ISCORE

I went to 2 presentations. The first was on "What are you?" It was given by two students that are from Puerto Rico, and they were asked all the time when they came here, what are you? So, they decided to do some research on this "phenomenon." Personally I was not so overjoyed by their presentation because I don't just go up to people, for curiosities sake, and ask people what nationality they are, and that was the basis for their research. I have a few international friends, or friends from different ethnic backgrounds, and we talk about their heritage or how things were back home all the time. However, I just don't go ask people randomly on campus. The only time I will ask is if I already know them and its really out of courtesy that I ask because I want to be open about their heritage and don't want to make false assumptions. For example one of my friends is of Indian descent and she is vegetarian now I don't want to have her over for homework or a study session and not have anything she can eat while she is here, because we often take hours to do some things. Now that's enough on the one I really didn't like.

The other one I went to was about the changing 'face' of affirmative action. Going into this seminar I thought they were going to talk about affirmative action in the workplace, because that is the only association I had with affirmative action. However, they talked about it in general. In the school systems and how affirmative action is moving towards social-economic purposes rather than ethnic backgrounds or race. There are a couple of reasons why I think I really liked this seminar. One is because the two speakers were not students, they do research/work with organizations that deal with this. Another reason was that the majority of the audience were teachers, faculty, or just older people. There were not a lot of students that attended this seminar. And the main reason I really like it is because they opened it up for group discussion like we do in class. They had us talk to the people sitting by us, and then brought it back and a few people talked about what they had just discussed. Heath and one of his friends were there, and that's who I was sitting by, so we had a pretty good discussion I think. I also thought a lot of the audience brought up very good points. One older lady said something to the extent of how the government should not hesitate to give out loans to college students because if you have a loan with a low interest, after you are done with college you can get a good job. With this job you are then able to pay off the loan, and its interest, and you are then able to pay more in taxes. So, therefore, the government is making more money because you are making more money. So, basically what she was saying was that it should be an incentive for the government to graduate students from college, and make it 'affordable' or allow them to get loans to pay for college because everyone is making out better. Overall, I thought this seminar was really thought provoking and I wish more Hixsons could have been there.