Cory Booker

I can honestly say I had never heard of Mayer Cory Booker until this assignment. He is obviously heavily influence by Dr. King and he reminds me of what Dr. King might have been like if he were still around today. Booker has captivating tone that left me wanting to hear him more by the end of the video. He's a lot like Dr. King in that he can access his vast library of knowledge on a whim. He actually quoted about an eight liner of Dr. King in the video. He didn't seem threatened by any of the questions and he answered all of the questions directly because he didn't have anything to hide. In the video he talks about how it's about getting in the trenches and getting things done or at least moving; and Booker embodies this belief. He spent eight years living in a low-income high-rise. He's had a teen aged boy die in his arms and death threats graffitied on buildings in Newark.

In the article "The Mayor's Crusade Gets Personal" Booker continues to lead by example. He adopts three Newark boys in the big brother program and spend nearly every weekend with them. It's not charity work for him, it's just one of his parts in changing Newark. Instead of trying to change these boys he guides them in love. That's a huge element in Dr. King's philosophy of change. I'm going to start following this guy much closer, I think he's got a lot of big things yet to do at the young age of 39.

Teacher Quality Argument

My assignment was to research and find evidence that teacher quality is not a priority of Belmont's in the letters from Bob Fisher that inform the tuition payers when tuition is going up and in the year end evaluations. The following are quotes from Bob Fisher's '08-'09 letter:

"Belmont is in a very solid financial position as it prepares to weather this storm" (the storm being the receding economy)

-The message that I took from this quote was that Belmont is in a solid financial state and has cash to spend on things, thus why is it not being spent on hiring more quality teachers?

"We remain committed to being good stewards of our finances while offering an excellent educational value to our students"

-If we are good stewards of our finances, are we investing in quality professors that seek to enrich the lives of their students like it says in our mission statement? "Faculty, administration and staff commit themselves to guide and challenge students to develop their full potential in order to lead lives of meaning and purpose." (Belmont Mission Statement)

"In order to ensure the continuing quality of a Belmont education, and to attract and retain the best faculty and staff possible we find it necessary to raise our tuition"

-Does this mean we ARE raising tuition? I don't think they are retaining the best faculty and staff possible, thus is it NECESSARY to raise tuition?

These are just possible points that I think might have some weight behind them if used correctly in this "document" that we might produce.

Non-Violence

Who better to hear from on non-violence than Gandhi himself?

"Non-violence is goodwill towards all life. It is pure love."

This sounds familiar because Dr. King adopted this view of Gandhi's and Dr. King lived this principle. Gandhi says, "Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory." Gandhi lived his principles as well. He spent over six years of his life in prison and devoted himself to non-violence as a means to achieve the freedom of India.

"The greater the progress , the greater the recognition of our unworthiness." Gandhi was humble about any progress that was made through his leadership and that is what probably made him such an attractive leader. Non-violence was the cornerstone to the foundation of his leadership and it proved to be successful.

Financial Aid

Daniel Headlee

Dr. LaLonde

November 12, 2009

My question for Ms. Gill is, “Is there more full athletic scholarships given out than full academic scholarships?” And, “What qualities are most attractive when considering what person gets a certain amount of financial aid?”

After being at Belmont for a year and almost a semester I’ve experience a broad array of fellow students. A lot of the students who come to Belmont come because they want to get a job in the music industry in some way and most of them bust their butt to get here. I understand that it doesn’t make sense for the university pay for students to come here if the student is willing to take on the financial burden himself or herself but Belmont advertises itself as a Christian affiliated school that cares about the individual. If that is what matters to Belmont then I would disagree with an athletic scholarship being given out more often than an academic. On average the students who receive an academic scholarships are going to be students who excelled in high school and want to come to college to develop skills that help them down the road.

In the Belmont mission statement it says, “Belmont University empowers men and women to engage and transform the world. The university prepares students to use their intellectual skills, creativity, and faith to meet the challenges and opportunities that face the human community.” I believe our school does this but I think Belmont is diverging from this mission when they invest high dollars in things such as athletics before things such as speech and debate students (I.E. “students with intellectual skills and creativity”). I’m not saying that the athletes don’t have these skills it’s just that in their sport theses skills aren’t being developed as efficiently as they could be if they were in speech and debate or SIFE.

Gandhi

I have a better understanding of Gandhi after completing this short biography of him and watching the movie but my new understanding of him has generated other questions.

Who did Gandhi pray to? He considered himself a Hindu, Muslim, and Christian all of which have different gods. My guess would be that he prayed to whom I consider the one true God, that Christians pray to, but I don't have any facts to back that up.

Gandhi was a wise man who used his power to cause change for the Indian race. As a great leader himself, who did he follow? From my knowledge it would appear that he didn't follow a deity but values and principles. "Gandhi pondered the principles guiding his life-truth, non-violence, self-realization, and community service." Gandhi's influence didn't cease when he died. His influence continued on to conquer the civil rights struggle in the United States through Dr. King. Gandhi is an irreplaceable figure of our past and our world would be different today if it weren't for him.

Where do we go from here?

The more I read of Dr. King the more I respect him. His understanding of human nature seems infinite and uncluttered by external distractions. In Dr. King's speech "where do we go from here" he continues to impress me with his skills of leadership and drive towards the goal of complete freedom.

The purpose of the speech was to voice that even though they've made some victories they are not done and to inform them where they stood in the big picture thus far. Dr. King does a great job of working along side the people that he is leading and showing them how they're going to beat segregation. He comes off as just one of their own, a normal guy, and that was attractive to his followers.

"First, We must massively assert our dignity and worth."

"Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against a long night of physical slavery"

"We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship."

"We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation..."

And probably my favorite quote of the speeches so far:

"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

Also, I thought this is a way was funny just because the job he is referring to is his job.

"The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy"

Nashville Civil Rights

The main thing that caught my attention was how much differently I would think about issues today if it weren't for MLK and the civil rights movement. It was interesting to see the diverse group of people they interviewed. The first being the white soccer-mom (what she would've been referred to today) who believed it was a violation her own civil rights by not allowing her to choose who she gets to serve and not serve. Another interview that was interesting was the group of teenaged boys. One of the boys specifically said that he wasn't raised around African Americans and he didn't want to have to adapt to living around them because he wouldn't know how. All of the people interviewed who were against the civil rights movement in Nashville sounded unintelligent. They avoided the real reason they had a problem with the movement; that they just didn't like African Americans.

MLKJR

Up until today I only knew a few things that Dr. King had accomplished in his life. After reading a bit, I feel like I've learned what's was more important and that is who he was. He has an uncanny ability to boil issues down to their source, a deep thorough understanding of human nature, and a humble but wise approach on taking action. He wasn't narrow minded he just saw the most effective way to take action and didn't stray from that path. I get this notion mainly from his elementary explanation of nonviolent action and why he believe this is the best manner for reform.
"Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones."
"True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force-tension, confusion or war; it is the presence of some positive force-justice, good will and brotherhood."
"We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may happen to be unjust." (I loved this quote because reveals the purity of Dr. Kings motives, heart, and character)
In these quotes I like how he outlines where injustice lies and why action needs to take place and explains it in its rudiments.
"Nonviolent resistance doesn't seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding."
"At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love"
He may have only been twenty six but he had a gift of understanding and foresight and leadership. It makes me excited to learn more from him as we read.

PBS

As I watched the documentary on Obama's presidential race and the events leading up to that point I took a couple notes on specific things that caught my attention or provoked me to analyze certain words a little deeper. One of my favorite parts was the reference to Barack's first time in the senate. Barack was a rookie (if you will) and because of that he was the last person with the opportunity to have a chance to voice his opinion. Barack passes a note back that says "shoot. me. now." the note was responding to Senator Biden who apparently was incessantly talking and talking. I found this ironic obviously because he would go on to be his vice president.

One of the main things that perked my curiosity as to what motivated Barack at this time was when an interviewee said that Barack was "on a quest to find a church home and to put down his roots". When Barack was trying to breach into Chicago politics he chose a church for the qualities it had such as, big and popular amongst the black community, and many of its members were the black elite in Chicago. The way I understood Barack was that he needed this connection with the black community because they didn't see him as one of their own. Later, when Barack decides not to let Reverend Wright introduce him before he announced his candidacy for president it appears that Barack is separating himself from that image that benefited him before but now that he needs to go beyond the connection with the African Americans of Chicago and to the average white American. My whole problem with this is that he is forming this public image to best benefit himself and that is a contradiction to "dreams of my father". In his book he is striving to find who he is and "to be an individual" no matter what the outside influence is.

Barack

"I had no idea who my own self was. Unwilling to risk exposure, I would quickly retreat to safer ground." I think this is a great window into Barack at the time he is referring to himself in this quote but also who he is today. Pride is something that every man deals with and Barack is no exception. He is admitting to us that at this point in his life he was pretty arrogant and prideful. But in admitting that to us in the book Barack is revealing to us that he has largely overcome his pride and humbled himself in many different veins of the book in telling us things such as this conversation with Ray. "Maybe we should give the bad-assed nigger pose a rest"(Barack), to which Ray responds confused, 'What pose?" After I read this I kind of had a "hell yeah" moment because Barack is a success story for the people who don't know themselves. He was caught up in "being black" and Ray (who "is black") helped Barack make the next step to being himself by calling him out. I think it would be safe to say most college and high school kids (and some adults) don't know who they are because they're so caught up in fitting in or going with the flow and they need a Ray to call them out or push them out on the edge.

Tony Campolo

Spirituality is having a dramatic increase in our generation today. Everyone wants a spiritual experience of some kind. The only problem is that the portion of our generation that's looking for a "spiritual" experience is seeking it through a vein other than Christianity. When Tony came on stage my immediate assessment was that he was sincere soft spoken, gentle mannered speaker but that was my assumption before he opened his mouth. It made a lot of sense when he told us he attended a black church back home and it was obvious that his pastor had taught Tony some things when it came to speaking. Dr. Campolo was lively, young in nature, and invigorated to share with us what invigorates him. According to Campolo, we're missing a big chunk to our faith and relationship with God because we have very little ritual in our churches today and ritual is what bolsters your faith and binds you together with fellow believers. Campolo ended by telling us about Ignacian Spirituality. It means to clears your mind and focus on Christ and wait for Him to connect with you and absorb you. Campolo told us that this was a ritual that he practiced every morning. After listening to Dr. Campolo for just 30 minutes I was impressed by him and it's no surprise that Shane was impacted by him considering all the time that he was able to spend with him.

Community

The communities that I’m a part of all deal with relationships with people. The communities that come to mind are my family, brothers and sisters in Christ, my friends at home, and my friends here at Belmont.

The only community that I’m a part of that has rules is the one where there is an authority over myself; the community of my family. In that community I’m expected by my mom and dad to honor what my they tell me to do or what not to do. The principle behind that rule is that they are my parents and they have authority over me, thus I must act in compliance with what they say.

In all the other communities that I’m a part of there are strictly expectations. Whether it is my friends at home in Kentucky or my friends here at Belmont, it’s the same expectations. This is because they are both based on relationships and in relationships there are expectations that you will respect your friends and you will honor their perspective as much as your own. Naturally we all fall short to that one because we are all selfish in nature and look out for ourselves first and then our close friends second. I think we know these expectations because we’ve grown up and learned what a relationship is about and how they work and if you don’t honor these basic expectations then the relationship will no longer exist.

The community amongst friends is a unique breed. It’s a community that almost every person is a part of. But what is its purpose? I think the easy answer is to just have fun, but why do we have this desire to have fun with peers and what makes these communities work? I think of my friends at home, we all started hanging out my sophomore year in high school and what brought us together was that we all shared a similar view/focus on life at the time. Our focus was to have fun without getting in trouble, and honor God, and girls. So I guess our common “goal” is what united us together and the expectations grew from there to maintain those friendships and bolster our “goal” as friends. (I put goal in quotations marks because what friends sit down and discuss what they are about? And I think goals are usually something that are announce so that everyone knows what they are working towards, which isn’t the case in my friend group)

The difference between my family’s community and my friends community is that there are rules in my family as well as expectations and growing up with three sisters is where I learned how to interact with people in a relationship. It’s good to have a firm foundations for your other communities from which the of lesser communities spawn from. In regards to the particular rule amongst my family that I mentioned earlier I think rules are easier to break because you more than likely know the consequence rather than when you don’t meet and expectations they can create a riff in a relationship and (or) hurt people. Another thing that contributes to this that I touched on earlier is that we are all selfish in nature and these expectations and rules hold us accountable and remind us to not just focus on our own desires but also the needs and desires of our peers whom we want to keep as friends because it’s always so much fun to be together.

How did I become a part of this community? I became a part of my community of friends because I went to school with these guys and as we hung out we slowing realized that we liked being around each other and began to share the same “goal” as we grew deeper in our friendship. When communities are formed there is an unspoken exclusivity that is naturally formed unintentionally. So when other people came along it wasn’t that they were too weird to “be a part” but it was just that we didn’t jive with each other and they didn’t feel the need or want be a part. Most of communities are exclusive in some way shape or form and most of the time it is unintentional.

The community of brothers and sisters in Christ I think is the most natural and raw community that exists. We are all united by our joy in the Heavenly Father and His victory in the end. Because of this, anyone who shares these beliefs is automatically “in” in the community. That’s is what is so great about God’s community of believers, there couldn’t be anymore nonexclusive because God wants everyone. As you delineate down from this broad group there are smaller communities all they way down to two or so people, that are exclusive in nature like my community of friends at home.

Communities are one of the many joys that we get to be a part of in this world. To maintain them we have created expectations and sometimes there is necessity for rules too. We are all united in a grand community are earthly beings and that is why there is a need to help our fellow communers if they are under-privileged, have a disagreement, or any of them that need help because that’s what communities are about; helping people who have a connection with yourself through a common goal or relationship.

Irresistible Revolution. First post

"Just as believers are a dime a dozen in the church, so are activists in social justice circles nowadays. But lovers are hard to come by...Lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the "issues" they are concerned about" Lover is what shane would tell people was his occupation when they asked him what his occupation was. Not only was it an answer for people who were looking to identify him with an occupation but he truly believes that is his occupation/purpose. I think that we are so consumed (including myself for sure) with the things of this world that it's almost impossible for "us" to comprehend what it would be like to give everything up and genuinely (and I mean genuinely in every element possible) and become a lover. It's hard for me to take the command to get rid of everything I have literally and that is because I'm so consumed by the material things of this world. I can only speak for myself on that but I know I'm not the only one. Shane does a good job and stating the obvious in its simplest of terms and this quote is a great example. Shane couldn't be more spot on and simple, we need genuine lovers to take over the church (not the building) and lead more people to be genuine lovers.