Avoiding the Finals Week Funk

Dead week is among us and students across campus are already looking sluggish and are over the fall semester. While many students are being offered study tips and facilities as well as resources to study and get through this final stretch, no one is really offering help with the amount of stress and anxiety one will be faced with.

Students at this point need to remember that as much as we all need to cram for those tests or drink tons of coffee to get that ten- pager done, it is also really important to take sometime for ourselves to make sure we don’t go crazy by the time this is all over.

Check out this video, and just relax your mind and get out of the finals week funk.

Bridging the gap between cultures, one sign at a time

November 9 through the 14th is National Deaf Awareness Week. With the recent protest against Audism (a prejudice against people who cannot hear) done by the Deaf Studies Association and other organizations on campus, people are becoming more aware of the Deaf community that is here.

Deaf Awareness Week is implemented in order to help  people understand that Deaf people are not disabled, and the reality of the situation being that there is mainly a language barrier present between hearing and Deaf. With events and seminars ranging from an American Sign Language intro crash course to socials, people can dive in to the community and be exposed to the culture.

An alternative campus for refugees and immigrants

Education is often seen as an obligation rather than a luxury. Living in the United States, since a K-12 public education is free, we can tend to forget that some people in other parts of the country do not have the same opportunities to set foot in a classroom.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, Oakland International High School is lending itself to offer a chance for refugees and immigrants to get an education. Because the school is catering to these students, some whom have never been in a traditional school before, teacher’s are finding themselves having a hard time guiding and helping them. This is because while not only to they have to teach them english, and ultimately try to get them to graduate, they also have to help them cope with any psychological trauma they have attained due to living in a war torn land.

While some California school districts place the newcomers in immersion programs, the Oakland Unified School District dedicates an entire campus for those students where they offer them a chance to stay up until they graduate. Since 2007, the school has helped educate over 200 students from countries like, Honduras, Russia and Mongolia. The school focuses are helping students learn English, professionals and students alike however, express that the transition and process is difficult.

Speak- Controversial Book on High School’s Reading List

According to an article in the L.A. Times, Temecula Valley Unified School district just added a new book to their core reading list, but this isn’t the typical F. Scott Fitzgerald type story. “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson is a story about a young girl that has trouble making the transition for middle school to high school. She loses herself as she struggles to go through her days for she hides the secret that she was raped at a party over the summer.

I read to book when I was a junior in high school for fun and it was definitely a hard book to read. Strictly because there were some vulgar and graphic parts, that as a young female, were difficult to fathom and get through.  I can see where the controversy erupts from, the book deals with hard adolescent issues; however censoring books with that kind of content does not protect anybody. But by banning books like “Speak,” leaves kids in the dark and makes them vulnerable and oblivious to the harsh reality that our world is filled of.  Kids shouldn’t and cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them, for censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Thus, let the exposure to the new types of literature commence.