Trigger warning: clowns have been spotted around the University of Northern Iowa. Recently, students on campus have been frightened by people dressed in clown costumes. The students have experienced and shared these encounters with one another, but no one has heard of the clown’s perspective until Shelby Welsch wrote the article “A Conversation with a Clown” for the UNI newspaper. Even though the clowns on this campus have not harmed anyone, it is still an issue that needs to be addressed. Shelby Welsch, a student at UNI, decided to write an article after a clown stepped forward to share his explanation as to why he wanted to scare people. Shelby writes articles that are published in the Northern Iowan, and one article in particular …show more content…
The anonymous interviewer said, “I know my rights. As long as I’m not chasing people it can’t be considered harassment.” (Welsch, 2016). The message of the article was clear that the clown was looking to scare people for his own enjoyment, but he started a campus-wide fear that also prompted other people to dress like clowns in public. The article was missing an important piece of information; the piece should have shared the thoughts from students that have seen clowns throughout campus. One specific example would include Dancer Hall residents since the first encounter was located within the building. Even though the clowns want to scare others for their own kind of fun, they should think about the feelings of those they …show more content…
I asked other students for their thoughts about the issue, and the majority feel that the clowns were mentally harming students even though they claimed to be unharmful. On the other side, I also believe that “clown hunters” were also in the wrong. They have caused a lot of chaos on campus that resulted in police taking the hunters to the station. The madness has been overwhelming, but it has also calmed since Halloween has passed. Most people are open about their opinions, however the author seemed to keep her thoughts to herself during the
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
What if you were raped and nobody knew about it? In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda was raped and she didn’t tell anyone. Before school started Melinda was at a party and she was drunk. She was raped in the woods that night by an older senior , Andy Evans. She called the police and she was blamed for calling the police on the party but, its because she never told anyone she was raped. Through many different events and people Melinda changes from being shy to feeling confident. I will show you how trees represent melinda through the beggining , middle, and end
One of the unconventional styles of argument he uses surprisingly is humor. When Dave Berry says, ‘drivers in your city are all homicidal morons” he is trying to grab the reader’s attention by letting
Both “A Plague of Tics” and “Turkeys in the Kitchen” present humorous situations in which the authors partake in and learn something. Barry expresses his confusion as to how to peel turnips, a simple task, in a comical way by posing multiple questions. “1. Which ones are the turnips? 2. Do you have to wash them first? 3. Do you have to peel them (Then why did you just peel them!?) What do you peel them with[?]” (page 74). “A Plague of Tics” is an essay regarding the behavior of a man assumed to have Tourettes or some similar disease with the symptoms of tics. Sedaris also amusingly questions his teacher’s theoretical comments in an attempt to explain his ignorance. “Why come here and lick my switches when she never used the one she had? Maybe she was drunk” (page 362). Sedaris also amusingly questions his teacher’s theoretical comments in an attempt to explain his ignorance. Sedaris and Barry’s use of humor is beneficial to the essays, as they invite the reader to come for the comical tone and stay for the thesis.
Speak is a cleaver and an ironic title for a story in which the main character chooses not to speak. The story is written in first-person narration from the point of view of protagonist, Melinda Sordino. Speak is written like an interior monologue in the mind of an introverted teenage girl, like excerpts from her personal diary during her miserable freshman year of high school. Instead of blending in and finding her way through high school. She withdraws and secludes herself from the other students. She calls herself an "outcast." Melinda is so desperate to hide from the world; she turns an old janitor's closet at the high school into her safe haven. She cuts classes to hide in her closet. How lonely could this teenage girl be? All of these characteristics are common in assault victims. Melinda has been seriously disturbed by something traumatic and doesn't feel comfortable talking about it, nor does she really trust anyone. Teenage depression is a common
Walking down the school hall to the next class, the bully appears before his prey. He stands before his soon to be victims as if he is two feet taller and ten times stronger. His victims attempt to ignore him, but he stops them and puts his face in front of theirs to make sure his presence is known. He then abruptly decides to save his senseless punishment for another day as he passes by with a slight shoulder nudge. In today’s high schools, the majority of bullying incidents occur in this fashion. A bully finds the weakest kids and targets them. Freaks and Geeks, a television show, demonstrates these specific bullying instances and their effect on the character Bill Haverchuck. The pain bullying causes goes beyond surface level bruises and stretches to damaging internal feelings. When analyzing Freaks and Geeks, it is apparent that this television show demonstrates the physical and emotional effects of bullying through character Bill Haverchuck.
The way that we are taught as children, that “adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm,” (Lukianoff/Haidt) ultimately is something that should, but is not, let go of when age increases. Likewise, this issue has become a very voiced problem at the University of Oklahoma. Recently, the President of the university took “aim at the rising political correctness on campuses across the country with a sharply-worded blog post calling kids "self-absorbed" For example, it is shown in the first article that many people propose that “helping people avoid the things they fear is misguided” and that “”the presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual” (Lukianoff/Haidt) due to the fact that it never allows someone to face and ultimately get over the fear. Another new idea that has surfaced which as potential to be harmful for personal growth, especially at this age, is the creation “safe places” being implemented across many college campuses.
Schools are safe places. However, the American public has become increasingly concerned with crime in schools and the safety of students. In part, this concern has been shaped by the highly publicized acts ...
Rod Sterling’s classic show The Twilight Zone has long elicited feelings of deep-seeded eeriness in its viewers. From its familiar, daunting music to its obscure, often sinister plot lines, the program holistically embodies the Freudian principle of “the uncanny.” In other words, the show depicts what psychologist Sigmund Freud calls “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” (2). One specific episode, “The Dummy,” exemplifies this definition of the uncanny through the story of small-time ventriloquist Jerry Peterson and his inexorable descent into madness at the hands of his dummy, Willie. Through these characters, uncanniness is portrayed through animism, the idea of heimlich and unheimlich
How safe do you feel when you attend school everyday? Many students and faculty don’t really think too much about school being a dangerous place; however, after a couple of school shootings had taken place their minds and thoughts may have changed completely. On April 16, 2007, in the town of Blacksburg Virginia, a college student who attended Virginia Tech, opened gunfire to his fellow classmates. This shooting has been considered to be the biggest massacre in all of American history. There are many things to be discussed in this major tragedy. Some of them include the events leading up to the shooting, the timeline that the shootings occurred, the causes, and the significance in this particular shooting. The Virginia Tech is only one of the several examples of the horrible behavior and violence in our school systems today.
The documentary “Rize” by David LaChapelle, focuses on the lives of Black Americans who live in South Central Los Angeles and the struggles they go through in their daily lives. Moreover the film also introduces two types of dancing groups that they have in the community. These dance groups are meant to keep the youths and children occupied and distracted from all the problems that have been going on in their community, such as the LA riot. The two styles of dancing are Clowning and Krumping. Clowning was created by Tommy the Clown in 1992. Tommy used to be a formal drug dealer, he went from having his life together to losing all his money and house. However, instead of doing nothing productive with his life, he decided to help his community by changing the lives of others through entertainment. In addition, not only did this dancing group help him get to a better place in life but also the group members are like his family. His main goal was to help put similes on people’s faces and help get some of these children and youths away from gangs. On the other hand, Krumping was also generated from Clowning, however Krumpers believe that their form of entertainment is different from clowning. Moreover, these dancing groups main focus is to distract the youths and children in the community by giving them the opportunity to do something they love, which is dancing. Furthermore, passion, spiritual connections and connection to the African culture are conveyed through the film by Clowning and Krumping.
In November of 2012, a 14 year old girl committed suicide in Canada after receiving numerous threats from 2 of her classmates because of a “falling out” in the girls' relationship. This past year, a freshman at Rutgers University took his own life after a video revealing his true sexuality was discovered and put onto a commonly known website for all the university to see. The well known “Columbine Shootings” shocked the world because the shooters were said to have been picked on and bullied in school. The effects of bullying, even in one’s childhood, can haunt them forever: “Sometimes, a whisper in an elementary school classroom can echo for decades. A threat called out in a middle school hallway can cling to the subconscious into adulthood. And an insecurity exploited in a high school cafeteria can redefine a future” (Johnson 1). It’s clearly obvious that bullying can take lives and torture the people whom loved the victims of such cruelty. People, not just kids and teenagers, but people are bullied everyday across the world.
Musical group, The Clarks, as well as poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, both believe that the state of America does not live up to its reputation nor does it represent the ideals of a government created for the people. The Clarks’ song Clowns puts great emphasize on the lack of genuine and caring members of the government through the use of extended metaphor that works powerfully to get the message across. Within the poem, I am Waiting, Ferlinghetti states that America has been corrupted by the people in it and he turns to God to find the answers and “wonder” that he feels America needs. The Clarks begin their song with a metaphor of religion, in which it is said that “the good book’s words [are] justifying hate and murder.”
A fight always brings in extra conflict. It is apart of human nature to pick a side in any given argument, whether it is physical or verbal. Yet in this task, humans harm their ways of life, just as they did in the story. It can be seen when played out, but in literature the story must specify its tone to allow the reader to know what is happening. Imagery is also important as it allows the reader to get a mental image of the situation at hand. In the short story War of the Clowns, author Mia Couto uses tone and imagery to develop the plot of his fictional war.
The issue of school safety has become a controversial topic in the United States, due to tragic acts of violence occurring on a daily basis. American citizens should never have to cope with the negative impact of school violence, no matter how often they hear about the tragedies (Jones, "Parents" 1). In the past, schools were viewed as a safe place for children to get an education. Recently, the concern over violence in schools has taken a toll on many parents, school administrators, and legislatures (Eckland 1). Studies have shown that there are over 3 million acts of violence in American public schools each year. Not all occurrences are serious and deadly, but they occur on a daily basis throughout our country (Jones, “School” 6). This has caused many parents to worry about the well-being of their children while they are in class. This has also led to an increase in questions and concerns by parents and guardians. Many people have asked, “What are you doing about safety and security on my child’s campus” (Schimke 2). School violence is the cause of elevated worry and fear for their children, and school districts should enforce better security.