Questions!

Question 1

A particular misunderstanding that comes to my mind occurred between my best friend Abby and I over a few nights this past summer. Abby and I hung out practically everyday during the summer, sometimes making elaborate plans, and sometimes just sitting around her house. Though we share many of the same personality traits, Abby has a hard time making decisions and more often than not changes her mind at the last minute about all sorts of things. She had turned a couple 180’s on me from time to time, but it was sporadic enough that it never really was an issue, until one particular week during the summer. I was presented with the opportunity to hang out with some people that I hadn’t seen in awhile, and, yes, there was this boy. So I, as usual, asked Abby to go with me and she agreed. The plans were for Friday and we made the arrangement to go together on a Monday. As the week went by I made sure to repeatedly bring up Friday’s plans and reinforce her decision to go due to her sometimes flaky nature. Everything seemed okay right up until Friday night at 6:00pm when I arrive at her house to pick her up and she tells me she has decided not to go. Undoubtedly I am not happy, and we argue; me repeating the fact she had the entire week to make her decision, and her claiming she made the decision only 5 minutes before I arrived. She was under the impression that I wouldn’t care, if she decided not to go, when essentially I would have never wanted to go alone. This makes me believer our conflict resided on level three. I placed much more weight on the importance of her agreeing to hang out this particular night than she did, and she emphasized her belief that it wasn’t a big deal if she went or not. We worked out our conflict later that evening, though I did not end up going where I intially wanted to go, by making sure we were on the same page. I realized I had never expressed any annoyance at her breaking plans or changing her mind at the last minute before, and she realized that these things mean more to me than she originally thought.

Question 2

The allusion to the university being “in the world and not of the world” works because it can be applied to both aspects of the analogy “Sproul Hall is to student’s rights as Mississippi is to civil rights.” Savio states in his speech that university administrators feel the task of the university, and the students within it, is to, essentially, be stagnant; to be a physical part of the world, but to do nothing to its change or advancement. This same concept can be applied to the events surrounding civil rights in Mississippi. The mindset of those who intended to suppress African Americans in Mississippi was that African Americans served no part in the development or progress in the world. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had passed mere months before this speech was given, and using this allusion puts segregationists and university administration on the same level; a place where assumedly they would not want to be.

If I were the university administrator I would have taken a particularly good look at the allusions he used to support the analogy in the beginning of the speech. I would have taken offense at the comparison of myself to a segregationist or for that matter the scientists in “A Brave New World.” Because Savio used allusions that appealed to me emotionally educationally I would have tried to come to some sort of compromise with him and the students.

Question 3

Accusations surrounding Obama’s character based on his relationship with Reverand Wright are stemmed from multiple controversial statements made by Wright. Obama uses his own personal history in order to essentially contradict potential opinions that because he is associated with Wright, he in turn believes the same things. Obama states specifically that he does not agree with many things spoken by Wright, but uses their history to highlight why, stasis of cause, they bonded in the first place. This history stresses the positive reasons Obama was drawn Wright, in effect emphasizing the positive characteristics of himself. Arguing on any other level of stasis would not challenge the Obama/Wright relationship in the same way. The stasis of fact would draw potential conclusions that they are alike merely because Wright is Obama’s reverand, the stasis of procedure may only state how they met and became connected, and not why. The stasis of value may come a little closer in credibility, but then again the audience may only gain insight on their present relationship, why their bond is so strong now. In this case history and cause serve Obama the best in establishing his own credibility.