On Monday September 23rd we had a lot of introductions and new people to meet. Shannon Tennant, our personal librarian went over our class’s Periclean Scholars page on the library website. She also introduced us to different databases that could help us with our research and provide us with more background information about issues in Honduras. Shannon has also linked helpful news websites that will help us keep up with current events. Her presentation was helpful and we are excited to have her as a resource.
Our new members, Abby Senseney, Julianna Sierra, Erin Robertson, and Aidan Dyer presented their identity posters and shared a little bit of information about themselves. We are happy to welcome them into our class and looking forward to getting to know them better as time goes on.
Afterwards we continued our on-going discussion on Cargill and the possibility of having them as a partner. Some concerns that were raised included; the conditions that their animals were kept in, the environmental impacts that are involved, and the possibility that we would be bound to Cargill’s goals and missions. We talked about how as a big business they inevitably put business first, meaning that community service falls somewhere beneath that.
We decided that we wanted to make a google doc that our class can add any project ideas they have to. We also wanted to find a way to explore more Honduran perspectives. We were thinking of partnering with a Honduran University and that would be a good way to hear more from people living in Honduras.
Wednesday, we spent our class time catching up on our current events and checking in with our committees. We discussed a number of the pressing sociocultural issues that have defined the turbulent internal atmosphere of Honduran society and applied our own ideas for projects to the events that were addressed. Among the topics that were covered were: the rights of indigenous peoples such as the Miskito; the mismanagement of police forces that has played an integral role in the skewed nature of social justice; the social effects of drug trafficking; the preventative uses of medical readiness training exercises; and “war porn” that pervades Honduran media and facilitates the most profound fears of the citizens.
We had vibrant, fruitful discussions surrounding these national concerns and began brainstorming the ways in which we should go about forming our project. Some believed that our research on Honduras is far from completed and that we should continue our investigation of the country before we begin planning potential projects. Others felt that the learning process will inevitably be a continual one and, thus, it is essential that we begin delving into the issues we have discussed and consider the potential windows for opportunity to develop projects. Still others offered the idea of creating teams of “specialists,” through which we could learn more fully about specific issues, potential projects, and the effects of past efforts in the nation regarding their issues of focus. This discussion ultimately embodied the fact that we are certainly a group of passionate, diversely-minded individuals. In the next few weeks, we will hopefully exploit these unique passions and ideas as the impetus for moving our project forward.
And the most important news of all….Pumpkin picking and ice cream at April’s house!
Have a great week, everyone! -Anna and Caroline
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