Preparing to Conduct Business Research 2 Essays - School Shooting

Preparing to Conduct Business Research 2 Essays - School Shooting Cristal Williams, Anthony Moreno, Alex Adkins, Kelvin Burford, Rocio Terry RES/351 Preparing to Conduct Business Research 2 Instructor: Said Nik-khah October 19, 2015 Schools Safety Over the past several years, the Department of Education as well all nationwide schools have faced several events of gun violence. Some of these events have included the active shooter massacres at Columbine High School, 1999, Rocori High School in 2003, Campbell County Comprehensive School in 2005, Orange High School 2006, Platte Canyon High School in 2006, West Nickel Mines Amish School in 2006, Virginia Tech 2007, Northern Illinois University, 2007, Chardon High School 20012, Sandy Hook Elementary School 2012, Santa Monica College, 2013, Arapaho High School, 2013, Reynolds High School 2014, Marysville-Pilchuck High School 2014, and at Florida State University Feb 2014. (USA Today, 2014) These are just some of the active shooting events going on around the Nation. The safety in schools has raised the questions of how to implement better systems to prevent incidents like those reported from happening. One of the issues that these schools faces is not having enough safety precautions in place and not possessing an established protocol to ensure the safety of each school. The protocols that schools should be implementing are things like an active shooter and lock down drills, metal and safety detectors, an assigned Resource Officers on site and mostly parent involvement. Research Questions Research questions are very important to guide our research and focus on the relevant information that supports our objectives. For our objective, we have come up with three questions to start out our research. 1) What is the rate of incidences that occur in the U.S. that apply to school safety? 2) What can we do to reduce the amount of shooting in our schools in the U.S.? 3) Will shooter drills play a role in reducing a number of injuries or casualties in a real life situation? Hypothesis and Variables Considered Although there has been talking about banning guns, there are too many ways to get a hold of one and in all actuality, they are not going to go away. Our question is now, how can we be protected? How can our children be protected? How can our schools and communities be protected? Going back some years, there weren't many instances where one would hear about school shootings. Nowadays, we do not stop hearing of them. School standards have risen so high that it has been causing a great deal of stress on the students and teachers as well. Students feel the pressure of having to succeed, please their parents, deal with being homesick, and everyday life that occurs. Some of these shootings that occur are from students that attend these schools, and they may feel like there is no other way. There needs to be more protection around school zones, communities should work closer together to help one another, there need to be more programs available for people who may be falling into such a de pression that they feel like killing others, and there need to be more "laws" or "guidelines" into being able to buy a gun and owning one. Ethical Considerations Considering laws and guidelines on buying weapons, ethically should we allow teachers to carry weapons in schools to protect the students? If so, what types of firearms would staff be allowed to carry or not allowed to carry? Would the weapons be his or her personal firearm or school-issued weapon? Would there be inspections conducted to ensure functionality of firearms? With this in mind, we need to ponder ethical considerations prior to preparing schools to allow firearms while preventing and managing situations of lost, misplaced, or stolen firearms. Allowing teachers to carry weapons creates the impression on the part of the student that he or she is in an unsafe environment and that it is necessary for people to protect him or her with firearms in the school. They should have the feeling that where they are studying and where they are with other children is a safe environment. And by carrying a gun, a teacher gives the wrong impression that it is not. A growing number of studies show a link between hidden biases and actual behavior. In other words, hidden biases can reveal themselves

Ted Sorensen on the Kennedy Style of Speech-Writing

Ted Sorensen on the Kennedy Style of Speech-Writing In his final book, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (2008), Ted Sorensen offered a prediction: I have little doubt that, when my time comes, my obituary in the New York Times (misspelling my last name once again) will be captioned: Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy Speechwriter. On November 1, 2010, the Times got the spelling right: Theodore C. Sorensen, 82, Kennedy Counselor, Dies. And though Sorensen did serve as ​a counselor and alter ego to John F. Kennedy from January 1953 to November 22, 1963, Kennedy Speechwriter was indeed his defining role. A graduate of the University of Nebraskas law school, Sorensen arrived in Washington, D.C. unbelievably green, as he later admitted. I had no legislative experience, no political experience. Id never written a speech. Id hardly been out of Nebraska. Nevertheless, Sorensen was soon called on to help write Senator Kennedys Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage (1955). He went on to co-author some of the most memorable presidential speeches of the last century, including Kennedys inaugural address, the Ich bin ein Berliner speech, and the American University commencement address on peace. Though most historians agree that Sorensen was the primary author of these eloquent and influential speeches, Sorensen himself maintained that Kennedy was the true author. As he said to Robert Schlesinger, If a man in a high office speaks words which convey his principles and policies and ideas and hes willing to stand behind them and take whatever blame or therefore credit go with them, [the speech is] his (White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters, 2008). In Kennedy, a book published two years after the presidents assassination, Sorensen spelled out some of the distinctive qualities of the Kennedy style of speech-writing. Youd be hard-pressed to find a more sensible list of tips for speakers. While our own orations may not be quite as momentous as a presidents, many of Kennedys rhetorical strategies are worth emulating, regardless of the occasion or the size of the audience. So the next time you address your colleagues or classmates from the front of the room, keep these principles in mind. The Kennedy Style of Speech-Writing The Kennedy style of speech-writingour style, I am not reluctant to say, for he never pretended that he had time to prepare first drafts for all his speechesevolved gradually over the years. . . .We were not conscious of following the elaborate techniques later ascribed to these speeches by literary analysts. Neither of us had any special training in composition, linguistics or semantics. Our chief criterion was always audience comprehension and comfort, and this meant: (1) short speeches, short clauses and short words, wherever possible; (2) a series of points or propositions in numbered or logical sequence wherever appropriate; and (3) the construction of sentences, phrases and paragraphs in such a manner as to simplify, clarify and emphasize.The test of a text was not how it appeared to the eye, but how it sounded to the ear. His best paragraphs, when read aloud, often had a cadence not unlike blank verseindeed at times key words would rhyme. He was fond of alliterative sentences, not solely for reasons of rhetoric but to reinforce the audiences recollection of his reasoning. Sentences began, however incorrect some may have regarded it, with And or But whenever that simplified and shortened the text. His frequent use of dashes was of doubtful grammatical standingbut it simplified the delivery and even the publication of a speech in a manner no comma, parenthesis or semicolon could match.Words were regarded as tools of precision, to be chosen and applied with a craftsmans care to whatever the situation required. He liked to be exact. But if the situation required a certain vagueness, he would deliberately choose a word of varying interpretations rather than bury his imprecision in ponderous prose.For he disliked verbosity and pomposity in his own remarks as much as he disliked them in others. He wanted both his message and his language to be plain and unpretentious, but never patronizing. He wanted his major policy statements to be positive, specific and defi nite, avoiding the use of suggest, perhaps and possible alternatives for consideration. At the same time, his emphasis on a course of reasonrejecting the extremes of either sidehelped produce the parallel construction and use of contrasts with which he later became identified. He had a weakness for one unnecessary phrase: The harsh facts of the matter are . . .but with few other exceptions his sentences were lean and crisp. . . .He used little or no slang, dialect, legalistic terms, contractions, clichà ©s, elaborate metaphors or ornate figures of speech. He refused to be folksy or to include any phrase or image he considered corny, tasteless or trite. He rarely used words he considered hackneyed: humble, dynamic, glorious. He used none of the customary word fillers (e.g., And I say to you that is a legitimate question and here is my answer). And he did not hesitate to depart from strict rules of English usage when he thought adherence to them (e.g., Our agenda are long) would grat e on the listeners ear.No speech was more than 20 to 30 minutes in duration. They were all too short and too crowded with facts to permit any excess of generalities and sentimentalities. His texts wasted no words and his delivery wasted no time.(Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy. Harper Row, 1965. Reprinted in 2009 as Kennedy: The Classic Biography) To those who question the value of rhetoric, dismissing all political speeches as mere words or style over substance, Sorensen had an answer. Kennedys rhetoric when he was president turned out to be a key to his success, he told an interviewer in 2008. His mere words about Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba helped resolve the worst crisis the world has ever known without the U.S. having to fire a shot. Similarly, in a New York Times op-ed published two months before his death, Sorensen countered several myths about the Kennedy-Nixon debates, including the view that it was style over substance, with Kennedy winning on delivery and looks. In the first debate, Sorensen argued, there was far more substance and nuance than in what now passes for political debate in our increasingly commercialized, sound-bite Twitter-fied culture, in which extremist rhetoric requires presidents to respond to outrageous claims. To learn more about the rhetoric and oratory of John Kennedy and Ted Sorensen, have a look at Thurston Clarkes Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America, published by Henry Holt in 2004 and now available in a Penguin paperback.