Enlightenment, Realization, Awakening (1/3

This morning I woke up to my mother’s voice yelling at me to get up. With that call to alarm I slowly rolled out of bed (after more yells of course) and got dressed. Not having time to do anything else I neither ate breakfast, or brushed my teeth. As you can see I am the teenage epitome of healthy. Today was gonna be interesting because I had my second day of MCAS at my school Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School. I pretty much knew I was gonna pass, so really I was just glad that I didn’t have much homework or tests this week. (woot woot go MCAS except of course the Long Comp that sucks) I got to school talked with my friends, and then headed up to my room. I took the exam, and went back down. Now here’s where my day got interesting. One of the readings within the MCAS was by a Harvard Headmaster(Derek Bok) in the early 1990s. The reading was a persuasive essay about how much Harvard should restrict hateful symbols from the campus. Bok took the stance that free speech should be accepted within Harvard because of other public institutions protecting it, banning it would give the hate symbols more attention, and that instead of ridiculing these people who did these symbols we should try to get them help. After finishing the exam, and sitting with my friends, Harry, Lea, and Fauna, we started to talk about the specific Harvard reading. First Harry, Lea, and Fauna were arguing about whether Bok had a point or was just some racist/xenophobic old guy. Kyle believed that free speech should be protected while Lea and Fauna believed that all hate speech should be banned. Harry eventually asked my Point of view and I believed despite the moral issues of not banning the speech, not banning it was better. My point of view was mostly about the precedence of banning one hateful speech could eventually lead to banning, more and more, a snowball effect as you may(especially if it set a precedent if it went to court that freedom of speech could be infringed on). I also believed more heavily that ridicule was bad and that we should try to help these people. Lea quickly called me too optimistic and that people aren't really as good as I believe. While believing not whole heartedly in my argument I did fight hard for it. All this did was create an angry situation between a group of friends, but what really enlightened me came after in my self reflection.