Student Opinions / Submissions

Budget Cuts and School Sports

by Hayden Kilpatrick

Budget cuts in the Florida school systems have Duval County contemplating the elimination of sports programs. All sports would be cut at the beginning of the fall semester of 2011; no football, soccer, track or baseball. Governor Rick Scott and School Board Chairman W.C. Gentry confirm that with a $97 million deficit sports in Duval County will likely be cut. With nearly 50 different Duval County school sports programs being threatened thousands of children will be affected. Eliminating sports programs from Duval County schools will not only negatively impact the students but the community as well.

With noticeable reductions in my high school (shortage of books, lack of materials and class choices becoming increasingly limited) the sports curriculum and events associated with it have maintained camaraderie amongst students and kept us engaged in school pride. Reports have indicated that students who played sports in school did 10 percent better in core classes. With almost one third of a school’s student body participating in sports, cutting these programs will no doubt affect the overall county academic performance. Hundreds of students each year receive sports scholarships to universities that they most likely could have never afforded. School sports also have long term positive effects on students; nearly 80 percent of all college graduates report saying that sports greatly enhanced career development, team building skills and overall positive work ethic.

A local Duval County mother, Amie Fielding, says, " This [eliminating sports] is an outrage. My son wouldn't have ever had the opportunity or chance to make it to a university without football. Not to mention it kept him active, healthy and most importantly out of trouble."

Students participating in sports have 0.6 percent chance of dropping out as opposed to a 10.3 percent chance for non-participants. Keeping students involved in after school sporting activities leaves an excess amount of unsupervised and unstructured time. Students not active in daily school sports have 40 hours a week or more of “free” time, leaving kids more susceptible to trying drugs or engaging in other illegal activities. With an already high crime rate in Duval County, can the city afford the potential increase? Of course, with a higher crime rate comes the need for more protective and rescue services, rendering the Duval sports budget cuts obsolete.

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Policy Brief: Golden Gasoline

by Kirk Harrison

1. Gas prices in America have recently become a matter of great interest and concern for the general public, as well as an issue for congressmen and women and senators alike to be handled accordingly and with trust to the general public. Recently prices have soared up to near record levels like the ones we saw in the summer of 2008, due to the aroused conflict in Libya. The conflict has greatly decreased trade with the area, including Libya itself and is causing a major increase in prices on the home front. Because of this, there will be less gas circulating in the economy, as families and individuals will be pouring money straight into their gas tanks. Though these prices are not record breaking, they are bound to put a dent in the economy of St. Johns County, the state of Florida and the entire United States as a whole.

2. Is it the government’s place to step in and end these assailing prices that seem to have no end and if so, how should they go about doing so?

3. There is no shortage of gasoline. The problem with the gasoline prices lies simply in the fact that trade with the area has grown sour over the United States’ involvement in many Middle Eastern affairs in recent years due to the War on Terror, President Bush’s search for weapons of mass destruction and also to lay the foundation for democracy in growing nations such as Iraq. It is no secret that the United States has yet to access its own major sources of oil, a large sum of which is held underneath some reservation lands in Alaska. Thus far, the United States government has not decided to drill into these natural reserves in interest for the preservation of wildlife and the ecosystem of the area.

4. It is a known fact that Jacksonville is the largest city land-wise in the continental United States. Because of this, there are large numbers of suburbs and outer city-limit areas in which many of the city’s main workers reside. Being so far out, it is extremely common for these people to own and rely on cars for transportation—not just to and from work, but for all their other needs as well. With the price of gas being so high and I myself being one of those that drives regularly on a daily basis, driving has become harder and harder to accomplish without reimbursement on any other front. Should the cycle continue and the prices keep rising, it could have long-term effects on the local economy and move either people to other jobs or those that choose to keep the jobs away from their homes.

5. Some direct action has been taken by the United States government to stem the tide of rising gas prices, but other actions have been taken which secondarily affected factors that helped improve the situation mildly as well. Drilling off the coasts of Florida, Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico has increased with more government approval and passing of law and also funding from state governments granted by Congress. Also, the Cash for Clunkers act helped to relieve Americans of their old and gas “guzzling” vehicles and trade them in for direct cash. The bailouts of 2009 also helped to keep American car companies in business, allowing them to continue research and development of vehicles with improved gas mileage and even electric transportation.

6. The most clear and efficient course of action is to open up the American oil industry to its full potential. Oil reserves are only as good as there name makes them out to be: reserved. If we open up the fields in Alaska and everywhere else we know there to be oil, our dependency on the Middle East for oil and all its products and by-products will be cut dramatically. Though this may be a seemingly temporary course of action, it could give the United States time to sort out its foreign affairs in the Middle East and also open up some export/import options with other nations as well. Option B is to pull the plug on all our external affairs in the Middle Eastern area. This would greatly ease tension on groups that are holding our country hostage energetically and, in time, would ease the choke hold on the petroleum trade with OPEC and its affiliates. The last option would be to wait it out. This isn’t the first time we’ve had serious issues with the oil trade and it has yet to even reach $100 a barrel as of yet. However, since the first of these petroleum crises, they have continued to grow more frequent and more volatile.

7.
Option 1 :
- U.S has own oil source
- External affairs continue mostly unhampered
- Alleviate dependence on Middle East for oil
- Long legislative battles over drilling rights and landownership

Option 2:
- Bring troops home
- Will bring oil trade prices down
- Be seen as weakness to other nations

Option 3:
- Least amount of mobilization needed
- Prove our point to the Middle East
- Long wait out for pricing to recede

8. Drilling the reserves on United States soil is the most logical and effective method to solving this problem. We cannot continue to ignore the fact that we have resources of our own and simply not utilize them. With the reserves open and flowing, our dependence on the Middle East for oil necessities will virtually cancel, and we can become self-sufficient in our energizing efforts. Wildlife can be relocated, houses and owners bought and sold; in the end if it isn’t worth our economic independence as a country then it is worth the time we bought to find new sources of energy such as solar powered vehicles and other means of transportation that could eventually take the need for gasoline or oil out of the picture for good.

Sources:
"Cash For Clunkers - Facts About The Government Sponsored Car Allowance Rebate System - Kelley Blue Book." New Cars, Used Cars, Blue Book Values & Car Prices - Kelley Blue Book. Kelly Blue Book. Web. 13 Apr. 2011. <http://www.kbb.com/kbb/cash-for-clunkers/?r=406159797952728500>.

Cooper, Rory. "Auto Bailout Update: Drove My Chevy to the Levee… | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News." The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog. 23 Feb. 2009. Web. 13 Apr. 2011. <http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/23/auto-bailout-update-when-will-it-end/>.

Krasnow, Jay. "ALASKA OIL DRILLING." Alaska Oil Drilling. Justice Department. Web. 13 Apr. 2011. <http://www1.american.edu/ted/alaska.htm>.

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Video Game Violence

by Luis Grossling

Over the past few years video games have changed a lot, from the first Pac-Man game to the latest games like Call of Duty or Rock Band. But one of the things that has changed the most is the creation of all the different video game genres. And one of the most controversial of these video game genres would have to be violent video games.

Over the past few years games have become more violent and these types of games are sometimes being blamed for the increasing crime rates and increase in child violence. But these games, while possibly a small factor in the increase of crime and child violence, are not the key factor. Games like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas have had to deal with hundreds of people accusing these games as the reason for their crimes. And a lot of parents are also blaming these games for the increased violence of their kids. But parents should not blame violent games for their kids' actions because it is the parents who buy their kids the games of which they disapprove.

I can see this every time that I play video games; I can be playing a game like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and I will join an online game, and play with hundreds of little kids. I am able to tell that they are little kids or at least not old enough to play a rated M game (which you have to be 17 years old or older to play and buy) because of their voices sounding like they belong to kids between the age of seven and 13. So if parents are really against games that show too much violence, then why do they buy their kids these games and why do they let their kids play these games?

In my personal opinion parents should do what my parents did—let their kids play these games, but not until the parent feels like their kids are old enough to comprehend these games. Parents should also keep an eye on the amount of time their kids play these games and make sure that if the kid is still young and is going to play a violent video game that the kid knows it is just a game and he should not do anything he does in the game in real life.

Finally parents, stop blaming violent video games for your kids' actions, because while yes the game might be making your kid a bit more violent, you the parents are the ones who buy your kids the violent games and the game systems that they use to play these games. And this is coming from someone who has played violent video games for years and has turned out fine and is not violent at all.

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Students Attend Lou Frey Symposium

by Wesley Tucker

During the spring Lou Frey Symposium hosted at the University of Central Florida by the Lou Frey Institute of Politics and Government, speakers from China and the United States came together to talk about important issues such as bridging the cultural divide, whether or not the United States and China need each other, working together in an age of terrorism and nuclear proliferation, the 100,000 strong initiative and understanding and addressing core national interests.

The "Bridging the Cultural Divide" session of the symposium consisted of Dan Wright (president and CEO of GreenPoint Group) and Liu Xiang (Second Secretary, Education Office of the Embassy of the PRC in the USA) talking to us about the 100,000 Strong Initiative. Currently there are 20,000 United States students in China studying, while China has 130,000 students studying in the United States. They came to tell us about the program which had a goal of getting 100,000 students from the United States studying in China. Afterwards, Ambassador John Veroneau and Zhang Shaogang educated us about the markets that the United States and China share and how complementary they are. Zhang Shaogang stressed the important of "collaboration vs. confrontation" and how China can/has offer(ed) 235,000 jobs for Americans. Zhang Shaogang also told us about how globalization grew exponentially since China's trade growth, but stressed on how trading rules need to catch up.

During the last sessions, "Understand and Addressing Core National Interests" and "Working Together in an Age of Terrorism and Nuclear Proliferation," the speakers from China talked about how they needed to work on the military and defense relationship and how we can't address threats solely. They referenced 9/11 and how China and the United States worked together then and how it needs to be more like that. They also talked about how sometimes we work together and sometimes we don't, referencing a day when a Chinese and United States captain boarded each other's ships to eat dinner, while on the other side of the world United States surveillance personnel were being harassed by the Chinese.

For more information on the Lou Frey Institute at UCF, visit www.loufrey.org, www.facebook.com/loufreyucf or follow him on twitter @LouFrey.

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Opinions and News of St. Johns County, Florida Students

Budget Cuts and School Sports

Policy Brief: Golden Gasoline

Video Game Violence

Students Attend Lou Frey Symposium