Super-size Me

After watching the documentary Super-size Me, I disagree with the point that the documentary tries to make.  Is America obese? Yes.  Is that the fault of fast food restaurants? In a way.  Fast food is not good for you, and eating it everyday like the guy in the documentary does will cause you to become overweight and unhealthy.  But, the reason America is obese is not just because of fast food.  We do not exercise, we eat way too much, and the food that we do eat is not healthy.  Now, I am not talking about fast food here, but all kinds of food that we eat.  Most of our food is loaded with preservatives and unnatural ingredients that until the last 40 or 50 years were never there.  Americans do not exercise.  If we have to go somewhere, we take the car.  Both of these explanations have much to do with why America is obese.  While fast food definitely does not help the situation, it is hardly the cause and reason for our obesity.

Also, what really irritates me the most about this documentary is where the blame is placed for America’s obesity.  The documentary likes to place the sole blame on the fast food company’s and the way in which they target children in order to create life-long customers.  While I will agree to the fact that the fast food companies need to show a little more responsibility, such as placing the nutritional facts of their food where people can see them, the real blame for America’s obesity falls on the individual themselves.  It is a little thing called personal responsibility, something that is fast disappearing in America.  It is so easy to blame the other guy instead of looking at our own faults and changing them.  The fast food companiesdo not force the people to walk into their restaurants.  People do that because of their own free will.  Is the food unhealthy for you? Yes.  Do the people know that? Yes.  It is like the saying goes, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”  Well guess what, fast food has fooled you more than once, shame on you.  Time to take a little personal responsibility and stop eating fast food if you are so worried about what it will do to you.  And as for the companies targeting children in their advertisement, I just ask one question “Where are the parents?”  If they are so worried about what is happening to their children, then why let them go?  All you have to do is say no!

Student Journalists Turn to the Web to Circumvent Censorship

While this article was written over seven years ago, I think that it raises a very important issue that will only increase in importance as time goes on.  With access to the internet, kids have found a way to go around the censorship that schools have placed on student newspapers.  In 1988, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of school administrators to censor student articles.  Students have now found a new way to get around that censor; the internet.  According to several court rulings, the internet is out of reach of school officials, even if the students focus on school issues.  According to Edwin C. Darden, a staff attorney for the National School Boards Association,

The dilemma is that the student is off campus, and they have First Amendment rights. On the other hand, school officials have a responsibility to protect the school and not have those rights cause harm or fear within the school walls.

What should be done? Is the internet free game for the students, or should school officials be able to censor them? According to Lance Lipinsky, a student and founder of an online newspaper,

No one wants to offend anyone.  But there are kids in the journalism department, and they are very talented, but can’t say what they want to because it’s censored.  We have found a way around that.

I think that this is a great concern that many educators have.  While students certainly have thier First Amendment rights, I think that as soon as they decide to write about school and the people in that school, they lose those rights and should be censored by school officials.  The interent is a great tool that can be used, but I think that the schools need to have more influence on what their students are posting about them.  Maybe in some way, the internet should be seen as an extension of the classroom.

“Student Journalists Turn to the Web to Circumvent Censorship”

From eSchool News Staff and Wire Service Reports

Full Article

How a Gutless Student Press Lets Georgetown Censor Us

Censorship is a very touchy subject.  Who gets to decide what is censored or not? Should anything be censored at all? I mean after all the first amendment gives us the freedom of speech right?  In an article written by Moises D. Mendoza, the former editor in chief of THE HOYA, a school newspaper for Georgetown University, Mendoza responds to an episode that happened to the paper last week. Georgetown University censored THE HOYA for an advertisement that was placed in the newspaper.  THE HOYA apologized for it.  Mendoza was not mad about the fact that THE HOYA apologized for running the article, but that the newspaper was censored at all. 
Mendoza says,

It’s not that THE HOYA should print every ad it gets.  We should respect community standards of appropriateness.  If the paper wants to ban certain advertisements, that’s its prerogative.  What’s scary is Georgetown’s trying to dictate those standards to students.  It’s fundamentally violating its pledge to support free speech.  What’s more scary is that we just accept it.

In a way, Mendoza has a point.  As citizens of the United States, we have the right to free speech.  As a University in the United States, Georgetown supports that right.  But, I think that Mendoza is wrong in thinking that Georgetown is violating its pledge to support free speech when it censors the university newspaper.  The university newspaper is an extension of Georgetown University and therefore falls under Georgetown’s jurisdiction.  It is Georgetown’s right to censor anything that is produced under the Georgetown University name.

This is a very touchy subject when dealing with censorship and freedom of speech.  When teaching in a writing class to students, were do you draw the line between what can be allowed and what shouldn’t.  Most high school’s have a student newspaper that the students run and operate.  Does that mean that the students should be able to write what they want in them or should the school censor what is written?  What qualifies as being censored and what doesn’t?  It is a very tough call and I think that it is one that needs to be made on a case by case basis, but certainly it is the school’s responsibility to censor what is being published, especially since it is being published under their name.

“How A Gutless Student Press Lets Georgetown Censor Us”
by Moises Mendoza

Full Article

 

 

Introduction

Hello all!  Welcome to my blog MySpace or TheirSpace?.

As you may already have guessed from reading my title, the topic of my blog is about MySpace censorship, specifically on how it affects schools.  As MySpace has become more and more popular especially among teens, the issue of what should or shouldn’t a student be allowed to place on his or her account has become very important.  Should a student be allowed to talk bad about the school or those involved with it?  Whose job is it to monitor the students MySpace accounts?  If the parents do not care then should the school?  If the student is forced to remove certain things from their MySpace account, is that a violation of their freedom of speech?  I know that this is a lot of questions to deal with, but I hope that by looking at some of the events that have happened recently I will be able to answer some of these questions.

The feeds that I have subscribed to are USA Today, The Washington Post, Google News under the search query myspace and schools, and finally to a blog called blogTO.  I chose USA Todaybecause I thought that it would provide me with many articles about MySpace censorship that have occurred throughout the United States.  I chose The Washington Post because I hope that it will give a view of the topic from a more political angle.  Located in Washington D.C., I thought maybe it might have some political opinion about MySpace censorship that other newspapers might not have.  The Google News search query should be able to get me a lot of articles that specifically deals with MySpace and how it is affecting schools.  The blog blogTO consists of many different blogs to search through, and provided me with a few that dealt with MySpace censorship.