Only 3 more weeks and FH will be ending. I’m hoping the next three weeks will be memorable ones as you leave room 329 for bigger and better adventures (perhaps in room 331 or 333?

A few months ago when I was flipping through the Facing History and Ourselves textbook, I came upon a very intriguing article. The article was about how a high school student in Japan was beaten-to-death by her classmates because she was wearing a hand-me-down school uniform. When the police arrived at the scene her perpetrators responded that the girl was an “eye sore” and she made the school look bad because she was wearing hand-me-downs. This happened in the 1990’s perhaps 1993, THAT’S NOT TOO LONG AGO. In Japan it is advocated and accepted to punish those who don’t fit in. In the article the culprits were never arrested and charged (at it wasn’t mentioned in the article). What I want to know is how can no one intervene as the girl was beaten to a pulp in public? Because being beaten to death takes a long time and calling the police only takes less than a minute. Why were there no consequences? How did they know her clothes were ‘hand-me downs’?

A friend of mine told me that he could feel when people wanted to hurt him, and he would always carry a weapon for self-defense. I, of course pointed out that he couldn’t bring one to school. So he told me that he would never be alone. My point is that, it couldn’t just be the clothes, maybe there was another reason behind it. But why wasn’t there anything or anyone to prevent the attack on the victim?

Kaylie Cossette

For the past couple of weeks, I have gone through a series of different situations; situations ranging from extreme fights to many accounts of forgiveness. Saturday morning as I lay in bed, many things crossed my mind. I though of why I had reacted to these situations the way I did and the positive and negative consequences that came from them. Then this class came to mind, and I remembered all that we had learned about how people react differently towards certain situations and always receive positive or negative consequences that will later affect us or the future. I feel that we learn from our experiences and until these couple of weeks I never realized how much I could learn about myself and the people who I love in my surroundings. But is this how we truly learn> By doing things the wrong way and then fixing them? Or should we as intelligent people be able to automatically know and do what is right?

These questions crossed my mind. And I alone could not come up with the answer. Many of the things that occur on a day to day basis reflect what has occurred to us in the past. What good comes out of the wrong choices that we have made and how can we turn it around to help ourselves? This refers to all aspects of life, whether it be genocide like we are studying in class or even something just as simple as little mistakes we make as people.

In the past, our founding fathers believed and fought for independence and representation, which we are glad to have as of today. But is that really true for the city of Lowell? Well I think that it’s weird how the majority of the city council is made up of rich whites men from the upper highlands. These councilmen/women are to represent all of Lowell when the majority of Lowell is minorities. (if that makes any sense) What about the other regions in Lowell like Centerville, Pawtucketville, the Acres and South Lowell that aren’t represented. Could this be because of a higher power that we have a control of? Or the lack of minorities that vote? Or both?

As I was searching on topics to blog about for this week, I stumbled across an article about a lady who was losing job benefits due to her facebook profile. She was on a long term sick-leave as she was diagnosed with major depression. She soon received monthly sick leave benefits which were covered by her insurance. However, these payments suddenly dried up as the insurance company spotted her facebook profile. Their excuse for ending her payments while she dealt with her depression was that her photos showed her having “Fun.” As she was diagnosed with depression her doctor specifically suggested for the lady to go out and have fun with her friends and enjoy doing things as a way to forget about her problems. Yet the insurance company saw it as her no longer being depressed at all. She is still fighting for a reinstatement of her benefits. Now my opinion of this situation is that this lady should have not been penalized for her social life. Yes, she was out of work on sick-leave but to get over depression, medication is not just going to cure you over night; she has the right to go out and have fun, especially when her doctor advised her to do that. I feel the insurance company had no initial right to stop her payments while being on sick leave, they did not consult her or her doctor about the problem before ending the payments, they just right away took it as a negative thing.. but this is just my opinion.. overall, do you think facebook/myspace profiles should hold people against things like this? I can agree in other situations if a company, work place or school found very personal information and used it against them because we all should be aware that our profiles are accessed by millions of people. But with something like this, I don’t find it to be a big deal in this situation.