A little while back I posted a blog post about fraternities and their problems, but I have done more research and interviewed a few people, and I have updates. I interviewed two people, one who is director of fraternity and sorority affairs at a college that I will not mention for anonymity reasons. The other was Jake Sisco, the assistant director of admission at Wellesley University, and was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity at MSU. With my new information I am back with a second blog post explaining everything that I have learned since my first post.

In my first post I stated that fraternity brothers aren’t real brothers, and that fraternities should be shut down. I also stated that my neighbor was hazed, so it was pretty obvious that at that time that I had some bias against fraternities. Since then, I have put my biases to the side, and tried to look for some of the good aspects of greek life, rather than focusing on the bad things about fraternities. Of course, I will include bad things, because fraternities aren’t all good or bad.

In my first blog post I explained the reasons behind why I think fraternities are bad, what is bad about them, and why they should be shut down. I used evidence from Timothy Piazza death related to fraternity hazing that happened a year ago. Seems very well backed up right? Well all of the things that I said in that post were true, but the internet has a way of doing things where it filters all of the most popular things to pop up first, and the most popular things are usually bad things about fraternities, which casts a negative stereotype over fraternities. In this post I will be speaking the truth about fraternities to the best of my ability.

http://www.ttujournalism.net/classes/j4370/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/12/HazingInUS.jpeg

Chart for hazing in the U.S. Shows how many people are hazed per year, deaths, and who realizes that they are being hazed when it is happening.

As I stated in my first blog post fraternities were created to get the rich kids away from the poor kids, that is true, but fraternities were created a while ago, and that has evolved, now fraternities welcome people based on how dedicated they are to greek life, and as both of my interviewees told me, hazing happens a lot, but most fraternities see initiation as a celebration of new members, rather than a test or a “haze”.  In fact, Jake told me that the worst thing his fraternity ever did to initiate people was make them solve a puzzle in the dark, which is not very bad compared to the other things that have happened during an initiation to a fraternity.

https://images.complex.com/complex/images/c_limit,w_604/fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/s6lzwdmrf7puawqg23xx/fraternity

Initiation to a fraternity

I asked Jake and the other person I interviewed to tell me what happens in order to prevent anything bad happening in a fraternity, and what is done as a punishment to the people in a fraternity. They told me that fraternities can be monitored, they can be dry fraternities, meaning that alcohol is not prohibited, and a few more things that you would expect. A way to stop bad things from happening again, was an “actions have consequences” approach, where depending on how bad something was, there would be punishments from “no parties for the rest of the year”, to expelliation from the fraternity or the school, or for things like the Timothy Piazza case that I talked about in my first post, there can be criminal charges against the other fraternity members. This shows to be careful when in a fraternity and to be careful when looking for a fraternity to join. From these two interviews I can take away that bad things happen because of fraternities, but fraternities are not all bad, as most of them unite people, and show brotherhood, my wise words would be to be careful with what kind of fraternity you are joining.

Ethan Friedman

Original Research

Over the past month, I have been researching the minimum wage issues in Pennsylvania. I’ve conducted surveys among teenagers in Philadelphia. Throughout my research, I’ve discovered many different perspectives on the issue and have come to a conclusion.

When working on issues regarding money, it is important to take other factors into account, such as location, opportunity, and sources of income. When I conducted a survey with students in Philadelphia, I found out that 1 in every 9 students only lives with 1 adult figure.

Source: Google Forms: Original Research Survey

When you only have one source of income which is that adult’s job, it is very difficult to support a family. The population of Pennsylvania is approximately 12.81 million people according to the United States Census Bureau.  That means that about 1.4 million families in Pennsylvania are ran by a single parent. There is clearly a problem in the system if 11% of families can’t afford to live.

Part of being a teenager is spending time with your friends. Whether it be going out for lunch or going ice skating, most activities cost money. According to my survey, most students are unemployed.

This is important because the ability to become a social person, you need to have the opportunity to interact with people. The money would have to come from family.

A majority of students don’t receive money at all from their parents, so that will tie into the future once they do need to get a job and live on their own, they won’t have the skills that they would have had from socializing.

It isn’t ethical for a system to take place where 11% of families are treated unfairly and have no way out. Not every kid who grows up in a minimum wage will have the drive to be a scholarship worthey student. Their families can’t afford college like other families can. The same cycle continues because nobody without a degree can get a well paying job. The system needs a change.

Annotated Bibliography: here

Justine Koffi

Ms.Giknis

English 9

18 March 2018

There’s a Way To Change

For this portion of my You and The World Project, I was meant to do a survey, interview, or  a field observation. I planned to have an interview with the communications director at the G.E.M.S program. I mentioned them in my last post, click here for it. I planned to have my interview Monday afternoon, during advisory, but it had to be rescheduled for the next day. The same thing kept happening until thursday which was the last day I had the time to conduct the interview. I forgot about the interview which was my fault. Overall, there was fault on both sides which resulting in me not having the interview I needed for this part of the project. Instead, I decided to further my research.

For my first post, I looked into the statistics. I found some horrible facts about the children we are losing to this industry and how much they are suffering on a daily. Can you believe that some kids are sold 5-6 times a day? Vulnerable children are targeted, ages 11-17 all the time and they are put into this horrendous life. Since I found very interesting information about the general industry of child sex trafficking, for the second post, I decided to look into some specific stories of women who were sold into the sex industry as children. I found some more surprising information.

First, I found the site Human Trafficking Survivor. The girl in the account said she was raped about 43,200 times, which I found hard to believe until I really read and thought about it. Karla, the woman bravely speaking out about her past, said she was abused since she was five by a close relative. She felt rejected by her mother, and the overall dynamic of her family was dysfunctional. When she was twelve, she was pursued by a man who spoke nice and had a fast car that she liked. They spoke, and exchanged numbers. He started talking to her as a friend and Karla was excited. They met up again and he brought a different red car that she liked a lot. From there, she recalls seeing red flags everywhere. She was convinced to go stay with him since her mom locked her out one night. The next couple months, he shows her kindness and gave her everything she wasn’t getting at home. He then started telling her about the pimping business and how she must act and speak for her to get money for him. He explained the positions to her and how much money she must earn. "I started at 10 a.m. and finished at midnight. We were in Guadalajara for a week. Do the math. Twenty per day for a week. Some men would laugh at me because I was crying. I had to close my eyes so that that I wouldn't see what they were doing to me, so that I wouldn't feel anything," Karla says. They moved to other cities where she was still expected to see about 20 men a day, seven days a week. There was even a day she thought she would escape her unfortunate circumstances when a police officer came in to one hotel known for prostitution. Instead, the officer forced them to do things too. Karla got pregnant at 15 years old and gave birth to a girl. The baby girl was now threatened if Karla didn’t fulfill her duties as a prostitute. She was rescued in 2008 during an anti-trafficking operation. She was 16 at the time. She is now 23 and a speaker and advocate against sex trafficking. She says,  "These minors are being abducted, lured, and yanked away from their families. Don't just listen to me. You need to learn about what happened to me and take the blindfold off your eyes." I think it’s very important to letr Karla’s story sink in and reflect on it. Just as I said in my first post, vulnerable children are being pursued by predators and being taken away from their homes. It’s important to take into account that this could happen to anyone and that we should be doing more as a community to speak out and try to prevent it.

In addition, Karla’s story was fascinating to me, especially the part about the corrupt police officers, so I started to look into the police involvement in child sex trafficking. I looked into this article about police help with the issue at hand. From this post, I found that a lot of the time, police arrest sex trafficking  victims on a prostitution charge in which they are threatened to be prosecuted, which obviously isn’t working very well. The girls, who are victims, are held accountable for their circumstances instead of the people who are actually the problem which doesn’t seem fair to me. They don’t seem to take into account that the girls need help. They just see a crime that someone has to pay for.

In conclusion, although I wasn’t able to conduct the interview, I found some more shocking facts about the sex trafficking industry.

   The Effect of Sexual Objectification on Women’s Mental Health

Moriah Lahr

3/14/18

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJ6B8PTnw_vgVb6aBkCLC_DRJA1BjmPpT_-KwdDTSdg/edit

I want to focus on the topic of the effect of sexual objectification on women’s mental health. I experience sexual objectification daily. Whether it’s seeing a music video of half naked girls dancing around a guy or getting cat called on my own block. Both which can make me feel bad about myself. A goal I have in researching this topic is to be educated on the different types of sexual objectification and the different health issues it can cause. I want to help make a change by getting women’s different point of views and stories of being objectified and getting the word out there to people who can’t see that it’s a problem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3673099/Man-confesses-checking-mediocre-women-Reddit-good-deed.html

This woman is shown walking past a man while he looks back at her curves. What this photo actually came from was a website that had a married man saying he checks out mediocre women to “compliment them” as if we enjoy being gaped at.

I am interested in this topic because as a woman in this culture, I have been objectified many times in many different ways. This topic matters to me because I have many friends who have been cat called or checked out etc. and I know first hand how scary it feels to me and my friends. When I’m out with my friends, we have to talk about what if a guy comes up to us and starts checking us out and saying creepy things to us. We came to a conclusion that if that happens, we’ll just say we’re a couple. I think it’s truly sad that girls at a young age are so scared to just walk outside because we get looked at and taunted. Some men even think checking out girls are a compliment when it really makes us feel worse about ourselves. “We are not outside for your benefit. We do not look in the mirror every morning hoping this outfit will get a guy to silently follow us down the street for five minutes after saying, “God bless you mami… Damn.””

http://www.eatthedamncake.com/2010/06/14/getting-checked-out-by-guys-with-wives/

This woman is being showed in the camera view in an angle that only shows her body and shows two guys looking at her body. This shows how much women’s bodies are sexualized and lusted over. It’s showing her body as if she doesn’t have a face or a personality.

In the research I found, I learned that sexual objectification comes in many forms such as catcalling, getting checked out, sexual assault, rape, pornography, television, etc. These things can cause not only men to look at women as objects but cause women to look at themselves as objects and make them want to look a certain way to fit into the cultures view of a “perfect body”. This causes mental health issues such as body dysmorphia, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, etc. It is important for people to know about this and be aware of it because some men are raised to think it’s okay to objectify and they just don’t know any better. Knowing the research behind it might really change the way we are looked at and the way we look at ourselves. The details in my research that can educate readers is what the different types of objectification there are because some people might not even be able to realize it when they see it or do it.

http://websterjournal.com/2014/12/01/catcalls-arent-compliments/

This photo shows a woman that is covering up and looking insecure as people are cat-calling her all around. This happens on a daily basis to women. Mens calls make us feel insecure like all we are is a body.

My research so far has impacted my understanding of sexual objectification because I never really focused on looking at the mental health side of things and how it affects people. Now I can see better why me and some of my friends have the self image issues that we have. I’m objectified on a daily basis so I feel like this is a personal topic that I have actual experience to backup my claims with.

effects on well-being

“The present research suggests that stranger harassment (i.e., experiencing unwanted sexual attention from strangers in public) is a frequent experience for young adult women, and that it has negative implications for their well-being. First, stranger harassment was positively related to self-objectification. This was true for women who coped with stranger harassment using common strategies (passive, self-blame, or benign), but not for women who used an uncommon, active coping strategy (e.g., confronting the harasser). Second, stranger harassment experiences and self-objectification were positively related to women's fear of and perceived risk of rape. Further, women who feared rape were more likely to restrict their freedom of movement. In concert, the findings suggest that stranger harassment may have both direct and indirect negative effects on women's lives, and that it is a phenomenon worthy of future research. “

Women perceive themselves as objects

“girls and women are typically acculturated to internalize an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves. This perspective on self can lead to habitual body monitoring, which, in turn, can increase women's opportunities for shame and anxiety, reduce opportunities for peak motivational states, and diminish awareness of internal bodily states.”

This says that women see themselves the way other people view them and if they are viewed like objects that’s how we’ll see ourselves as.

Graph of psychological consequences  

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This image shows what sexual objectification can lead to. It’s like a domino affect where once one thing happens there’s a trail of bad things happening after it.

I gathered surveys from 3 different female SLA students. Some new information i found is that ⅔ of them were around my age and ⅓ was an older teen. I learned that people experience similar things such as getting cat called and feeling extremely uncomfortable. One girl said that being cat called is one of the most terrifying experiences she has, I can relate to  his because for me it also sparks a lot of anxiety when I’m being sexually objectified.

Also, 100% of the people who answered the survey say that they deal w mental health issues. This proves my point that sexual objectification affects the mental health of females. I asked them what they think we can do to end this issue, and the main response was to just bring awareness and show people this is what’s happening to you and how it makes you feel as a woman.

In my first blog post about wildlife preservation I talked about all of the places out there that helped endangered animals. So for to further expand my knowledge and research I visited the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. I did a field observation of half of the trail and was able to spot some animals out and about. Since I went in the morning there was not much to see because most animals came out at night but what I did find was enough for what I needed.

The data I gathered was abe to help in my original research because I was able to see how much of an issue wildlife preservation is. While at the refuge I saw birds, swans, and even some horses. The animals themselves aren’t constantly cared for like you would see at a zoo but the ones here just live like they would in the wild but without having to worry about the dangers of being killed. So comparing this to what I heard about all of the endangered animals has really opened my eyes more as to how bad they have it.

Something I still have questions about is how are the rescued endangered animals cared for. Since I know that there are ones out there that find help they need and are going extinct for different reasons, I wonder how they are cared for. Another question I have which is revolved around this is how do the animals in the wildlife get there food. If all animals there are to be protected then how can they at least surrive food wise. For example if there was an eagle that ate squirrels in the wildlife, but that squirrel was also there for protection then how does it work out so that both can survive?

While at the wildlife center there are some things that I observed and noticed. One of those things were that the other people there were mostly adults and more importantly with there own pets. There were a few kids I noticed there but they were also with parents. But one of the adults I noticed there was actually there to take pictures just like me, except he seemed a lot more professional. He had an actual camera and possible a notepad with him. If I could have stayed longer i would have asked him if he came to this place daily or what other places he went to. Looking back on what I did there only made me realize what more I could have done.

To end it all off I think that my field observation went well. In the future I would have liked to find more animals since was a little bit harder to do during the morning and also maybe ask around from other people on what they have seen here.

My first blog post addressed some issues with grey infrastructure and stormwater management in the city as well as briefly explaining the problems in the system. Now I gathered some more information around the situation with the help of my mother and some field observations.

Mz. Julie Snell (my mom) worked at PHS for a number of years before starting her own business in landscape architecture along with two other women from PHS. Now seeing as Mz. Snell worked in her field as long as she has as well as teaching a class about green infrastructure at Temple University, I consider Mz. Snell an expert in green infrastructure. So I chose to interview her. In the interview I asked a few questions that relate to stormwater management and green infrastructure in our city.

Is stormwater management a problem in this city and if so how? Was my first question for Mz. Snell. The response explained how that yes it is a problem because of Philadelphia's very old combined sewer system which when is overflowed will cause backups that’ll get your basement flooded.

My second question asked how quickly the city was changing to green infrastructure. Mz. Snell explained Green City Clean Waters, which is a 25 year, 2.5 billion dollar  project that started in 2011. The main goal is to get rid of the combined sewer overflows(CSOs) and the push behind the project is that Philly as well as other cities is mandated by the EPA to eliminate CSOs by 2026.

Knowing that Mz. Snell played a role in getting the Peco green roof all set back in 2009 I asked her about the process and specifically how long it took. I was surprised to hear that it was a very short project. It went from planning the concept of the green roof  in November to putting in the sedums only a month later. As Mz. Snell explained the timeline she also focused heavily on the fact that with green infrastructure the cost of installation is much less and will start working right away. Unlike grey infrastructure such as huge pipes and expanding sewer systems. So hopefully it won’t take that long for the city to reach their goal of getting rid of CSOs

In my fourth question I asked about what people around the city can do to help out. I wanted a better idea of what people could do to involve themselves some more. Mz. Snell explained how there are plenty of volunteering opportunities all over the city. You can choose to volunteer with PHS and join a tree tender group, you can help out with Parks and Rec friend groups, or you can even get a tree right out front of your house for free. The Tree City program can take a look at your space outside your house and see if you can qualify for a tree out there. Other than that you can do your best to keep the city a clean and healthy place by recycling and making sure your trash gets to a trash can.

My final question was simply if there was anything else Mz. Snell thinks people should know about green infrastructure in Philly. In response I got a message about how people who live in this city should be proud of the progress we’ve made with green infrastructure. I was kind of surprised to hear that at first but then I thought to myself that I should be proud of my city and it’s long plan for a cleaner environment.

• This is me an my mother shorty after I conducted the interview with her. I have her to thank for most of my information so thank you, Mom.

Other than an interview with my very own mother I also wanted a location in the city for field observations. Lucky for me there are plenty, the closet on eto SLA would be the Peco green roof. So going up there for my field observations was my original plan. Although it was harder than I thought to get up there seeing as it is not simply open to the public so I had to go with a backup plan which was Cira Green. Development for the green roof finished back in 2015 and if you don’t know the place I’m talking about it’s a green roof on top of the parking building next to the big FMC tower. Greenroofs.com provides the background information of the building such as the building type, the size, and the system. Other than when you go up there you can see how everything is put in place so when it rains it holds a good amount of water in the beds up there.

The coolest part about these projects is that they are usually public places like cira green so when the weather is nice they are really great places to hang out with friends. While at the same time time it’s a powerhouse of stormwater management. Why wouldn’t you want you city filled with places like Cira Green all over. Maybe they will be one day because in the last few years Philly’s green infrastructure has only gotten better and better so I know the only way is forward in this journey of making our city a better place.