The Justice System

Ok well, literally a few minutes ago my dad and I got stopped by a policewoman. As soon as she got to the window she was in my dad's face and asked if he was feeling ok. I'll leave it to you to figure out what she was insinuating, but really he just couldn't see very well without his reading glasses and that's why he gave her his credit card instead of his license.

That wasn't fair. She immediately jumped to conclusions and was very rude. And we pride ourselves on our judicial system? Just like when a Al-Qaeda member held in Guantanamo Bay was tried in a civilian court he was acquitted on 284 of 285 charges and only convicted of the one because most of the evidence against him was gained during torture. Some people said that this was why (suspected) terrorists should not be tried in a civilian court. But many said that this was exactly right because the judge wouldn't allow the evidence gained from torture to be used in court, which is the law.* 

In AIS we were also talking about how unfair America's justice system is. How the cards are so stacked against the poor that probably many innocent people are convicted and when the rich are called to court they can walk away with no punishment if necessary because they can afford a good lawyer. But how can 

 the system be changed? Many people like it this way and the poor don't have much of a voice. Can anything be done?

*For more info on the court case CLICK HERE

Passion

        What is passion? Is it excelling in a given area or is it an emotional involvement in an area? Now here's a big question, does New Trier promote passion, create passion, or just kill it? Now, all sides of this can be true or not, it just depends on your perspective.
        Now, New Trier can lead someone to passion because there are so many different clubs and classes to try. If you find something that you really like then that can lead to a lifelong passion. Conversely, New Trier might push too hard, and too competitively and that might kill whatever liking you had for something, whether it was academic or extracurricular.
       But I think New Trier does create and promote ambition. Now do you think that ambition is in itself a passion or is it just ambition? NT pushes its students to be the best, but is that good? That could take all of the passion and enjoyment out of everything and just leave someone with no goal but to be the best of the best for all of the wrong reasons. I wonder, does the rigorous academic curriculum leave time for someone to find anything that they really love to do? How does this affect us as students and as people?
      It is important to examine what is going on at schools around the globe. Passion is important. The Puritans have passion for their religion, they are very devout and that is admirable, but do they take it too far? As seen in The Crucible the people of Salem say that there is witchcraft around and that it might have been there all along, they just didn't see it. Just as, perhaps, how we (people in general) don't always see what is actually happening, but on the other hand, sometimes things are seen that really aren't there.