Ever have a day where you are just bursting with opinions? Almost every day is like that for me. I can't say that my mind is constantly engaged in any and every subject of current debate. But I can say that where I am, I am physicaly and mentally engaged. I generally don't need to be on my phone or updating facebook when I'm in class or around people. This is because I'm not constantly wanting to be somewhere else. So if you ask me if I have an opinion on that, I either have an opinion or I can get one pretty fast.
So today I became one of THOSE people. Usually I have opinions in class, but I generally keep them to myself. This is partly out of fear that my opinion is stupid and partly out of fear that I'M stupid. But last night I had a sort of intellectual breakthrough. I was writing a paper for my media relations class and I began to write about my school and what kind of media relations I think it has in relation to my reading assignment. This came out then today in class. Suddenly, within the objective gates of political correctness, I voiced that my school's policy on having a passive media relations campaign sucked. When my school was faced with a sex-related crisis earlier this year, their policy was to stay silent. Whaaat? This literally means that everywhere I go, people think I go to a mental, rapist, conservative Christian college. There is literally NO public voice for my school on the web. Sure they have facebook and every fathomable form of media - but it's all controlled by internally generated media. Where is the student's voice? Where is the alumni? Where is the blogger and major news organizations? Where is the voice of the community? As a returning student, I value those opinions FAR more than an overwhelming amount of school-generated links about some new school program. If someone accused my organization of something, would I want to stay silent? Heck, no. I'd join the cause - I'd speak out against the problem! I would want to hear student's opinions! When you squelch those opinions and remain silence in response to accusations, you look so so guilty. What do you have to hide? Who cares if it's not politically correct or if one student doesn't get it right. Let your people talk! As it is people outside the organization are talking anyway - and it's ALL bad. By regulating free speech, the school has literally shut down all hope for positive word-of-mouth from those who truly know how great the school is; instead they feel the problem will 'go away' as long as the Christian church circles are kept happy and well-informed. The fact is, Christian circles are not deaf; they hear what the community and public think of my school. And while adults may be discerning of imbalanced public opinion, will 17 and 18 year olds?
This perspective of Christiantiy drives me nuts. Just because we're Christians doesn't mean we can hold ourselves to a lower standard when it comes to communicating with those outside of our circle. Honestly? Our alumni "circle" shrinks on a yearly basis! The student population is dropping! You really want to keep advertising and limiting yourself to your internal circle? That's like BP sending out an internal news memo after the oil spill, telling everyone the great things they're doing to improve the environment and encouraging everyone to think better thoughts about BP.
It's just frustrating because I literally see that my school offers such a great education but it is smothering itself in red tape from generations gone-by.
Guess what? Do I feel like I have to defend every Christian out there? Nope. You are going to meet people who claim to be a Christian and they don't even live by the Bible. They add to the Bible (which is why it's so easy for them to judge!) and they take away from the Bible (which is why they wrongly reason it's ok to forgive sexual abuse without considering the law!). You're going to meet all kinds of people who are good Christians and bad Christians - it's not because God is any less holy. It's because we ALL have a sin nature. Some people are just hypocrites! It doesn't change who our God is - He is still love and hope and justice and salvation. My sin means I deserve hell - God changed that story when He sent His Son to earth to die for my sins! This is why I don't feel the need to defend all Christian's - because in the end my ONLY association is with a holy God - not with an organization or a denomination. So if I were the school's president, I would literally have gotten down and joined the protesting against sexual abuse in the church myself. Because I don't support sexual abuse in the church - and neither does my school. It's a good school- it teaches great values/work ethic - and it's a solid, well-rounded education. But by remaining SILENT - guess what people assume?
I guess I'm so passionate about this one because now this organization reflects ME. It all goes back to economics - regardless of what values we hold, we all have a self-interest.
Sigh. I didn't even touch on my opinions that I contributed to Economics class today. I was going to wax eloquent on how the minimum wage discourages employers from hiring people at their true worth. Where is the incentive to hire people with disabilities when you are forced to pay every person the same fixed amount, regardless of what skills that person has to offer. So instead of hire someone at a lower amount, some people go without jobs and other people have no incentive to work harder at their job when they're paid the same amount as someone who barely works at all! Don't even get me started on our disability system - I worked in healthcare! Soooo many people made it their full-time job to try to get on disability - do you think they wanted to work at all after getting awarded? Nope. In fact time after time I met people who were ABLE to work but would lose their disability check if they went back to work or worked too many hours. So what we have is the middle-class supporting the person who CAN work at least a little bit but is afraid to jeopradize the benefit of NOT working.
Like I said, it's just flowing from me today. Is it politically incorrect? Most likely. Does everyone agree with my opinions? Of course not. Do I care? Nope.
I should probably go for a run or think about something else or I'm going to start losing my few friends! :)
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