Blog Stage Three: Substantial commentary or criticism #1

The article I chose to write about is entitled, "Make College Affordable" and the author is Charles E. Grassley a Republican senator from the state of Iowa. He is writing about the need to make college affordable. The author's intended audience are people who decide how much college tuition will be. Students who believe tuition is too much along with parents of students who have to pay these outrageous fees for college. He states facts for both sides that there are reasons why tuition is so high and he also states facts about why tuition should be lowered in price. He states that he asked 24 higher education experts why colleges can not use their endowments to help out with financial aid or student tuition so people don’t have to take out huge loans they will not be able to pay off their fees for years to come in order to get a degree. The degree is the all important key to success in the working world and the only way to get it is by going to college which is overpriced and expensive. The author of this article is very credible because he is a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, with jurisdiction over tax policy the position he holds makes this a credible author also by the sources he cites evidence throughout the article with the facts, numbers, and percentages he provides in the article also makes it credible. He states the amount of endowments colleges received in just one year and colleges like Harvard, Yale, and the University of Texas grew in billions of dollars from the year 2006 to 2007 alone. He proposes the question to these higher education experts why colleges can not use their endowments for help in lowering tuition costs and he says that they provided some answers that could be legitimate but said that most were as pathetic as the phrase “the dog ate my homework”.

Stage Two: Article introduction and colleague’s blogs

The article I chose to write about is found on this website. http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/10/1010utsigns.html. This article talks about two students who live and go to school at the University of Texas in Austin. They are both Democrats and have burnt orange t shirts on that say “University Democrats”. Both are supporters for the campaign of potential President Obama. The students were under fire from political student groups who protested these two for having signs in their dorm room window promoting Democrats for change Obama and Noriega and also Vote for change vote democrat. They were being banned from being able to come back to school next semester and take classes unless they took down their signs in their dorm room windows. Both students decided to take the risk and keep the sign up. Democratic and Republican student groups came to their side, along with lawmakers, alumni and others in the community who called University of Texas officials to ask why school policy did not allow students' First Amendment right to express their political views. The students eventually learned that they would not get into any trouble or having anything come against them for leaving their political signs on their dorm room windows. I believe that this article is worth reading because it goes to show you that you need to stand up for what you believe in and do not let anyone or anything sway you. In this case the thing that potentially could have stopped the students was the University of Texas saying they had to take down their signs in order to come back and take classes next semester. This is an outrage in my opinion if you can put things like bumper stickers or big signs on your front lawn supporting a presidential candidate, proposition or anything like that then I believe that you should be able to put up a harmless sign in your dorm room window. These students pay thousands of dollars to come get an education at UT and should be able to put up a sign in their dorm room window with whatever kind of political preferences they choose. This is an important article to read because it goes to show you need to fight for your free speech first amendment right if someone is coming against you to take that away from you. I’m glad these students decided to take that big risk for them and possibly not being able to take classes next semester to stand up for what they believe in.