Walking to Chicago (finally)

Some number of years ago I fell off my bike and broke my arm.  Because of when I broke it I ended up not biking for another year and so when I finally began to ride a lack of practice and fear of injuring myself again kept me from biking as often as I had been.  

When I first got a job working as an assistant Hebrew school teacher for my synagogue I would bike the three miles it took to get there.  After breaking my arm my mom drove me and this worked until I got my permit but refused to drive myself so I was back to getting myself to Hebrew school.  But I wasn’t about to bike so I started walking.

This, along with walking to school, meant that I was walking 13.5 miles a week (excluding walking that I did in school).  It quickly became my ‘thing’ to walk anywhere and everywhere if I could even if it would take me an hour or more. 

I’ve walked for hours on end to run errands or see a movie but walking was just a mode of transport that allowed me to take routes that cars couldn’t and listen to music and text and whatever else I felt like.  This continued for a year and a half or so before I started talking about walking as more than just a mode of transport.  I started talking to people about walking to every state capital or across the country, but baby steps would need to come first.  And this is where I got the idea to walk to Chicago. 

I planned it out in my head a month or so before going.  I would walk along the train tracks to avoid getting lost since I wouldn’t have a map or a smart phone to help.  Then I would finish at Union Station and take a train back to Deerfield.  So I put out an open invite on Facebook and starting talking seriously to my friends.

When the day came the sky was a bit overcast so I packed a poncho for the wet and a sweater for the cold.  I brought money and a camera and my phone and a water bottle.  I left Deerfield train station with one other friend (three people had responded to the open invite, one was a maybe and then canceled, one was a yes and then got sick, and the third made it) at 8:30 am on a Monday morning in early June.  We took a picture at Deerfield and planned to take one at every station on our way into the city

Since we were familiar with the Deerfield area we didn’t walk next to the tracks but instead walked to the next station down the line before we left the town behind and walked along the tracks through some forest for a couple miles.  This is how it went for quite a while, walking along the tracks when there wasn’t civilization around and sticking to sidewalks and trusting my friend’s smartphone to guide us when there was. 

After stopping for lunch we continued on for another couple hours before my friend received a text from his mom telling him to come home once we reached the next station because he’d have reached the city limits of Chicago.  I started texting my mom about wheter or not I would continue on alone.  We walked and I agonized over my decision as we got closer and closer to the point at which my friend would leave me.  I finally made my decision almost in sight of the station to continue the whole way to Union Station.

After this point I walked along the tracks for several miles under now clear skies.  The tracks still cut through a forest which I found weird because I hadn’t thought that there would be so much nature so close to/inside of Chicago.  I randomly met two boys with bikes while crossing a bridge.  Luckily it seemed that they weren’t doing drugs or drinking (although I’d seen plenty of broken bottles on my way) so I continued on my way after an acknowledging nod. 

As I continued I saw up ahead someone in an orange neon reflector vest and, considering the fact that the last official person I’d seen was a cop that had asked me if I knew I was trespassing if I was walking along the tracks I quickly looked for a way off the tracks which is more difficult than you might think because although there are ways to get on close to civilization where there are lots of people who might want to get to the train tracks there was a nice high fence along the border between the tracks and the forest.  Fortunately there was a way out that took me into an interesting neighborhood that was full of cookie-cutter houses, some still under construction.  It was particularly unusual to see smiling faces and talk to and be talked to.  I wandered around this community trying to stay close to the tracks and trying to avoid people in case they asked me who I was and what I was doing.  Eventually I made my way back to the fence and followed a forest path along a low hill that lead me to a back yard and another hole in the fence.

I was able to walk next to or close by the tracks for the next 10 minutes or so until I started to enter the actual city part of Chicago, but this wasn’t an issue because I was still able to zig and zag to follow the tracks.  This took me through some interesting neighborhoods (not interesting because they were particularly X but just because they didn’t look like what I’d imagined Chicago would look like and they were oddly both similar and different to my neighborhood. 

This zigging and sagging went well for half an hour or so until I zigged under a bridge and was about to turn right onto a sidewalk that would follow the tracks I’d just gone under turned into US 94 a 4 lane highway that I wouldn’t be able to walk along.  Looking around for what to do I found a bus station with a map of the area.  I noted when I should turn: right at the first street, straight for a couple blocks, left, right, and so forth before setting out.  This turned out to be a bad idea because the map had spaces between roads that I thought simply showed the map was zoomed in, instead they were spaces between major roads and I quickly became lost.  I was lost for so long in fact that I had dinner.  I estimate that it was about an hour and a half before I was back on track.

Nothing super eventful happened for the next several hours until my mom started to text me around 6:30  because she was worried about how long I was taking and because I was about to enter the worst neighborhoods in my journey just as it was getting dark.  She wanted me to come back at the next station but acknowledged that I wouldn’t feel much if I didn’t complete my mission so we decided that after reaching the next station I would skip strain to Union and try to catch an 8:35 train back to Deerfield.  My mom thought this a daunting task because I would have 90 minutes to walk 6 miles and to make it I would need to walk much faster than I had been.  So I put on the gas and began to power through the last leg of my journey.  To keep myself from getting lost I got text updates with directions from my mom.  Eventually as I got close and my time was running short I called my mom to get ‘live updates’ since my position was changing regularly and my mom was now following my progress on Google maps.  At 8:31 I told my mom I was going to hang up and sprint the last 8 blocks to try and make it to the train.  And so I flew down the street running faster than I would’ve believed possible considering that I’d been walking for 12 hours and gone 30 miles (including my hour and a half of being lost), sprinted into the station, down the stairs, and onto the loading platform where my train was waiting.  Relief flooded through me until I approached the first door and it was closed.  So was the next, and the next, and the next, so I look through the windows and see a conductor.  I knock to get her attention and to ask her to open the doors, but when she turns to face me she just shakes her head.

I then spent two hours cooling off waiting for the next train home to arrive at 10:35.  I got on this train and spent an hour or so on the ride home being ridiculously sore.  My mom picked me up at the Deerfield station close to midnight and drove me home.

Post End of High School and Stuff

So this blog was originally created as part of an ongoing homework assignment in my Issues in Modern America class, but now the school year is over.  Therefore this is no longer a place for homework and whatever, instead I will be using it off an on as my regular (regular as in not for school not as in regularly updated content) blog-ish type thing.  Feel free to read by back entries they're still worthwhile, but subsequent entries won't always be on similar tangents.  So without further ado; Welcome to my blog!

Rain of Iron and Ice #4

Now back to info about history as it relates to asteroid/meteorite impacts!

The space race is given (rather interestingly) a quick run-through that also manages to capture more info than I knew about it.  Races to get probes to the Moon, Mars, and Venus are described and the successes and failures of both Russians and Americans were numerous.  So it was very exciting when three American probes returned over 17000 images of the moon that depicted enormous craters to those less than a meter in size.  These images also showed that these were all impact craters as evidence for volcanic activity was absent.  However, the plethora of craters told scientists nothing about the frequency of their impacts because no data could yet be collected as to their age.  The crater ages were later measured by Apollo space missions allowing for accurate calculations of cratering rates both on the Moon and the infall rate of asteroids and meteorites on Earth.  The evidence collected by later spacecraft of Mars and Mercury showed that Earth was in prime impact real estate, but scientists were perplexed by an apparent lack of evidence and so a quest to find evidence of impacts on Earth began.  And by 1962 more than 200 Earth craters had been identified and authenticated.  The biggest of these was the 65 million year old, 200+ Km wide Yucatán Peninsula crater which is now believed to be evidence of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.  Using all this data a variety of frequency estimates were made.  It was approximated that hundred-megaton (about 5 times more powerful than a WWII nuke like the ones from Hiroshima or Nagasaki) impacts occurred every 1500 years, one gigaton impacts every 12000 years, teraton impacts every 800000 years and petaton (globally devastating) impacts every 100 million years (Lewis 74).  Other, smaller impacts are more common but were harder to measure with the devices of the time. 

In 1967 in response to the close approach of the asteroid Icarus (which had no chance of actually hitting Earth but created quite a stir due to the closeness of its approach) an M.I.T. class was tasked with creating a solution if it was discovered that Icarus was on a collision course with Earth.  The end of the year presentation by students was attended by the M.I.T. community, and the press (who ended up circulating widely inflated reports about the circumstances of the asteroid's pass by the Earth).  However, Icarus was nothing new to astronomers who had known about it since 1949 when it became the 13th body to have an orbit that brought it close to Earth. 

I'm glad that I'm finally getting where I want to go with this book.  The information about the relative frequency of asteroid/meteorite impacts on Earth is very intriguing as is the 1967 M.I.T. project which suggested one of the favorite methods in the case of imminent asteroid impact; use a satellite to slowly pull the asteroid out of an Earth-bound trajectory.

Rain of Iron and Ice #3

How meteorite impacts work:

This section begins by differentiating meteors from meteorites.  If a meteor doesn't complete its fall to Earth, if it burns up on the way, it remains a meteor.  If a meteor falls from the sky and hits the Earth it becomes a meteorite. 

As a meteor enters the Earth's atmosphere it begins to be ablated (the name for the process in which a projectile melts and vaporizes) and the rate at which this occurs is based on the density of the air in which the meteor is traveling (which doubles every 5K) and how fast the object is going.  This means that a faster moving object will penetrate to a lesser depth into the Earth's atmosphere than a slow moving object. 

The book brings up that since asteroids and meteorites regularly impact the Earth or other planets, if they weren't replenished there would be no more and meteor showers would stop.  However this isn't the case so scientists came up with some hypotheses: 1, that Jupiter's gravity acts on harmonically orbiting asteroids slowly pulling their orbit away from normal sending them on tracks through the inner solar system or 2, that comets with long orbits are disturbed by Jupiter's gravity and sent on shorter orbits through the central solar system.  Astronomers then calculated the approximate number of asteroids and meteors that are created and how many each hypothesis would produce and the numbers suggest that both hypotheses are correct, about 50% of newly created Near Earth Asteroids come from bodies dislodged from the Asteroid Belt by Jupiter and the other 50% come from comets that Jupiter's gravity effects in such a way to have them orbit by the Earth too.  This is relevant because comets and asteroids have different chemical makeups and so they'll do different things when they come into contact with the Earth's atmosphere. 

Not all impacts leave lasting evidence.  Since they are random the vast majority will land in the ocean and disappear without a trace.  Additionally events like the Tunguska meteorite occur with unknown frequency.  The meteorite exploded with great force, but because it didn't create a crater the evidence of felled trees would only last 100 years or so.  Despite not impacting the Earth the Tunguska meteorite could still have caused plenty of damage if it had come only minutes or hours later and exploded over a populated city.  The only evidence that will remain of the Tunguska event will be small spheres of magnetite which no one will be looking for because there isn't a crater.

Here is what happens when there is an impact explosion: the kinetic energy of the object is almost immediately converted into heat which produces a small, exceedingly hot fireball of vast energy and pressure.  The fireball briefly reaches temperatures of several hundreds of thousands of degrees and the energy released is significantly greater than that of the Sun before expanding faster than the speed of sound and producing high amounts of x-rays.  The fireball will continue to expand until its pressure is equal to that of the surrounding atmosphere.  At this point the fireball, which is still ridiculously hot, will begin to rise from the burning remnants of whatever was on the ground and allowing the relatively cold surrounding air to rush in.  These winds can reach hurricane speeds and serve to fan the blaze around ground zero.  The fireball may release so much energy that surfaces illuminated by it can spontaneously burst into flame while anything within the range of the fireball is vaporized (this can occur even with relatively small explosions like the one in Halifax, Nova Scotia on December 6th 1917 during which many people were never found having been consumed by the explosion).  Due to the forces involved the volume of matter excavated by the explosion will usually be about one hundred times greater than that of the impacting body (Lewis 59).  The rapid excavation creates a shock wave both in the air and in the ground causing buildings several kilometers away from the explosion to have the ground beneath them pushed outwards.  The glass in these buildings will shatter and then accelerate to near the speed of sound becoming deadly projectiles directed at the people who may be unfortunate enough to be around (or in the case of the recent Russian meteor, the people who went to their windows to see what had happened).  Aerial explosions typically effect a larger area less severely and impacts or explosions in water will have a similar effect except that the water will rush in to fill the gap left by the explosion, rising up in the center before splashing down again (this process can repeat several times).  Such an initial explosion and the splashing that follows will often create tidal waves or tsunamis that will devastate shorelines nearby.

This is the kind of thing that some sort of prevention strategy would try to... well... prevent, and why shooting a rocket at an asteroid is usually a bad idea.  If a rocket were to hit an asteroid and blow it up, usually the asteroid would simply be in many smaller pieces and these pieces could each go through the process described above.  Fun stuff.

Rain of Iron and Ice #2

Rain of Iron and Ice continues to discuss the issues with proving that meteors were not heavenly bodies (or that they existed at all).  Lewis brings up the issue that despite people finding a variety of strange iron deposits around the Earth they couldn't be confirmed as meteorites because there wasn't an observed fall to coincide with the found object.  It wasn't until the late 1600's that scientists from the Royal Society of London or the Société Royale decided that uncivilized hicks might have something to offer.  As science developed, our world view changed and more data came in about meteorites so that by 1759 the French Academy could editorialize that, "these meteors are not rare," which says a lot about how much danger we might be in.  While it suggests that meteor impacts happen often, it also suggests that they aren't extraordinarily catastrophic since the world didn't end over and over again. 

The first solid evidence for meteorites extraterrestrial origin came in 1800 and 1801 when E.C. Howard found chemical similarities in the compositions of meteors that were markedly different from local rocks.  This difference in chemical makeup is the first indicator that meteors were, in fact, meteors and not random terrestrial rocks.  France took slightly longer to confirm Howard's discoveries.  It wasn't until 1803 that Antione-François de Fourcroy performed similar research to reach the same conclusion before commenting on the value of eye-witness accounts.  He said, "I could distrust the imagination of a learned man, but I would place all my faith in the testimony of an ignorant person, because, by nature, the ignorant person has no imagination."  Which is a rather back-handed compliment if you ask me.  The book then continues into how people were unable to process the idea that rocks fell from the sky, so they simply ignored it. 

Now we finally get to some good interesting info about the meteorites themselves.  The book describes three types of meteors, Irons, Stones, and Stony-Irons (basically chocolate, vanilla, and swirl).  With the Irons being able to easily pass through the atmosphere and the Stones usually having quite a bit more trouble. 

There was a push against the idea that craters could be the result of the impacts of such bodies because hundreds of years earlier geologists had come to the conclusion that because Earth was so old catastrophic events would have no effect and have never happened.  These impact craters would blow massive holes in a defining theory of geology and so many educated people resisted the idea, but when, in the early to mid 1900's the evidence became irrefutable, many more craters were found all over the world. 

And I have finally found where the book begins to talk about how asteroid/meteorite impacts work!

Rain of Iron and Ice by John S. Lewis #1

Rain of Iron and Ice by John S. Lewis is a book about the history of asteroid and comet impacts on Earth and the dangers they present.  The book opens with a recreation of "events in Constantinople, A.D. 472" (1).  It describes what people would have seen and their likely reactions to a fiery explosion, thinking that the world would end.  The book continues by describing the early history of recording asteroid impacts.  This was especially difficult in Europe because the people most likely to observe asteroid impacts were 'lowly uneducated peasants' and they're claims weren't taken seriously by 'educated' people from the Church or a university.  Therefore most data about asteroid impacts during the Middle Ages and earlier come from the eastern societies like China or the Middle East.  It wasn't until after the plague that a schism appeared in Europe between Science and the Church which allowed ideas based on observation instead of theology to prosper.

All the info about why there isn't much data about asteroid impacts is interesting, but because I chose this book hoping it had relevant info for my Marketplace of Ideas project, it is at this point proving somewhat disappointing.  However I am certain (based on the cover) that after Lewis covers the basic history he will progress into the effects of asteroid impacts etc.

Marketplace of Ideas

     Started working on my Marketplace of Ideas project.  I was basically inspired to do something with defending Earth from collisions with near Earth objects (asteroids, meteors, etc) after watching astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil DeGrasse Tyson talk about the asteroid Apophis which is a large asteroid projected to come extremely close to Earth on 4/13/2029 (coincidentally a Friday) and depending on its path at that time, it may hit Earth seven years later.  I think this also ties in nicely to the recent meteor explosion over Russia back in February. 

     I've got a cool game planned that I think aptly shows how unequipped we (the people of Earth) are to defend ourselves in the case of a potential asteroid impact.  In the first scenario the player would have to try to fit a square block into a round hole.  Naturally this is impossible and represents what we could do if we were in danger of being impacted by an asteroid.  Then the player would have to opportunity to try and fit a block of clay into a round hole.  Something they'd be able to do with the tools I'd provide, representing what we could do (survive/not be impacted) should we find ourselves in danger of being impacted.

College Hazing (Mostly Excessive Drinking at College)

So in class we watched a documentary about hazing focused on/inspired by this guy from UC Boulder who had drunk too much, passed out, and then died because none of his frat bros called the police until the morning after (at which point he was already dead).  The documentary talked about why this is happening, why a kid like the one who died would do things like that and get himself killed (the film went into some depth about him to show that he didn't have a drinking problem, his parents didn't keep him cooped up at home, he didn't have a troubled childhood, he had no problem making friends, doing well in school or sports, etc.), and the consequences. 

This kind of thing always pisses me off, not because they're drinking underage (which I still disagree with), not because they're having a party at a frat house, but because in order for an environment to be created in which a) there is enough alcohol, per capita, for someone to die, b) there is the pressure to drink enough to pass out, c) people don't do a whole lot for people who do pass out, d) going to parties and drinking excessively is considered the only/best way to have fun and e) for this to happen regularly, there needs to be a lot of stupidity and irresponsibility floatin around.

I understand why kids want to go to parties.  They feel (because of adds, peer pressure, movies, certain beliefs about our society) that in order to have friends, meet a hot guy/girl, have fun, etc. they need to go to these parties and drink X amount of alcohol.

So, why is it a good idea to host a party and provide for your guests, all the things they need to kill themselves, and then pressure them to do those things.  Like WTF?  Sure, it's 'fun' but lets weigh the options; on one side we have, enjoying ourselves, meeting lots of people, etc. and on the other side we have, you might die or end up in the hospital.  Hmmmm, seems like a really hard decision right?  I mean, how can you be so unintelligent!?  I just don't get it...  Okay, fine, there are other ways to have fun that might kill you: bungee jumping, going on a cruise (apparently), rock climbing (not on a wall), driving a racecar, but when you go to a party and drink excessively, your safety isn't in the hands of time tested equipment, a ship's captain, your climbing partner, or a fine-tuned machine, it's in the hands of someone almost as drunk as you are.  That's a really bad idea, so don't do it.  If you're going to go to a party, go to one where you don't need alcohol to have fun, or go to one where you won't be pressured to drink yourself into a coma.

Let's say you're in college, it's a Friday night, and you want to have some fun.  What can you do?  Well, you could watch a movie either solo or with friends, play some video games (again either solo or with friends), play a board game with some friends (monopoly, risk, sorry, apples to apples, cards against humanity, chess, blokus, the list goes on and on), you could go to a restaurant with your significant other, you could hang out at a local park or field with your friends, or you could drink yourself into oblivion.  In the documentary one of the reasons the kids had for drinking so much and going to these parties, or participating in these hazing activities, is because they're fun.  Well gee, is the only thing you could come up with to have fun life threatening, because that's just sad.  Another kid said they drink because they can, well there are plenty of things people can do, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should.  Sheesh, I'm pretty sure that's a lesson you're supposed to learn in elementary school. Can you really not thing of anything else to do for fun?

So obviously these kids think that going out and drinking is a good idea and a good way to have fun, but why?  How were they raised that they think this kind of thing is a good idea (either from the host's or attendee's perspective)?  And to me, a question equally important, how was I raised that I think doing those things is one of the dumbest things ever?  Is it an environmental factor?  A genetic factor?  A factor in how they were raised?  So where does the irresponsibility come from?  I'm not sure, but hopefully a study will reveal more info, or a new policy instituted by colleges and universities can in some way change the frequency of events like these.  But some things that people can do, is keep the consequences of their actions in mind, be aware of how peer pressure is affecting them (and if they feel uncomfortable, leave), and know what you're getting into.

Rape Mock Trial

We recently finished the second of two mock trials in class.  This most recent case was about rape and I was for the defense.  The case consisted of two college students who had had a relationship during their freshman year, split up the next summer, got back together during their junior year, and had consenting sex several times before, and now the girl is accusing the boy of raping her.

When the event happened there was no one else in the the apartment with them and the girl, Susan, showered almost right away after the event.  The only physical evidence was a torn shirt (we'll get to the explanations of each side later) and some faint bruises on Susan's arm that wouldn't show up in a photograph. 

In a criminal case the goal of the prosecution is to prove the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no burden on the accused to prove their innocence and if there isn't enough evidence to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the accused is guilty, the jury must acquit.

This case went much more quickly than the previous case.  The prosecution called Susan, a college rape counselor, and the police officer who had investigated the apartment.  The defense called David (the accused), David's roommate Terry, and a psychiatrist who David had gone to see after Susan accused him.

Susan told her story about her relationship with David and then about the event in question.  She said that she and David had gone to a party before going back to David's apartment.  While both of them had consumed alcohol, neither was drunk.  Susan had seen David talking to a girl named Jenny, whom David had class with and was partnered with for a project, during the party and a note on David's desk afterwards that said "Honey, you're a great husband.  See you tomorrow," (Jenny and David's project had them acting as a husband and wife). 

While they were in bed together David and Susan made out but when David tried to take off her shirt, she pushed his hand away.  Eventually they started making out again and David tried to make another move so Susan got out of bed.  David grabbed her shirt and accidentally tore part of it down the back.  Then they had sex even though Susan said no.

That right there is the whole point of contention for the whole case.  The Rape counselor said that Susan exhibited symptoms of Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS), but these symptoms were very vague and could have been cause by a variety of other things besides rape.  The police officer saw the ripped shirt, but not the note from Jenny (David showed him that he and Jenny were in the same class by showing the officer the assignment), and said he'd seen similar cases in which the woman was telling the truth and similar cases in which the woman was lying.  The psychiatrist maintained that David was a nice guy and didn't tend towards anger which supported what David himself had testified, but that didn't exclude the possibility that David had raped Susan, it only made it less likely.  And Terry said that David was a good guy, but he also said that Susan was pretty chill also (even if he thought she was a little clingy).  

All this other evidence amounts to very little except to cloud the case.  In David's testimony he tells much the same story as Susan except he says that she said 'no' in a playful tone.  This is where the main issue is.  They both agreed that Susan said no.  However the difference is in how they think she said it.  David maintains that Susan expressed consent in a non-verbal way and that the tone she used when she said 'no' implied that she was giving consent.  Susan maintains that she wasn't being playful and in no way encouraged David.

My personal opinion (which should probably be taken with a grain of salt since I was on the defense) is that there isn't enough information to say that, beyond a reasonable doubt, David was guilty.  In other words, I was sure that I wasn't sure and so I would need to acquit David.  Yes, they both agree that she said no, but how she said it definitely matters.  So does the possibility that Susan was jealous of Jenny (even though her relationship with David was completely platonic).  The prosecution said that David broke under his desire for sex (even though he'd restrained himself, and stopped when Susan said no in the past).  This idea makes me really angry not because it's impossible or unlikely but because this is in the face of evidence that David is a really nice, patient, slow-to-anger, guy and the defense wouldn't recognize that the same could be said of Susan.  Sure, she's a really nice girl who had no reason to claim David raped her unless he actually did, except that she did.  She was clingy and could've been motivated by jealous.  The double standard there, that David might have gone against his personality and raped Susan, but there is no way that Susan could've gone against her personality and falsely claimed that David raped her, no that would never happen (read after the italics with heavy sarcasm). 

One of the jurors suggested a hypothetical situation in which Susan doesn't stray too far from her personality and still ends up accusing David, the man she loves very much, of rape.  He suggested that Susan goes back to her apartment angry after reading Jenny's note to David and tells her roommate that they had non-consenting sex in a fit of jealous anger.  After this point Susan has basically lost control as her roommate pressures her to go see a counselor and contact the police.  Susan can't really stop this process without serious embarrassment so she continues on.  She seems to have RTS because she is in the middle of a serious conflict with her boyfriend who she just falsely accused of raping her. 

That situation might seem unlikely, but it is possible.  While there isn't really a ton of evidence to suggest that David is innocent, there doesn't need to be.  He is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  There is doubt, and so he should be acquitted.


In the end the result was a hung jury with 4 for the prosecution and 5 or 6 for the defense. 

Sexual Harrasment Mock Trial

In class we recently finished the first of two mock trials.  This mock trial dealt with sexual harassment.  In it a woman who had recently started working as a trial attorney sued her employer for damages because she felt that the employer hadn't done what it should when she complained that her coworker was created a hostile environment for her.

Essentially the felt that the actions of her coworker, with whom she shared an office, caused her serious emotional stress, and hampered her ability to work well, culminating in her lateral transfer to another bureau.

The big thing about sexual harassment is how vague it is.  Now I think that it is necessarily so, because what one person thinks is harassment, another might not, but this makes deciding on such a case rather difficult.  The woman felt that the actions of her coworker constituted sexual harassment and this was backed up by her poor work performance, her being so stressed as to start seeing a psychologist, and the testimony of an expert.  However, when she went to the EEOC they decided that there wasn't enough to suggest/prove sexual harassment.

After about a week of direct and cross examination of witnesses the jury, myself included, went into deliberation.  The people who argued for the woman said that because she had made it clear that she didn't appreciate the actions of her coworker and that, because those actions continued, we should decide in her favor.  I argued against the woman on this basis:

Besides the main idea of sexual harassment really just being repeated actions that could be interpreted in a sexual nature despite requests for the offending party to stop, what allows the suit to have merit is because the sexual harassment must in some way be shown to have created a hostile environment that makes it difficult for the harassed to continue working.  However I felt that this wasn't the case.  Why? Because the woman had, during her first six months, received a 3/5 on her evaluation and, during her second six months, received a 1/5 on her evaluation I began to think that the 'hostile environment' wasn't caused by sexual harassment, but it was simply the standard work environment and the woman was unable to deal with the stresses involved.  This belief was reinforced by the testimonies of a couple witnesses who said that working as a trial attorney was very difficult and very stressful.  I worked to convince the jury that the woman wasn't a victim of sexual harassment, but was simply unfit to work as a trial attorney and she was blaming her poor performance on her coworker who she didn't get along well with.

In the end the jury was split with 2 for the woman only getting money to cover her medical expenses and everyone else (I think 6) were totally against her.

State of the Union and the Republican Response

In President Barack Obama's most recent State of the Union Address, President Obama gave somewhat of a laundry list of things he wanted to get done, some plans that he or his people had put forward, and addressed a variety of issues.  While I wasn't giving the President my full attention, and so I didn't catch a whole lot of what he was talking about, I did notice an underlying theme of compromise.  President Obama would talk about a bi-partisan committee with one plan or another, or tell Congress to compromise on this issue, or announce that if Republicans would do this, he would get the Democrats to do that.

Regardless of one's political view, I'd hope you realize that compromise within our government is extremely important.  Compromise helps ensure that a government designed to represent all it's people, and not just those who voted in the majority, does just that.

I was able to give the Republican response by Senator Marco Rubio much more of my attention and so I noticed a lot more.  Intermixed with Senator Rubio's touching stories about his neighbors, and how parents feel when they have a child, I got the strong sense that the Senator's message was essentially 'screw compromise, POTUS doesn't know what he's doing'.

Now it might seem that I'm all like 'oh Republicans never compromise' and 'Democrats are our saints and saviors because they are willing to compromise,' but this isn't the case, I'm just using the recent example of the SOTU and Republican response to make a point about the importance of compromise. 

It seemed to me that Sen. Rubio spat on the idea of compromise because he doesn't think that Pres. Obama knows what he is doing.  Fine then, but even if Pres. Obama is totally incapable as President (and I'm not saying he is or isn't) you should still be able to compromise with him on certain issues instead of just refusing to compromise at all (in fact, use compromise to change the policies you think are crap into something that is at least a little bit better) and getting nothing done, Republicans and Democrats alike should be more willing to compromise.

Regardless of which party is in power, they should still compromise.  They shouldn't use the power they have to browbeat the other party into submission or pass some petty, anti-X bill or law.  That's not okay, don't be a jerk like that. 

Campus Raping

While what follows may seem to put some blame on the girls (or boys) who are raped, this is not the case.  I don't think that they should be blamed (in the vast, vast majority of cases [if you go to a place that has a reputation as a place where you are likely to get mugged and then you do get mugged and complain about it, I think you should've known better, perhaps tried to avoid that area; the same goes for rape {if there isn't an alternate route or some other solution, fine, not your fault}, so if you go to a neighborhood or a bar with a reputation of being an area where people get raped, you might want to reconsider where you were before you say it wasn't your fault]) for being raped, but if they don't do anything (many statistics say that a large portion of rapes go unreported) they should be blamed for the fact that the cries they make fall on deaf ears.  The next paragraph is why I believe that this is the case:

Cynthia Wolken, the City Councilor of Missoula, Montana says that the response by the mostly male authorities is lacking and that that "makes women less likely to come forward and report sexual assault".  She says that people wont report a rape because they don't believe that their report will be believe, investigated, and result in a conviction or some sort of punishment for their attacker.  Reported  Katie J.M. Baker cites a statistic while investigating Missoula (which has been labeled the 'Rape Capital of America') that '54 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are not reported to the police'.  Well if most rapes aren't reported, it might not appear to authorities that rape is a serious problem (not that it isn't a seriuos crime).  If it isn't a seriuos issue, perhaps when compared to underage binge drinking, then the police might not put as much of an effort into investigating the relatively rare rape case as prosecuting the underage drinkers who put themselves and others at serious risk.

I think that the solution to the 'deaf ears' that the claims of rape fall upon, is for every victim to report their rape.  If each rape is reported, although individually the cases might not be investigated, such collective action by the victims will hopefully increase the likelyhood that subsequent rape claims will be more thoroughly investigated.

The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg #4

The rest of The Gatekeepers was also filled with miscellanea:

As the admissions season came to a close the book follows the students and officers to the end of the journey.  As Wesleyan continued to look for strong minority applicants (with the goal of about 10% each of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) it will make an offer to fly out a 'hot prospect' minority student in the hopes that such a gesture, and their experience on campus, will make them more likely to attend the following year.  This isn't the case with strong white applicants because "If a white applicant spurned Wesleyan, there was usually someone of equal talent and ability to take [their] place" (171).  In all the hustle and bustle, colleges can make mistakes too.  When just such a 'hot prospect' tried to get an interview with a Wesleyan alum, there was a communications mix-up.  Ralph knew that the incident was a huge PR fail.

In March, spread out over several weeks, were the last 5 days of committee meetings.  All of the 400 applications to be discussed had been read/considered by 3 people who were unable to reach a consensus.  Not only did the committee have the 400 apps, but there were still at least 2500 that had been read by only one person, or none at all, some of which would no doubt be added to the committee's pile.  In such a high pressure environment, with so little time left, admissions officers were reading applications late into the night.  One officer actually fell asleep during a committee meeting, but this occasioned no comment because either it wasn't too surprising, or it didn't merit stopping the meeting.

Because competition is so intense for selective schools, slight missteps can ruin your chances of getting into such a college.  Harvard (and I would assume other Ivy League and high tier schools do this also) turned away 1/4 of applicants who got a perfect 1600 on their SAT.  While this might seem discouraging, I think the opposite is true.  Since these schools have the ability to fill their entire class with people who got a 1600 on their SAT or a 36 on their ACT, but don't, it means that those test scores aren't everything.  However, The Gatekeepers also has some cautionary tales.  One applicant was rejected by the committee despite having a 1400 on her SAT, strong grades, and a letter of recommendation from another school's president (Wesleyan's president doesn't require the admissions committee to automatically accept such applicants based on the belief that the admissions system is sound) because her senior course load was weak.  Another student was rejected* because she wrote about a drug experience.  Her essay told a story about how she saw someone distributing a pot brownie, how she had consumed in innocence (she hadn't known at the time that the brownie had pot in it), and eventually ended up being the only person to turn themselves in.  Despite later going on to becoming class president and having strong academics the Wesleyan admissions staff couldn't get past the brownie incident.  I disagree with the committee's decision here because many college students do drugs, but they weren't comfortable with one who had admitted a mistake and grown from it.

 I'm not really sure how I feel about these tales.  On one hand, these kids should've known that such a misstep could ruin their chances of getting into X college (although the brownie was consumed in innocence), but on the other, I don't think that a single mistake should have such an impact.  As I discussed in my post 'why homework is (usually) lame' I discussed the negative results of too much homework.  I think that the rigors of the college application process are similarly detrimental, although the only solution to such an issue seems to be a move away from such a selective process (a process that does have many merits).

 

*Ralph would later make a case to the dean of admissions that the student should get another chance.  The student was wait-listed and eventually offered a chance to be in the class of 2005, but she ended up going to Cornell instead.

The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg #3

Miscellaneous thoughts from the next section of The Gatekeepers:

As I read more and I see how the admissions officers consider the quality of the high school; either high, low, or unknown, I find myself wondering if I'll read about DHS sometime in the future.

The Gatekeepers not only follows the admissions officers, but the stories of several students.  One of them, a strong academic and non-academic received a 9 for 'personal' and 8's in many other categories was marked as 'admit' by Ralph and then Ralph crossed out the lines for the second reader, signaling that he thought the student was a shoo-in.  After going to the Dean of Admissions' desk the application was marked with an 'A' so that a student recruit would know to contact that student.  Although colleges long ago agreed never to tell a student from the main round of applications that they're accepted before the regular notification date, but the 'A' on the application is a note so that the admissions office student recruit to give little hints to that student that the school (in this case Wesleyan) wants the student to come to their school.

Since many people look at statistics as a decision of where to apply, and potentially where to accept, getting a good review by U.S. News can have a huge impact on who (and how many who's) apply to that college (as well as also potentially impacting a school's ability to get donations from alumni), some schools are now rejecting top applicants who look like they wouldn't attend if accepted because that way the school can increase its yield (the percent of accepted students who attend).

Another story that caught my eye was one of a girl from a high end school called Harvard-Westlake (no connection to the University) who had missed her alum interview.  Since this girl was good friends with her counselor and her counselor was good friends with Ralph this girl was able to get on the phone with Ralph and explain that a miscommunication had caused the mix-up.  Ralph assured the girl that it was of no great concern which seems interesting to me since many schools that I've heard of place high importance on their interviews.  This again makes me wonder how DHS compares with other high schools from across the country since I doubt a DHS counselor would be able to make this happen (not that I doubt the quality of the DHS college counselors).

The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg #2

The next section of the book is about the actual process that the admissions officers go through when not in a committee.

The Wesleyan admissions office received 6862 applications for the class of 2004 (a 7% increase from the year before) and while Wesleyan is glad to have a broader pool of applicant from which to choose, it doesn't make the admissions officer's jobs any easier.  Each application must be read twice and sometime discussed by the committee (if a decision is unclear).  Ralph's personal goal is 30 applications per day although this rarely happens since many decisions are hard to make and there are a wide variety of things to consider for each application.

Diversity is something that Ralph and the other admissions officers are told to consider highly.  Wesleyan, and other selective colleges, want very diverse campuses so that their students can benefit from the diversity of the campus.  While the argument is made that minority students get a benefit simply because they are a minority and that they can get in to X college or university with grades that aren't quite as good as those of a non-minority student and that this is unfair, there is a rationalization, a reason why colleges do this.  The Gatekeepers explains that bringing something different to college (like the experiences of being a minority) confer a benefit to the university that they are willing to exchange for grades (although several colleges and states are removing race as a factor considered in an application).   While I don't necessarily agree with this policy, I do see its merits and understand why it is in place.  An example of this policy is this story: Ralph went to a school specifically for Native Americans in the southwest; two students from that school applied and even though one of them had C's, D's, and F's on his transcript from a previous high school, he was still under serious consideration by Ralph because Wesleyan didn't have any Native Americans.

Wesleyan is a small school and so the desire for diversity has a significant impact on their decisions, but I wonder how different it is at a large state school like UofI.

Ralph (and the other admissions officers of Wesleyan) have a 'cheat sheet' that they use to grade applications.  Applicants are rated on a 1-9 scale in 3 academic categories and 2 more 'nonacademic' categories.  The three academic categories are 'academic achievement', 'intellectual curiosity' and 'commitment'; the 'nonacademic' categories are 'personal' and 'extracurricular'.  After averaging the 3 academic ratings and the 2 'nonacademic' ratings, the admissions officer must then average those two numbers.  All those numbers and certain keywords like 'discuss' are used by the second admissions officer to read the file and the committee if the application needs to be discussed by the group.  Finally there is one more rating that reflects the admissions officer's opinion of the application: admit, the officer is confident that the student should be admitted; admit minus, the officer thinks the student should be admitted but they have some doubt; deny plus, the officer thinks the student should be denied but the application has some merit; and deny, the officer is sure that the student should be rejected by Wesleyan.

The book suggests that these rating systems, or something similar, are used throughout other selective colleges, but like my previous question about diversity, I'm curious as to what the admissions process is like for a larger school.

The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg #1

The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg is a book about the admissions process from the point of view of an admissions officer.  When I picked out this book, I picked it because I figured it would be somewhat interesting, but like most books read for school, that it would also be relatively boring.  When I finally starting reading, I was blown out of the water.  The Gatekeepers reads like many of the fantasy/sci-fi books I usually.  Jacques Steinberg writes about the admissions process by following admissions officer for Wesleyan, Ralph Figueroa.  Steinberg prefaces the book by saying that it is in no way a formula for how to get into a selective school like Wesleyan, and he follows through.  The book doesn't read like a formula or an instruction manual; I blasted through over 100 pages without noticing.  At this point Steinberg is describing the early action (binding) admissions process. 

While it is interesting to learn about what shorthand is used and how the admissions officers admit, defer, or reject a student, one thing stuck out for me.  There were two students, one with a slightly better academic record than the other; the weaker student had a previous connection to Wesleyan and so he was admitted.  While the rationalization was given (Wesleyan wants to keep its alumni happy so that they might be encouraged to donate) I still find this practice very unfair.  While it might be argued that the weaker student provided a different benefit to the school than did the stronger student, it still nags at me that the reason a student was admitted was because of his connections.

Now that I've given my two cents on that I will return the the admissions process itself.  Wesleyan has a small admissions staff of 9, two of whom will read each application (one selected at random and the other from the region of the applying student); in most cases, the student's file will then proceed to the full committee where a majority will decide if the student is admitted.  If five officers vote to either accept or reject the student then that is what will happen, otherwise the student is deferred and reconsidered later.  During a committee voting session each student is given about a minute or two of limelight; the admissions officers who read the application will summarize the application to the committee and then there will be a vote to decide the student's fate.  The process is quick, and it needs to be since Wesleyan must go through thousands of applications in only a couple months.

I'm sure The Gatekeepers will continue to present interesting information about the college application process as I read more.