Looking back, I feel like my writing style has definitely grown since I wrote this paper. Even though it was only a year ago, I feel like I've learned a lot, not only about writing, but also about the content and subject matter of this paper. NJSP also gave me lots of opportunities to explore these ideas, and more discussions with people of faith have definitely given me some new sensitivity and understanding of their position. Enjoy the paper!

Board of Ed Meeting Summary for August 13th

As some of you might know, one of the things that I'll be doing this school year is serving as the Student Liaison to the East Brunswick Board of Education (cool word I think, liaison). My liaising duties (even better word, liaising) include attending all of the Board of Ed meetings, where I'm allowed to speak during discussion time and represent us, the students! The other side of my job is reporting what I learn back to you guys, the school community. So, in this blog, after every meeting (1st and 3rd Thursday of the month), I'll give you guys a summary of some of the important discussions and happenings. Hopefully I'll also be writing in the school newspaper, but since that's only once a month (and word limited) this will be a good place to put some details up. After the eventful year we had last year, I want to make sure there's a place that students can come if they want information on what's going on, and I want this to be that place!

Today was my first meeting back since NJSP, and unfortunately among the things I missed was the presentation of the new Memorial School plans. I'm an alum, and passing by the other day I got the sad sight of a pile of rubble where my school once stood. Happily though, construction will begin soon, and hopefully there will be other opportunities for me to hear about the progress and plans. In other elementary school news, Warnsdorfer's new playground is now complete, with Bowne's playground and others near completion. Additionally, next year will see the start of an extended care kindergarten option, which give parents the option of having their children in a supervised, structured environment from as early as 7 a.m. to as late as 6 p.m. The program is optional, and will cost extra, but currently has over 65 enrollees and will provide a good alternative to daycare for many working parents. Lastly in the miscellany is news about the successful heart screenings that went on yesterday for student athletes. The screenings were optional and cost 60 dollars, but will provide parents and athletes assurance against heart related sport injuries.

Two other major topics were brought up in this meeting: news about the Board of Education's motion for an injunction against the Hatikvah International School's charter, and the (passed) motion to raise school lunch prices.

On the first issue, I should first give some background. Here is a link to the homepage of the school itself, here is a link to a discussion of the controversy, and here is a link to an article specifically discussing the Board of Ed's lawsuit. The proposed school will be a publicly funded school that will provide a particular focus on "Hebrew language and culture" to develop bilingual students and help "build partnerships for future economic and cultural opportunities" with Israel. I'll cover the debate over the school itself in a later post (the article does a good job of it, but I'll give you guys my take), because the Board of Ed's lawsuit came from a completely different angle than most of the criticisms leveled at the school. According to law, the school must have at least 90% of its maximum enrollment of 108 enrolled before starting classes and before receiving public funds. According to the numbers provided to the Board of Ed, the enrollment currently stands at 68, which falls far short of the 98 needed. The State Department of Education has already granted approval of Hatikvah's charter, but this lawsuit could prevent the school from receiving the 1.22 million dollars that it was budgeted to get. I'll keep you guys posted on developments, and I'll post on the issue itself hopefully soon.

The other major discussion topic was the new raise in school lunch prices. Without a raise, the school's Food Services budget of 2.4 million was expected to take in a 14 thousand dollar profit. While this may initially seem odd, this number should instead be seen as a surplus. Money coming in is used to make up the cost of providing the lunches, and profit is simply the extra positive income. This 14 thousand left little wiggle room however (barely half of a percent of our total budget), and the danger that we could fall into the red made raising school lunch prices unavoidable. The initial proposed hike was 25 cents, bringing the cost in the high school up to $3.50 and giving the budget a wider margin of 125 thousand (around 2.5% of the total Food Services budget). However, concerns that this amount would put an undue strain on some families' budget motivated a compromise motioned by Mrs. Vicki Becker to only increase the cost by 10 cents. However, at this point, concerns were voiced not only only the budgetary issue, but also on the logistical issue, with Superintendent Dr. Jo Ann Magistro stating that incorporating further change divisions (dimes and nickels as opposed to quarters) would slow down lines. I expressed the concern that the effective cost would be a quarter raise without the effective gain being a quarter raise, as many students both young and old would undoubtedly have a hard time keeping track of small change and would likely find themselves coming up short on more occasions. Ultimately however, the motion passed, and effective this year school lunches will cost an extra 10 cents, bringing the high school cost to $3.35.

However, around midway through the discussion the news was announced that this year, hopefully by December, a new system will be available to pay for our school lunches. The system will function somewhat similarly to a debit card through new ID's that will be issued, which will keep lines flowing faster and reduce the hassle for many students. Additionally, these new ID's are also planned to allow students to unlock doors in the morning and during school hours by swiping them. The plans are still being worked on, and again I'll keep you guys posted. Expect a Clarion article about the changes sometime in November or December!

That's all for that meeting, hope you guys found some of that useful or interesting. More posts are on their way!

New Jersey Scholars Program

Summer hasn't really been summer for me this summer. For the second summer in a row I decided to do something academic with my school-free ten weeks. In other words, I went back to school. Last summer I went to the University of Pennsylvania to take courses (for fun and for credit), and totally loved the experience. It was a great intro to college, I met a lot of cool people, and the courses I took were really fun. I didn't take it for placement, it was really just for fun. Intro to Philosophy with Prof. Hilgers and Intro to Decision Theory with Prof. Sen were the courses I took, and both really broadened my interests and taught me a lot. I'd never been away from home for any long period of time, so it was great to get used to living on my own for six weeks, being independent, taking care of myself, having a roommate, and making friends out of strangers. I suggest a program like that to any high schooler who has a free summer; I've never experienced those CTY programs, but taking real undergrad courses with undergraduates was really great. It motivated the hell out of me too, because you can get into summer programs at schools that are out of your range. Knowing that I would be comfortable at an Ivy, that it wasn't pretentious, and knowing that I'm capable of the work gave me a lot of confidence, and doing a summer program is a great way to push your borders.

This summer I was looking into a similar program at Harvard (again, I can only get in because it's a summer program) when I heard about the NJ Scholars Program. The Program was a five week seminar on Human Rights, examining the topic through four different disciplines: Literature/Law, History/Politics, Religion/Philosophy, and the Arts. I wasn't originally excited (the website didn't look that impressive, and the alternative was Harvard), and I did the application without a whole lot of enthusiasm. Then I got to the second part of the application process, the interview phase, and I realized how awesome this program was going to be. The campus did not look like a high school campus, it was way too impressive, and the interview itself was fun and interesting. I'm absolutely happy I got in, even though I know my summer would have been great no matter what.

The choice was a little difficult; getting the course guide for Harvard and looking at all of the cool courses was kind of painful, knowing that I couldn't take any of them. I'm happy with the decision I made though, NJSP was amazing. The first few days were exciting, and it's always great meeting other kids knowing that no one knows anybody, but that everybody wants to meet everybody else. We jumped right in and had readings to do the first night, after Mr. Sauerman warned us about crossing route 206 of course (you will die!). Monday through Friday our mornings began with a lecture from 8:30 to 10 with one of the four professors (Kate Dodd for Art, Amy Glenn for Religion/Philosophy, Champ Atlee for Literature, and Nina McCune for History/Politics). Then we'd split into 3 groups of 13 (there were 39 of us) and have our seminars from 10:15 to 11:45, which were discussion oriented classes with one of the professors. After lunch, we'd have another seminar from 1:30 to 3, and then the rest of the day was ours. We would relax in the library (which was air conditioned, unlike our dorm), do the readings for our seminars, and hang out with each other until curfew (and sometimes past it).

I learned a lot about human rights, and our coursework was fun and interesting, but I also learned a lot about the people I was working with. Everyone got very familiar with the mannerisms of the individual teachers, and our resident impressionist Mike Sotsky managed to replicate Mr. Atlee. I learned about my peers too; the diversity of the community we formed was impressive. I'm not a religious person, but there were people there who were Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. We had musicians, athletes, and nerds of all denominations. We had Disney sing-alongs, Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, and every kind of intellectual debate you could think of (especially at 4 in the morning). It's that diversity that made those discussions possible. If I had to describe NJSP in a few words, it would be "a community of intellectuals". I don't mean a bunch of elitist snobs, or pretentious nerds, I mean a group of people who really loved learning about each other and about the world.

I made a lot of lasting friendships, and I'm sure we'll be having plenty of reunions. As an unexpected bonus, I also met an amazing girl who I'm lucky enough to now call my girlfriend. She's smart, fun, and a great match for me. When I say great match though, I don't mean that we're the same kind of people, although in a lot of respects we are. The great thing is that we're very different people in some very important ways: she's religious, I'm a skeptic; she's from an all-girls Catholic school, I'm from a really big public school; and most importantly, she's emotional and I'm definitely not. We've learned a lot from each other, and she's made me more comfortable with being a little more emotional.

In the end I brought a lot away from the program. I really feel that I'm ready for college now, and I'm going to go into senior year with more motivation and more confidence. I've learned a lot about myself, others, and the world, and I've produced what I feel is one of the best papers that I've ever written. This summer, even though it isn't over yet, has meant a lot to me, and I'll remember it for a long time.

Link to my paper

Because I talked about it in my last post, and because I feel like the topic is really relevant to this blog, I'm linking the paper that I wrote at the end of the New Jersey Scholars Program. My post on the program still isn't up, I promise I'm working on it and I want to do it justice.

To give you an overview, this paper is about identity, something I talked about in my very first post, and the dynamics of collective identities, particularly how they are used to motivate and justify violence. The little number signs are footnotes, google documents doesn't like them.

Hope you enjoy it!

Collective Identity and Mass Violence:

How what we call ourselves affects how we think

Meta-Blogpost

That's right, this is going to be a meta-blogpost: a blogpost about blogposting. I've kinda let my discipline slip when it comes to this blog; I started this blog just before I started my major final paper (which I might post) for the summer program I was in and have since been travelling and seeing family. But that's not the real reason I haven't been posting a whole lot. The real reason is that it takes serious effort to produce writing that you're confident enough in that you want (potentially) the whole world to read.

When I was writing my paper I came across something with my friends. I'm the kind of person who always wants a peer review. I always like other people's input, even if it's just editing for grammar: my sentences get wordy, I use too many semicolons, my sentence structure gets too complex, I write the way I speak, etc. Most of all I like having someone to tell me when things don't make sense to them the way they make sense to me. But a lot of my friends are not the same way at all. When I was trying to get peer reviewers I was offering to trade papers, but a lot of people didn't want other people reading their papers. Even these kids--who were all very clearly smart--weren't confident enough in their writing, or were too intimidated by their peers, to let others read their work.

So how does this tie in with blogposting. It's not that I don't have confidence in my writing, but whenever we produce something we're always worried about how other people will react. Whether it's art, athletics, or discussions in a group, confidence is important and hard to come by. For me, I never felt really comfortable in a sports setting. I don't mean that I'm not athletic, I've done a lot of athletics in my life, but what I mean is that I never felt fully comfortable having other people relying on or judging my athletic abilities. In a team setting I always felt like I was dragging everybody down, and I never really knew where to be on the court. But in clear contrast to that, I almost always feel comfortable in a discussion setting or really anytime I'm talking in front of people. I love Mock Trial, I'm way into Model United Nations and Model Congress, and this year I'm hopefully going to do drama as well. I'm a born bs'er, and I almost always have the confidence to voice my thoughts when I'm in class or seminar. For me, group discussion is just where I'm comfortable.

No matter how confident we are though, we're always self-conscious. I'm comfortable talking, but I'm always worrying about whether I'm talking too much, or saying things that are offensive or insensitive, or whether I sound arrogant. Our self-consciousness never goes away, and I'm thinking about those same issues when I'm writing a blogpost. Should I be writing a blog? Are people going to care, or am I just going to be that weird guy who blogs? Am I sounding pretentious, or nerdy, or just plain weird? What it boils down to is this: how are people going to react to the part of myself that I'm putting out there?

It's something we always have to deal with: how others perceive us. How do we market ourselves, how do we sell ourselves, how do we present ourselves? Clothing, appearances, attitudes, they're all deeply influenced by our social interactions. Some people cater to the audience, and they become an actor, wear the costume, and play the role that they feel will make society happy. And some people decide to give the audience the finger, and pretend that they don't care what anyone thinks of them. But whether we like it or not, we always know what the audience thinks, and that knowledge informs our decisions.

So for my part, I'll try to stay conscious of my audience, but never let them run the play. In life and in this blog, I don't intend to be shy with my opinions or my thoughts, and I never want to wear a costume that I don't feel comfortable in. As much as I try to deny labels, I'm really a thoughtful nerd, a guy who never lost his sense of natural wonder in the world, a guy who isn't afraid to challenge his beliefs or the beliefs of others, and someone who really fits the term philosopher. I don't mean old bearded men with pipes mumbling about meaningless nonsense, I mean philosophy, philo-, meaning love of, and sophia, meaning wisdom or knowledge. I honestly just love to learn, love to know, and love to share that exploration and discovery with other people. That's why I'm here, writing this blog, and I hope I'll get some people to come along for the ride!