#37 Response to "What's Wrong with Gay Marriage"

In response to Katha Pollitt’s passage on “What’s Wrong with Gay Marriage?”, I find that people are seriously obsessed with the whole concept of marriage and pass through some complicated legal term in order to acquire such title or label that they are officially married. Why do people hope to gain through marriage? Do they want marriage in order to have some legal document to show others that they are legally bonded together that if they were to cheat on others, they need to face some legal procedure such as divorced and split their property? I guess marriage is more than simply dating like couples that it provides security to couple. To legally split responsibility of their wealth and kids if they were to have one, married couple can go through legal term if they were to have conflicts. Marriage is more than simply a testimony of eternal love and bond between people. It all comes down to money. I guess this is some issue regarding to why homosexual people are trying to fight for their right to get married. Living together as couple can easily turn to strangers the very next day. If they have kids, either side of the couple can easily walk away without taking responsibility. Most of the time, the lady would have to take care of the kids and the man would simply go away to find new dates. By marrying, women are better protected.

#36 response to Wenke "Too Much Pressure"

I totally can’t agree with what most students think cheating is acceptable. I totally agree with their argument that cheaters always win that they are rarely caught. Even if they are caught, they can wave their lowest grade out of the scale that it wouldn’t have an effect on their grade. Overall, the cheater can spend less effort and get a higher grade than those who study yet only get the 80s. Many times, people would just say, “Why do I have to place myself at such a disadvantage? I should start cheating as well to keep up with others.” This issue is fundamentally the school responsibility that they should enforce stricter rules and place harder punishment to those who cheated without letting the cheater felt they can escape easily that consequences for cheating is relatively low. I wouldn’t know if cheating is common in our school, but I would say there are indeed several cases where people cheat. I totally agree that no one in their life have ever committed any cheating. However, I will like to clarify what’s the definition of cheating. Cheating would be completely copying and plagiarizing other people’s work. In many cases, people are merely paraphrasing other’s idea when they want to take a look at other’s homework assignment. It is fine people can share works that by studying other’s work, it inspire creativity and makes oneself better. For example, would it be cheating if I wrote an essay based on what I have read in Shakespeare’s play? Would I be copying and cheating by incorporating some plots that share similarity to his play? No. Cheating is definitely bad. There are no excuses for it. However, paraphrasing is ok that at least you are putting the ideas down with your own word and have thought about them instead of just copying the answers down.   

#35: Defining Integrity

What exactly is integrity? According to Merriam Webster dictionary, integrity is defined as firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values. This definition is pretty legitimate and commonly defined by this definition. However, in our school, integrity seems to mean more than just firmly adherence to a code. It is becoming a slogan or a symbol for school that it was meant to mean honesty, hard working and being punctual to school or classes. The first time I have heard this word being widely used was after the school forced us to look at the movie “School Ties”. With this movie, it talks about how students need to face peer pressures and racial discrimination in order to maintain their integrity and moral values. I find it extremely suitable for this movie that students are supposed to follow school codes and conducts, especially for things such as cheating or lying. However, for me, integrity really means to have self discipline. With all the firmly adherence to code or moral or artistic values, it all goes down to whether a person can follow it personally to have good morality. To have integrity, it means the person has to be self conscious of what are the moral values, not just simply following the rules without really knowing why it’s implemented or enforced upon society.

# 34 Response to Leong's "Being a Chink"

Have I ever felt I have to protect my parents sometime in my life to defend them? Usually, it would be my parents that will be watching my back and constantly carefully monitor me to protect me from unnecessary harm, although occasionally they would want me to deal with problems myself to gain independence. Anyway, I can only say there are indeed some occasion where my parents were insulted or at least discriminated for their skin color and English ability when we went traveling in the state. I can totally understand Leong’s feeling. Trained with a second language at an early age, my parents are usually dependent on me when we went to foreign countries. Most of the time, I simply wished to stand on the side and let my parents struggling to do all the talking due to my shyness. I would often be scolded at for my impassiveness toward helping them when they struggle to communicate and understand some words, ranging from buying a Big Mac in Macdonald to reading a menu in a restaurant. Although our family was never been insulted with the word chink before, just simply the word “Chinese” pisses our family off. Many times when I tried to explain some terms for my parents in Chinese, the casher would suddenly whisper “Ha, Chinese” followed by some laughter or staring as if we were inferior.  Although he did not say anything else, just the word referring us as Chinese offended me. For me, I hated to be labeled the same as the people whom we have serious conflict with due to complicated political reason. Perhaps the word Chinese is innocuous, however it’s the way people use it in context and say it with sarcasm that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Mandarin endearment
親愛的~~ (dear one)
小可愛 (little cute one)
哈尼~ ( honey)