Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
No Language? No Problem.
Students at the University of Oklahoma with no previous foreign language experience still have the option to study abroad.
OU junior Tommy Moses is a philosophy and Native American studies double major who is preparing to go to England in the spring of 2013.
“I picked England because there was no language pre-requisite,” Moses said. “I’m already busy enough as it is, and didn’t have time to take up another language.”
Moses said he initially did not have plans to study abroad, but he eventually changed his mind.
“At first I thought I couldn’t really travel anywhere because I could only speak English fluently,” Moses said. “The fact that I can go over there without having any prior knowledge of a foreign language is a win-win situation.”
Moses said he would like to visit Japan or China as well, but simply does not have enough time to learn either language.
“I’d have to stay in school several more years in order to fulfill the language requirements for certain countries,” Moses said.
Andrew Nguyen is a senior at OU with a microbiology major and Spanish minor. He also knew he wanted to study abroad, and he did have previous knowledge of a foreign language.
“I took four years of Spanish in high school, as well as two years of Spanish at OU before I went to Alcalá de Henares, Spain the spring semester of my junior year,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen said he didn’t have to meet a foreign language pre-requisite, but he did have to take an assessment test.
“It was just a basic grammar test,” Nguyen said. “How you scored on the test determined the difficulty of classes you took in Spain.”
Nguyen said he recommends studying abroad to all OU students.
“It’s hard for people who don’t have language skills, but it’s not impossible,” Nguyen said. “Don’t let the lack of language experience hold you back. It’s not worth it.”
All students must go through the Education Abroad office in order to obtain academic credit. The office is located in the Beatrice Carr Old Science Hall on the North Oval in room 223.
The application deadline for spring 2012 and calendar year 2012 has already passed. The application deadline for summer 2012, fall 2012, and academic year 2012-2013 is Feb 24, 2012.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
'Til death do us part
John Corvino, also known as the gay moralist, gave a lecture about defining the term marriage last Friday afternoon at the University of Oklahoma.
Corvino said that there can be a definitional argument about same sex marriage.
“We’re just arguing terminology,” Corvino said. “Hetero-sexual relationships and same-sex relationships are too different to be under a blanket term. They cannot be interchangeable.”
Corvino said it is not just same sex marriages that are facing the problem of definition.
Corvino gave examples of the sterile-couples objection and paraplegics.
Under the new natural laws (NNL), the aforementioned cannot be defined as a marriage either. Corvino said the NNL defines marriage as a reproductive act, and while sterile couples and paraplegics can get married, it is not a true marriage since they cannot reproduce.
“There are many different ways to describe marriage,” Corvino said. “But the conflicting intuition on what marriage is gets us away from the real issue: how we treat gays.”
OU sophomore Morgan Rees said she agrees with this.
“I enjoyed the lecture a lot,” Rees said. “I’m glad that we have people out there fighting for gays to get married and enjoy the same benefits as hetero-sexual couples.”
Rees said the lecture opened her eyes about how serious the issue of defining gay marriage really was. She said she will definitely look deeper into the NNL and the roles it is now playing,
Corvino said there are currently five states that recognize same sex-marriages. He said he hopes that in the future that number will increase to 50.
Monday, September 12, 2011
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