HW 30: Citizenship Symposium

The citizenship symposium that we attended was a set number of lectures here at Keene State College that took on issues in our everyday lives. Voting Fairness: The first session that I attended was called “Voting Theory and the Questions of Fairness”. The name of the speaker was Vincent Ferlini, who is a mathematics professor here at Keene State. The main topic of this session was about voting and which methods are most effective in our society. Although at times the talk seemed somewhat bland, Ferlini touched on which methods of voting are the most fair if they are at all. The most interesting thing I learned would have to be many of our local and national elections hold the majority vote higher than the most first place votes. On the other hand, one thing that Ferlini said was,”We tend to vote majority rules, but sometimes it doesn’t always work that way”. This statement proves that the fairness and/or unfairness of voting is quite debatable. Animation in Politics and Society: The second session that I attended consisted of three Keene State professors, Jiwon Ahn, Sander Lee, and Mark Timney. The title of this one was called “Animation as Political and Social Constructions”. Ahn was the first to speak and she taught us about Japanese anime art and how it is affecting society throughout the world. She mainly spoke about how this new popular art are portraying females. Sander Lee took the podium next and questioned how American citizens saw Nazi Germany through cartoons during World War II. He showed us clips of Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny how they compared and contrast the creator’s views on the Nazi’s and Hitler. The underlining point he made is that the cartoons and propaganda showed that the United States was really the only chance to stop Hitler. The final speaker, Mark Timney, showed us an episode of South Park and explained how the satire cartoon showed us how to be model citizens. The cartoon, although controversial, takes on moral issues and questions human nature and ethics. A quote from Timney that really stood out to me was “We didn’t do our Homework” which put the episode that we watched into context. The most interesting thing I learned from this session was that cartoons and animation could really reflect people’s thoughts and ideas.