First amendment media project
Over the past few weeks, we've been studying the first amendment and its applications with the eventual goal of creating a video that displayed one of the topics we talked about in class. My partner and I chose to create a video about the first amendment in school. In our video, we covered the three supreme court cases that define the limits of student rights. In order to explain each standard in depth, we included a skit and an accompanying description for all three situations.
Free Speech Forum
For the free speech forum, we were all tasked with finding a real world example of free speech. Once a piece had been found, we had to design a presentation that answers the prompt, "why is free speech important to our democracy and how does your selection show this?" We also had to write an essay on the same prompt. The final piece of the forum was to craft a visual that represented some of the perspectives discussed in our essays. For my project, I focused on a plaque that the Freedom From Religion Foundation posted in numerous state capitols across the country. It is shown in the center of the picture to the right. My essay (below) was focused around the debates that this plaque spurred. These debates both support our democracy and protect our rights to free speech, expression, and religion.
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Mini project: Street Law
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For this project, we studied interactions with police. As young adults, it is important for us to understand our rights and responsibilities when it comes to law enforcement. Our task was to create something that communicates our learning in a creative way. We could choose any topic that seemed relevant to ourselves, as long as it had something to do with “street law.” I worked with Ande Lloyd to create a video that provides examples of what your rights are when walking down the street versus driving a car. (If the video to the left doesn't work, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcuVPzqyDz0) |
With so many topics to choose from, it was hard to decide what to focus on. However, while we were studying various different sets of rights, one thing stuck out to me. I found it very interesting and very relevant that your rights while driving are different than those when you’re walking down the street. While driving, you supposedly have a lower reasonable expectation of privacy that you do when walking down the street, and because of that, police officers need less evidence to search your car or arrest you. As a relatively new driver, I thought it would be interesting and fun to create an example that makes this difference clear to others. I’ve never taken a great interest in rights and rules, but this project really opened my eyes to how important it is to understand your rights.
If I could continue to explore this topic, I would want to learn more about the specific legal implications of certain actions. With the limited amount of time that we had, we weren’t able to get super in depth with the explanations of each situation. We gave a general overview of the justification of each case, but we didn’t really get in to the differences between things like probable cause versus reasonable suspicion or a pat down versus a full search. I found these details to be especially interesting, and I thought that it was unfortunate that we didn’t have the time to explore them further. Another thing that we could do to expand our comparisons between different situations would be adding a scenario in a school, where your rights are just slightly different than the other two situations. This would add yet another level of depth, but again, we didn’t have the time during this project to complete a third section.
If I could continue to explore this topic, I would want to learn more about the specific legal implications of certain actions. With the limited amount of time that we had, we weren’t able to get super in depth with the explanations of each situation. We gave a general overview of the justification of each case, but we didn’t really get in to the differences between things like probable cause versus reasonable suspicion or a pat down versus a full search. I found these details to be especially interesting, and I thought that it was unfortunate that we didn’t have the time to explore them further. Another thing that we could do to expand our comparisons between different situations would be adding a scenario in a school, where your rights are just slightly different than the other two situations. This would add yet another level of depth, but again, we didn’t have the time during this project to complete a third section.