Republicans, stop blocking every single bill that the Democrats approve of. This doesn’t make you seem like you’re indestructible superheroes protecting all of us from the evil wrath of liberals. Instead you’re blocking ideas that could help us get back on our feet.

Democrats; stand up for yourselves. It’s depressing to watch a group of highly educated men and women be beaten down by the opposing team just because they seem bigger and stronger. They may be able to knock you down but it doesn’t mean that they can outsmart you (trust me they can’t). Not to mention your strong amount of apathy during presentations, I’m not surprised that you’re unable to get anything passed in Congress. It’s because nobody can feel your passion when presenting an idea.

And Tea Partiers, either you guys gain some knowledge on how our government has been working for the past 235 years or you leave office. Frankly your ideals are hypocritical, you preach “give the power of government back to the people,” while you sit in Congress and block all the bills and proposals that could give power back to Americans and allow them to eventually become self-sufficient.

The deficit is rising, as is unemployment Americans’ homes are being foreclosed on, and still you all are more concerned with making each other look bad than compromising in order to get things done. Stop acting like petulant children and start making decisions that will benefit everyone.

And here is a note to Americans,

Stop blaming President Obama. He’s not the problem.

 
Love, Sam

Americans clearly still fear homosexuality, especially in the military. Instead of expressing the rights given to us by our forefathers, who promised us equal rights and freedom for all, citizens of America were forced to hide themselves. When President Clinton issued this exectuive order in 1993, his hopes were that the nation would eventually come to accept homosexuals in the military.

This, however, backfired largely due to religious opposition. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states the rights of the people, but it also presents the idea of separation of church and state. If God has made all things equal, and made everyone in his own image, then why would create something considered to be an abomination? What God would corrupt a heart?

Above all other things, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was discriminatory and degrading because it insinuated that homosexuals on the battlefield are inferior to the other men and women serving. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy not only belittled homosexuals in society, but promoted the idea of homophobia throughout our country. In a 2010 Vet Voice Foundation study, 73% of military veterans said they favored allowing homosexuals to serve openly. In fact, the veterans do not care what sexual orientation a person has, but rather if a person can hold and shoot a gun or not.

While the Republicans are balancing their time between Islamophobia and homophobia, don’t be surprised nothing is being done in Washington. The latest Republican debate featured political gay bashing directly on Fox News, a feat that would not go unnoticed. President Obama criticized Rick Santorum, who proclaimed he would bring back the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The audience booed the young soldier asking whether the policy would be returned, and Santorum called the repeal an “experiment which I view as tragic.” He also declared that he doesn’t have a problem with homosexuals, just “a problem with homosexual acts.”

A man like this in power could be detrimental to our nation. A man so bent on limiting the rights of man as an individual would directly violating the rights given to us by our forefathers. Santorum and others like him are the personification of hypocrisy. They claim to be crusaders for equal rights and less government, but continue to promote limitations on the rights of men and women. Let’s hope other Republican candidates do not follow the footsteps.

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will still be pursued by others, and will still be an issue for soldiers. Even if the soldiers are welcomed back into the military, ranks have been demoted and opposition has still arisen. This is not over. Not for the Republicans, for the Democrats, and not for the Americans.

Davis’ case calls into question the morality of the death penalty, even for the guilty.

There’s a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest peacemakers of all time, who said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

What about a death for a death? And what if both of those deaths are unjustified, as in the case of Troy Davis?

America’s logic seems to be a little lost in this instance. The government wants the public to understand the severity of murder by committing murder. And yes, execution is basically murder. The people being killed may not be innocent, but that doesn’t change the facts. Killing of defenseless, captured convicts has no justification, at least not one that would make sense to anyone with half a brain or heart.

Proponents of the death penalty say not only is it just but logical. Our prisons are overpopulated and expensive. Countless dollars are spent on the lives of murderers, thieves and drug dealers.

Yes, this would make anyone angry. Money used to maintain prisons could be used for alternative purposes which would benefit our community in countless ways, but saving money, on no account, justifies the taking of a life.

In many cases, such as Davis’s, race is called into question. It seems quite obvious that race plays a role in who receives the death penalty. It’s nearly undeniable that when a defendant is black, not only is he or she guilty but death is the only source of justice. Davis was a black man who supposedly killed a white police officer. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but facts don’t matter when race is added into the equation.

In North Carolina, a study proved that defendants were 3.5 times more likely to receive the death penalty if the victim was white. The likelihood increases even more if the defendant is black.

There are obvious flaws in the judicial system. The elimination of the death penalty may crowd our federal penitentiaries, but it also allows for the correction of any mistakes made by the courts. Davis made several appeals, but the courts continued to ignore the proof, or lack thereof. Basically, Davis was guilty until proven innocent.

Nine witnesses came forward in Davis’s trial twenty years ago, and since then seven have come forth stating that police pressured them into lying. About 1,500 legal experts also voiced their concern over Davis’s apparent innocence. Other than the accounts of these people, there was no other evidence implicating Davis. But a cop was dead, and that meant someone had to take the blame. Someone had to die.

From 2000 to 2007, an average of five prisoners per year were taken off death row after their innocence was proven. In the past ten years there have been 628 executions, and it is unknown whether or not some of these men and women were also innocent. Davis could be one of many innocent people who could have died in our nation’s history of execution.

Forgiveness in circumstances of murder is nearly impossible, and understandably so. Loved, innocent men, women and children are dead due to the ruthlessness of murderers. However, we cannot claim to be more righteous than those murderers if Americans allow death to become a moral equalizer. How can the innocent family members of death row inmates forgive those who have allowed their loved one to die? Would it not be just as difficult?

If this is not enough reason to doubt the legitimacy and morality of the death penalty, consider the other countries around the world that also execute felons. Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq are just a few. We disagree with these countries on just about every other political decision they make, except, apparently, capital punishment.

It’s time America set an example for its citizens instead of committing the same crimes, but it’s also up to Americans to stand up for the most basic of all human rights: life.

All school year we have been swamped with messages like “people are different, feelings are the same,” or, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  But despite all this philanthropy, we forgot another group to try to get along with – the transgendered students.

For those who do not know (or maybe are ill-informed), being “transgender” means that you feel that you better identify with a gender other than the one that you were anatomically born.  Many non-transgenders may also experience problems with gender identity.  Sometimes people who express their gender differently are often falsely labeled as transgender.  Many of the people called “transvestites” or “cross dressers” are not transgender at all; yet, they still are bullied just as brutally.

There are many students at this school who express themselves differently than the societal norms for their gender.  Even though it is society that sets these norms, we should not hate someone because they may not dress the way we think they should.

As a student, I have seen so much hatred towards these children.  Every day students glare at them and talk about them as they pass by in the hallways.  They are publicly ridiculed for the ways they feel best expresses the person they are inside.  How can we be such hypocrites?  We teach that it is what is on the inside that counts, and then we turn into brutal, bullying monsters the moment that someone tries to express who they truly are inside.

Everyone at East is at fault for this routine torture – students, teachers, and administrators.  We have allowed this to happen by not supporting these students when support is what they so greatly need.  Transgendered students and students with non-traditional gender expressions have the highest suicide rates of all teens.  This issue has become so vast that even the White House was forced to hold a caucus on the protection of transgendered people.

We have done nothing as a school to support these students, other than going around and saying to “stop the bullying” and “be nice to people.”  In other news, President Hoover will end the Great Depression by telling people “you should give money to charity.”  That always works.

Certain administrators have even contributed to this bullying.  There are tons of girls at this school who wear wigs, often for medical reasons, and it would be cruel to make them take them off.  It would be much worse to do this and then suspend them when they refuse to spend the rest of the day bald.  But, if you have a Y chromosome, it makes it okay for certain administrators to bully and harass you.  Hate crimes are okay if the student does not conform to your idea of a man.

This is wrong.  These students face enough harassment from their peers, the last thing they need is to be stomped on by adults.  If we are to be a school “tolerant” of all students, we need some education first.  Ignorance has been breeding all year like those rabbits we see hopping around Charlotte.

Are there some things just too difficult to tolerate?  Are there some people too controversial to accept?  I would disagree.

For those of you who have been harassed all year, I am sorry and I support you.  I want you to know that there are many people at this school who support you too.  Despite all of the transphobia floating around, you can find allies.  Charlotte has great groups for teens like Time Out Youth and a Gay-Straight Alliance based at East that is well-integrated in the community.

And, for those of you who continue to glare at these children, it is 6 a.m. and the phone is ringing.  It is time to wake up.

The U.S. is not only a major world power but a primary contributor to both of these organizations. As such it backs the organizations financially as well as in political and military might. Traditionally the U.S. has used its position to advance its own goals, but recently America has supported the overthrows of various dictators and oppressive authoritarian governments.

Several Middle Eastern countries have been in the midst of revolution for months, facing violent backlash from the ruling regimes. However, no leader has been quite as terrifying as Qaddafi. It is not only the weapons and power at his disposal which has ignited fear, but his erratic, irrational mind which has caused the world to become wary. He claims his people love him while they battle in the streets fighting off his forces, openly professing their hatred of the mad authoritarian leader.

This is what has constituted an international intervention. Despite the human rights issues at hand, many do not agree with the U.S. becoming entangled in affairs which are occurring an ocean away. Further, this battle has no direct effect on our country or population. The argument is valid.

The U.S. has been in economic crises for nearly three years now. We are making little improvements and the weight of recession still weighs heavy on the shoulders of the average citizen. The U.S. government is financing a revolution so that Libyans may be able to gain fair work while unemployment remains high domestically. Some question whether the U.S. should not focus on its own people before allocating resources to another nation, whether it is at civil war or not.

There is also another factor to consider, another war in fact. The “War on Terror” has cost billions if not trillions of dollars over the past ten years, not to mention countless lives. Is the U.S. really willing to pull itself, even if not directly, into another situation of warfare and reconstruction? The battle against insurgents continues as does the struggle to establish legitimacy and stability in Afghanistan.

The overthrow of Qaddafi has been difficult enough, a NATO attack on his home has already proved unsuccessful, killing one of his sons and three grandchildren while he remain unscathed.

And if the revolutionaries are successful in Libya, terrorists group will likely surface in the gap of authority and attempt to take power. The UN will have to step in to transition the nation into a new government system, meaning the U.S. involvement will continue beyond the time of war.

And what about those other revolutions? Egypt? Tunisia? Our support for the revolution in these countries was limited. We stated that we stood behind the people and that was that. They were able to successfully win the rights and freedoms which had been denied of them for decades and remove dictators which had siphoned wealth from the entire population.

These are all compelling arguments, but there is one issue which has not been addressed: human rights.

The Constitution protects the thing which we hold most dear, our freedom. It is a document more powerful than steel or diamond, one the likes of which Libya does not have. It is for this reason that Qaddafi was able to gain his power and assert his restrictive control over his people.

The Libyans are fighting for their rights, rights which we enjoy here in America, and often take for granted. It is difficult for Americans to connect to the Libyans because we lack empathy, but we were once in their situation.

American colonists fought and won the Revolutionary War against England, a monarch which limited the citizens’ freedom of speech, press, as well as their right to privacy and a fair trial. The colonists believed as the Libyans do that this was unjust, and they had the right to overthrow their rulers in order to create a more democratic government.

The colonists had strong will, but also support from the French and Spanish. It was this military and financial support which made victory possible.

All things considered, it’s still impossible to say whether U.S. involvement in the Libyan civil war is right or wrong. However, I am a human, and I support other humans in their pursuit for their rights, their freedom, and their equality.

Should religion play a part when you are judging someone? Should someone’s personal belief system play a part in how they are depicted as a person? If you asked me then I would answer with of course not! I believe that people should not be judged by their personal spiritual ideals. I have absolutely no say over if Joe Schmoe is going to be a Christian or Jewish. A person should be judged by how trustworthy and how genuine they are as people.

This country was founded on the basis of Religious Freedom. A majority of the people that immigrated over the Atlantic Ocean were coming because they were being forced out by the King who didn’t agree with their religion. From what I know this is a country of the free not of the religiously prejudice.

In order to create this religiously accepting world I believe that we must come together and learn to accept people for their differences. There are already a few different organizations that are trying to promote interfaith relations such as Mecklenburg Ministries which promotes interfaith relationships, and support inter-racial efforts, as well as attend to social justice issues in the community.

Let’s get into an argument about abortion, because isn’t it all semantics?  Someone says that they are pro-life.  And they are lucky, because it sounds good and it looks good and you can put it on a little bumper sticker with a cute little handprint on it.  You can write it on a piece of red duct tape and smack it on your kid’s mouth.  Cute.  But there’s a difference between being pro-life and being anti-choice.  Because, you see, the woman carrying a fetus is alive as well – she’s more than just a vessel lined with love and uterine tissue, she’s a person too.

And then we have pro-choice.  It is about choosing things.  It is about tedious decision making for a choice that women shouldn’t have in the first place.  But being pro-choice is not the same as being pro-abortion; a woman may never want an abortion, but she still will not deny this right to anyone else.  But people don’t know that.  Pro-choicers are crazy bra-less feminists and poor minorities in urban areas.  They don’t use protection, so they kill innocents instead of dealing with the consequences of their mistakes.

Here are two sides who never talk to each other, only over each other – one side an opinion of reason, and one side a reasoned opinion.  Unfortunately the constitutional right to abortion, as decided in the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, will not always be available.  Since it was established in 1973, the right to abortion has been fought against tooth and nail.  The right to abortion also allows for all sorts of reproductive rights concerning women – including the right to have a child the way a woman desires.  When we speak of limiting women’s reproductive choices, we speak of limiting all choices.  Natural births, home births, the morning after pill, in-vitro fertilization – all of these things are protected by Roe.

It’s time to “man up” ladies because the recent changes made in Congressional make-up have put women’s health care rights under attack.  The right-wing (who by the way supposedly wants to support constitutional rights and defend small government) has issued a series of new bills that brutally limit women’s access to health care.  Not only was a bill presented to limit the definition of rape (making almost 85% of rape cases no longer rape, meaning if you wanted to press charges against your rapist you would have to be brutally raped and sodomized), but also Congress has attempted to cut funds to Planned Parenthood because it “funds abortions.”  This completely disregards the fact that the majority of Planned Parenthood’s work involves basic health screenings and cancer treatment.  One in every five women has benefited from Planned Parenthood, often women who would have nowhere else to receive health care.  Planned Parenthood is too often seen a s a “fetus-decimating factory,” rather than a viable health care center.

An inflammatory South Dakota bill was also recently introduced; this bill would legalize the murder of abortion providers (no, I’m not making this stuff up).  Legal murder!  We are not talking about fetuses lacking a conscious, we are talking about educated adult men and women who go about their jobs every day: around 2,000 men and women who, in my opinion, make the world a better place.  If the bill is passed, there is no doubt that people would die.  Most reproductive clinics today require safe rooms due to the high number of life-threatening incidents that are bound to occur.  For example, a man from Seattle is currently on trial for breaking into an abortion clinic with a machete and screaming, “You baby killers! You are all going to hell for being murderers,” as well as threatening clinicians.  Many feel that the man should be charged for terrorism, but the harrowing fact is that this is a treat that looms over abortion providers every day.

Abortion provider Dolores P. (she cannot use her whole name because of fear) said of the South Dakota bill in a recent interview, “I wanted to call up my friends and say, ‘Hello! So, at least a couple people in South Dakota want to make it so that it kind of wouldn’t be illegal to kill an abortion provider. Like, me, your friend who does abortions. I’m an abortion provider and I’m your friend. So it would become legal for someone to kill me, your abortion-providing friend. So please, please, please help me do something about this.’”  Her desire to become an abortion provider stems from her own experience with abortion, a procedure she had after a contact pregnancy (like getting pregnant from sitting on a toilet – very rare).  Her experience has sparked my own desire to follow a similar path, because all women deserve health care.  She, along with the 2,000 other providers in the country, goes to work every day swamped by protesters and risk of violence.  She says of her work, “Every day I have gone into the clinic I cannot help but feel I’m working with the heavy s—, high drama. Not just the threat of violence and the content of the work but the fact that the news has a way of showing up in your waiting room pretty much daily. I shall call this place that is so dense with significance “Nightmare Town” – which includes pro-life patients! Yes! They too get abortions!”

It seems clear to me that this constitutional right is one that needs protecting, and more Americans should be standing up for it.  Pro-choice is about more than just abortion –it’s about access to the myriad of legal health care options available to women.  A pro-life person can be pro-choice as well.  So what do we call the dissenters? It appears anti-choice, the term adopted by feminists to describe this belief, is the best term.  The rest of us need to stand up and fight for our right to access health care, to receive treatment at Planned Parenthood, or to live life.  Besides, if the right-wing wants less government, then they should keep their government out of my uterus.

Rana’s inspiring account of the Egyptian revolution reminded us not only how blessed America is but also that democracy can only prosper if people value it and take advantage of its opportunities. We all can learn from Rana’s story because it proves that student protest can accomplish great things.  From Tahrir Square in Egypt to Tiananmen Square in China, young people can make a difference.  Next time teacher cuts or testing makes you angry, stand up and do something about it.

Hollywood is doing it as well.  Lupe Fiasco’s spectacular new album, Lasers, defies all accusations that rap is about simply the materialistic – cars, women, and the money that buys the two. Most notably, the song “Words I Never Said” sends a political message that every young person must pay attention to.

Fiasco says in this theme song for 2011 that “all the silence is worse than all the violence.” In America, freedom of speech is one of our most important as well as most ignored rights. As the world watches a Libyan dictator massacre his own helpless people, we must remind ourselves that we all have a voice, and are blessed with the freedom to use it as loudly as we can to protect those who haven’t been given the same blessings.

Whether it’s protesting the obviously unfair Pay for Performance plan by getting involved in the school’s Student Action Committee (it’s brand new and led by senior James Whalen) or getting involved in one of the interfaith programs the opinion piece “Spread Tolerance through Action” talks about, eliminating injustice usually starts small.

Fiasco sings that simply being a rebel in your thoughts is not enough. “If you don’t become an actor you’ll never be a factor,” he says. In our school, we’ve seen evidence of people getting involved in causes they care about. Purple day, R-word campaigns, Project Unify, religious tolerance – all of us have proven that we can be student activists. In fact, our school has received local attention for our student and teacher involvement in issues like testing.

So when a teacher gets cut, or when a women’s clinic loses funds, or when a tsunami damages a country, the East Meck Eagles will do something about it. Because if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem.

 “Waiting for ‘Superman’” gives statistics that disguise themselves as optimistic. According to the movie, if we eliminated the lowest performing five to 10 percent of teachers, we could have the solid public education system we had decades ago. While this may give some hope, it is misleading. The way our federal, state, and local education systems are acting, our definition of performance will continue to fail students and that five to 10 percent of teachers will continue to be in charge of the well being of students until they retire. These administrators, whether they are federal, state or local, may never stop adhering to the public’s opinion or acting fears over re-election. Are they forgetting that the only people who should matter to them are the students?

Case in point: Michelle Rhee. This D.C. schools’ superintendent tried to introduce an option for teachers to choose between pay based on performance and pay based on tenure. Pay based on performance gave teachers the option to earn more than $100,000, but, for some reason, the D.C. union still found this proposition radical to the point of chaos.

So what happened to the heroic Michelle Rhee, the woman going against any chance of public approval or re-election for the sake of the children she served? She was fired by the end of this November.

It’s obvious that the first solution is to eliminate tenure. What job, besides teaching, uses tenure? If a banker, doctor or even a grocer begins underperforming, he or she is fired without hesitation. So why is it that the pay and employment of teachers, who have the most important job in America, is based off of how many years a teacher has taught rather than how influential and successful a teacher is?

What is so thought provoking about “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is that the problems covered in the documentary are present in most school systems, like in our case, CMS.

For example, one teacher’s success cannot be gauged on whether or not they can pull the test scores up of a class of thirty students who have grown used to the mediocrity of CMS’s (or, in general, America’s) schools. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, which means the efforts of the teachers, administrators, and school board.  Still, a teacher’s pay should not depend on how many years he or she has committed to a school. Students will be the first to attest that just because a teacher is an experienced veteran does not mean they have the passion or ability to be a teacher. Sometimes, teachers with more years behind them can be less enthusiastic than those who are new to the field. But when it comes down to the chopping block, these new, passionate teachers will be the first to go.

 “Waiting for ‘Superman’” challenges the complacency that some teachers have as a result of tenure, which is that they have the “right” to teach. This view is often due to teachers’ unions, who frown upon firing a teacher over poor performance or not rewarding teachers with tenure. Although teachers’ unions are illegal in North Carolina, this attitude is still shared in some classrooms.

CMS, as well as the state and national education department, must reconsider what it thinks a “high performing” teacher is, as it seems that Peter Gorman and his nine cronies are struggling to find a valid measure of a teacher’s success. This is seen in the school board’s new program with a somewhat misleading name, “Pay for Performance.”

“Pay for Performance” defines success as the average student improvement (on tests) from year to year. So this could mean that an AP or IB student, who is generally one that performs highly on End of Course exams, could go from teacher to teacher each year and improve their already high exam scores only slightly. These educators in charge of already successful students will be penalized simply because the improvement of these students was slight.

Many of us have been surprised to hear that some of the teachers we learned the most from are considered by the new teacher evaluations to be some of the lowest performing in the school. And thanks to the “Pay for Performance” program, these teachers’ wages will decrease, which may cause teachers to leave. Furthermore, on the state level, East Meck is a Distinguished School. But by CMS’s Pay for Performance standards, East Meck is lack luster.

The reason CMS has instated end of year exams for every class, even classes like Student Congress, is to gauge a base for determining teachers’ pay. And what about resource lab?  It will be completely cut.  Students are being trained to become a product of the citizens – literally robots who cannot think for themselves, only regurgitating information and saying “A, B, C, or D.”

Pessimists theorize that the reason behind this is so Gorman can save money by docking all teachers’ pay.  It seems that no teacher can succeed in the proposed Pay for Performance system.

Clearly something needs to change, and paying teachers for performance seems to be the answer.  But not Gorman’s way.  A teacher’s pay and a student’s understanding of a subject cannot be solely determined by test scores and faulty statistics.  It’s our future that Gorman needs to think about, not saving a buck or making the system look good.  The school system needs to impose realistic solutions to better the education of students.  The way things are looking, this could soon be an impossibility.