Favorite Moment As A High School Student

My favorite moments as a high school student were being able to meet new people and make new friends. I also enjoyed talking to my favorite teachers that always make me laugh. For example, you are one of my favorite teachers, but I'm still mad because you always lied to me and never brought me my COOKIE BUTTER!!!!!

Also you should take me to Grill em All and buy me a behemoth burger!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was also fun playing spot it and bullshit and go fish with you during our long advisory days, especially since you kept losing!

Favorite Moment As A Senior

My favorite moment as a senior has been going on the senior activities, I especially liked going on the northern college tour, I thought it was fun and a cool experience being able to see the colleges that I was interested in and going to the Santa Cruz pier and being able to go to San Fransisco and walk around was an awesome experience. I also enjoyed doing the rest of the senior activities and planning them, it was a nice experience being able to work on something and then getting to enjoy it even more since I worked on it, like the northern tour.

Favorite Moment In Class

Some of my favorite moments in this class were when you, Rocha, would just sit down next to me and Christian and Giselle and we would just talk about music or random things with Giselle coming up with random topics out of nowhere. Also when we would constantly be making fun of you with CATS and calling you PetaQ and other insults.

That's how I always feel in your class.

Social Media

Another topic we discussed in class was social media, and how most of the media is owned by six major corporations, yet these corporations have little to nothing to do with the media. The six big corporations are Disney, General Electric, News-Corp, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. Over time the amount of companies controlling the media has gradually been decreasing, in 1983 90% of the media was owned by 50 companies, however now these six companies own the same percentage of the media, 90%. As we can see the ownership of the media is slowly becoming a monopoly with fewer companies involved in the ownership of the media. It was interesting to see how so many companies was took part in the media and how it has shrunk to only six companies now. These six companies now control what we read, watch, and listen to. These major companies now have a great amount of power to influence the public into their way of thinking.

Bill of Rights

While in this class, we discussed the Bill of Rights and each and every one of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is important because it protects our basic human rights and personal liberties and it allows us to know when we are permitted these rights and to what extent.

First Amendment: freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly; the right of petition/protest.

Second Amendment: the right to bear arms.

Third Amendment: limit on quartering troops.

Fourth Amendment: protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Fifth Amendment: protects against self-incrimination and double jeopardy.

Sixth Amendment: the right to a fair and speedy trial.

Seventh Amendment: trial by jury in civil cases.

Eighth Amendment: protects against cruel and unusual punishment and it protects against excessive bail.

Ninth Amendment: people retain rights.

Tenth Amendment: powers not delegated to the U.S goes to the states or the people.

We also had to do a project on our favorite amendment, my group chose to do the second and fourth amendment. We decided to do these two because we felt that these were the easier ones to do a book on, we included the amendments word by word and a summary of each one as well as a drawing of each one.

Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights movements first began during the time of the formation of our country. However, during the era of the 1960’s a huge Civil Rights movement began to take place. During this time, several issues began to come up and many people began a movement to gain their rights. Several issues such as racial discrimination and gender discrimination were brought up and given a solution during the Civil Rights movements of the 1960’s, however, these forms of discrimination still occur to this day, thus the Civil Rights movement has yet to come to can end, with such issues such as one’s sexual orientation being a more current Civil Rights issue.

Racial discrimination has been an issue dating back to the time of slavery. For many years, most of the African-American population in the United States was either forced or born into slavery, with the exception of a few who were of the high class in society. It took a significantly long time for people to finally stand up for their rights. Once the topic of racial discrimination began to pop up many activists began to speak out to abolish slavery. There was even a war, Civil War, that had to take place in order for this particular issue to get resolved. The aftermath of the Civil War resulted in the creation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which stated that slavery and involuntary servitude was now forbidden. However, getting rid of slavery did not change the way that many people thought about African Americans. Many people were still degrading them and treated them miserably, they even had established Jim crow laws, that segregated people of color from the whites. It wasn’t until 1964 that the Civil Rights Act was established to make these discriminatory acts illegal in hotels, motels, and restaurants. It also made discrimination in jobs illegal due to race. Even though there are many laws to protect against racial discrimination, it is still a battle we face today.

For hundreds of years, women have been constantly fighting for equal rights. These feminists want to have the same opportunities that men have. They had already gotten the right to vote several years before in the 1920’s, due to the establishment of the Nineteenth Amendment. There was even another amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, that would create equality amongst all genders, brought up during the same time as they gained the right to vote, however, it failed to get all the votes necessary for it to become established into law. During the 1920’s - 1960’s, there were laws designed to protect women and protect men from competition with women, these were called, The “Doldrums.” The fight for women’s rights still went on strong and there even came to be a second feminist wave, which brought up a court case in 1971, Reed vs. Reed, this case ruled that can Idaho law preferring men over women was unconstitutional and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To this day, there are still constant issues being brought up by women, such as wage discrimination, amount of worth, sexual harassment, and women in the military.

A more current Civil Rights issue, being discrimination against one’s sexual orientation has recently had some great successes. Gay and lesbian rights have been recently gaining many laws made in place to protect their rights. In the early 2000’s the court case, Lawrence v. Texas resulted in the protection of private homosexual acts by the constitution. Just last year, as of June 26, gay marriage was made legal nationwide. This legalization overjoyed many homosexual couples and supporters of the LGBT community, who have been longing to have the same rights as heterosexual couples. This has been a huge step for the discrimination against homosexuals simply based upon their sexual orientation, however, they still continue to be discriminated against, since many people do not approve of homosexuals due to their sexual orientation, because of religious reasons or other reasons they may have.

The Civil Rights movements of the 1960’s brought about great change for racial and gender discrimination. Although there have been several laws made to protect against these discriminations, the Civil Rights movements have yet to come to an end, there are still many issues being faced about racial and gender discrimination to this day, as well as discrimination based upon one’s sexual orientation.