Blog #3: Ritual

Fail Whale.

OK guys, I apologize for the extreme lateness of my blog this week.  I was creating my Prezi for Citizenship for tomorrow's class and was all like, yeah, this will be great, and then I realized I never made a blog for this past week.  Sorry… welp, I guess it's a good thing that I'm not actually a student in class!  Hah, amiright!?  *That's not an excuse.*




What does my ritual mean to me and how do I show congruence and commitment to it?

Congruence.

OK guys, so I had to get a semi-vocabulary lesson from Josh the other day when discussing this blog, and honestly, I still don't have the best clue as to how ritual would apply to me, because I understand there is a lot of tradition and 'secrecy' behind ritual for Fraternity Life, and so it is something I have never experienced.  So, taking Josh's advice, and his example blog (I swear, this is not why I waited so long… sheesh), I'm gonna work this from the angle of maintaining congruence with my values and how I live them out.  


The first value that I wrote about last week was equality, and based on the in-class activity last week and what I shared with class, a lot of what I apply my idea of equality to is sexual orientation and sexuality.  It's where I have had quite a bit of involvement both as a volunteer, student organization member and student worker in a GLBT Resource Center, and have met lifelong friends and learned lifelong lessons.  It also comes up a lot in my academics, because as I'm learning about student development or policy issues facing colleges today, my lens is focused on these issues of gender norms and sexual identity, and so a lot of my self-guided study and research interests are based on providing a college experience for GLBT students where they won't have to fear for their safety on campus.  

Last time I checked, there were
not universities at the poles.

Along with that, and very much bringing in another value I talked about, access to education, I care very much about people getting the opportunity to go to college, and have that developmental and enriching experience, both inside and outside the classroom.  One of the things that I focused on a lot in some of my international affairs stuff is the plight of international students, who, across the globe, are charged significant fees to study abroad, far more than out-of-state students.  And for one simple reason, that for the most part, higher education will not deny: they are treated as cash cows.  They have the spendable money, and institutions, often in financial hardship, are more than willing to charge them large fees for their time studying at the institution.  Granted, there is a lot of knowledge, research, and cultural exchange that is beneficial for both cultures that comes with international students across the globe, but how fair is it that we exploit international students and charge these fees, so that only the most affluent of students can afford to study abroad, in a higher education system that is significantly better than that in their home country.  So, in a lot of my work here at OSU and during my times studying abroad, I have tried to focus on improving international student experiences at their host campus, so that they are gaining the best experience possible, both inside and outside the classroom, at a fair price that is not set for institutional gain, and promotes access to an equal education around the globe.


Ok, so I realized, those are pretty pie in the sky ways of justifying my values or showing how I try to maintain congruence with them, but as these identities and topics are the most salient to me currently, that this is where this prompt, and Josh's prompts, took me.




And now… a video: courtesy of the Pac-10 bound Colorado Golden Buffaloes and South Park: