Freewrite #2
Writing 205
Eunice Jones
March 8, 2010
What has interested me the most is the rules and regulations that are apart of public and private spaces in the U.S. Public parks and spaces are supposed to be open to the public but they have limitations on when and who can be in the public spaces. They have opening and closing times. The county officials want everyone to come to certain area parks or squares, let us say Hanover Square, to enjoy ourselves but not the homeless. The homeless are also a part of the city. They would like to enjoy themselves too. Even though some of them will be pan handling.
I really enjoyed the ads and bulletin boards. You know how sometimes you are riding along in the car and all of a sudden a billboard just has a message that really makes you think or puts you in a different place or time. I also did not realize how many racially or sexually motivated symbols there are in the world. It seems that advertisers are using billboards to get their messages across to everyone instead of television because it is a lot cheaper and motorists are always on the highways and streets heading to somewhere.
I feel that freedom of speech and freedom to act in a public space is one of the issues that I feel that we are losing out on. We sometimes feel that we are being watched all the time, even if you turn from a corner that says no turns. You wonder who is watching you. Are you going to get pulled over by the police? In September of last year, the Indian students did a protest dance against Columbus Day. It was the first time that I’ve seen in person Indians doing their native dance. It was both interesting and very informative. I guess since they were student, the University let have their protest in the Quad. But I feel that if they had asked the county officials to have the protest downtown, I don’t think that they would have agreed because of the Italian immigrants that we have in office and in the city.
There is one specific site that I am interested in and that is how disabled students are discriminated against on Syracuse University. There is a group of disabled students that meet three times a week and discuss their problems that they are having. But anyway there are complaints about the older building not being accessible for the disabled student. The clock tower building is not really handicapped accessible. The back door can be opened automatically but the wood door is hard to open. The elevator in that building is very slow or sometimes does not work. The old building of Eggers, Lyman and Maxwell halls have tried to improve the conditions that were lacking, but there is still a struggle with some of the bathroom stalls the desks in the classrooms and getting through the winters here is the worst. Going to this school is very hard because of the parking that is assigned to some of the students is crazy. Even if you have a handicapped sticker they still want you to park far away. One year I was going to catch a ride with another student because they let us out early because of the weather. We had to walk from the Quad to over by the Carrier Dome to get her car. We had to walk down stairs that was not shoveled at all. I told her if I fall take a picture and go get help.
The two ideas that I am trying to choose from are discrimination of disabled individuals and invasion of search engine space or privacy. The first idea is good because I am disabled and have seen some things and have seen how some disabled students are treated. Sometimes I feel that S.U. does not care because we are the minority on the hill. The other idea came from a friend of mine. She felt that jobs are searching through facebook, yahoo!, and other searching engines to see what people have on their websites.
