One More Research Topic

I have read a lot of your papers concerning same-sex marriage, but one consideration never got mentioned. Down through history, one strong reason for marriage was prevention of disease. If you have a population who only have sex with their own spouse and remain faithful, STDs do not spread. If you have a population which has a lot of random sexual partners, there is a lot more opportunity for STDs to become epidemic.

It would be an interesting project to trace what happened with HIV/AIDS after the legalization of same-sex marriage. The gay community was pretty much decimated in the 1980s; how are things today? (These statistics should be fairly easy to track down.)

Comments

Week 14 Announcement

As I look at the end-of-semester assignments, there’s a lot of stuff coming in quick succession—and from my perspective a lot of grading that I must do very quickly (according to the syllabus plan, 156 assignments for 102 plus 34 for 101). We both could use a little relief, so here’s what I’m going to do: The Research Paper and Final Portfolio/REI assignments will be unchanged. They are pieces of the course which must stay put. The Abstract is out. It is a very difficult, specialized kind of writing that we have not discussed, and it would take more time than we have available. It’s also very difficult to grade. The In-Class Final goes back to the original plan: something you can write with pen and paper and no outside resources. By the way, as I said previously, if you must be out of town on University business during our Final Exam time, I expect you to schedule a time to write it at the Ashland University...

Snow Days

The university just canceled classes for Monday, January 26, so we can all hide out, drink hot chocolate, and try to figure out the rest of our lives. I have no idea how much longer the snow emergency will last (and some news outlets think we might be looking at several days), so I am using this somewhat more human way to communicate. Better than email. Academic stuff As I said Friday, college class schedules are tight enough that we cannot simply take a day off. (I have been grading your in-class papers this weekend, so I know what it’s like to do a working vacation.) You have two main tasks for our course: Pull your “Life Changing Experience” rough draft together for Wednesday. If we are in session that day, we will be exchanging papers so your fellow students can read them and write comments. (By the way, I asked for two paper printouts of your draft, but if you cannot get to a printer, I have a “Plan B” in mind.) Keep up with your daily Blackboard ...

Getting the most from Library Day

Monday, March 30, will be Library Day. We will meet in the Archer Library, and a member of the library staff will conduct the class. I wanted this to be earlier, but we had schedule conflicts, so now this is showing up pretty late in the research process. To get the most from the day, I am going to encourage you to arrive with specific questions about doing the research for this paper. If you think of a question earlier, so much the better. If you email the question to me, I will forward it to the library staff person.

English 102 at Ashland

Search This Blog