VOL. 5, No. 9; Tuesday, February
28, 2006
Dear Arthur,
Today's
newsletter includes:
1. Report
on yesterday's Middle School M.U.N. teacher
meeting.
2. Information on this Saturday's High School Discussion
Group.
3. Review
from Civitas "Reinventing the
U.N." Conference.
4. New
survey on Is The Mardi Gras
Your Kind of Fun?
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Civitas Home
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Middle School Teachers Meet To
Select Resolutions For Spring Sessions
Nineteen Middle School Model UN
teachers met at the Creve Coeur Government Center yesterday to
select resolutions for the six sessions that will take place in
April and May. Many of the teachers brought resolutions
that their students had already authored with them; others came
with the frameworks of resolutions that their students were
working on.
The Spring sessions will be on April 5,
April 26, May 3, May 4, May 10, and May 11. Each will have
between 70 - 100 delegates. The teachers began the
resolution process yesterday so that the students for each
session would know well in advance what topics they would be
discussing in their sessions and what ideas have been put
forth.
Lisa Granich-Kovarik and Bobbi Clemons are
working on organizing the resolutions and ensuring that they are
"fit for publication." Once they are ready, they will be
published on the web and printed copies will be distributed to
teachers.
Any Middle School teacher who has any
questions about the meeting or what their remaining
responsibilities for the year are should contact Lisa at
314-865-4704 or [email protected].
Photos
from Middle School Teacher Meeting Middle School
Country Selections for 2005-2006
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Discussion Group This Saturday at
Crossroads
We will have our first "pure" high
school discussion group in six weeks this Saturday, March 4, at
Crossroads School from 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM. Since
mid-January, all Saturday sessions have been related to the
recent "Reinventing the United Nations" conference.
This Saturday will be two hours of unfettered discussion on
topics of your choice. We'll have our usual blend of
nutritious and non-nutritious food -- all of it tasty.
Topics can be serious from the New York Times suing the
Pentagon to the more frivolous (the greater meaning of the Mardi
Gras). Your wish is our command.
Hope to see you
this Saturday!
Map
and Directions to Crossroads School
| For Those Of You Who Missed It, Civitas
"Reinventing the
U.N." Conference Major Success!
Following a month and a half of
preparation work, the Civitas "Reinventing the United Nations"
conference took place on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 17 -
18 at the DoubleTree Hotel - Airport .
Thirty-nine students divided into three committees to
tackle issues related to reforming or reinventing the U.N.
Among the topics that received the greatest attention were: (a)
establishment of a permanent U.N. peace-keeping or "police"
force; (b) changing the voting systems in the General Assembly
and/or Security council to a form of "weighted
representation." Under such a system, the voting power of a
nation could be determined in-part by factors such as its
population, its contribution to the U.N. through dues, its GNP,
its military strength, its human rights record, its willingness
to commit troops to serve in U.N. peacekeeping operations, its
land-mass area, adherence to the U.N.'s mandate that all member
nations be "peace-loving countries."
Other topics included reworking the
U.N. Human Rights Commission, eliminating or restricting veto
power in the Security Council, and establishing a "Fast Action
Council" to take the place of the Security Council for
international emergencies.
One topic that received
considerable attention and support was promotion by the United
Nations of an international language such as Esperanto. One completed
resolution on this topic was written in Committee 2 (chaired by
Lisa Granich-Kovarik) and you can read it by clicking
here. Committee 2 also authored a resolution on U.N.
peacekeeping and it can be accessed from the same
site.
Additional information is
available on our intranets
site. You can get information on the
intranets site as well as join by clicking here.
More information, particularly from Committees 1
(chaired by Gloria Bilchik) and 3 (chaired by Arthur Lieber) will
be available shortly.
Our thanks to photographer
J.B. Forbes of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch who covered our sessions on
Saturday morning. The Post carried one of his photos
on page 2 (or was it 3?) of the Metro section in the
Monday, Feb. 20 edition of the newspaper.
Also, please remember that Dr. Ronald Glossop
will be starting a new class on Esperanto next Tuesday,
February 28.
You can contact Dr.
Glossop at [email protected].
Among the students who have already indicated interest in
learning Esperanto
are Christina Doelling (Rosati-Kain, 2008), Katie Fanning
(Lindbergh, 2008), Abigail Henderson (Fox, 2010), Tanya
Konovalova (Fox, 2007 {Exchange student from Ukraine}), Derick
Martin (Hazelwood Central, 2009), Allison Reed (Rosati-Kain,
2008), and Gabrielle Ruess (Fox, 2006). In addition,
several Civitas staff may be interested as well.
Conference Home
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| Map and Directions to DoubleTree Hotel for
Conference
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Is Mardi Gras Your Way of
Celebrationg?
KMOX
radio reported this morning that since Hurricane Katrina last
August-September, St. Louis has gained approximately $17 million
in convention and visiting revenue from New Orleans. A good
deal of that came this past weekend with the Mardi Gras
celebration in Soulard.
The media often
presents Mardi Gras as being synonymous with "a good time."
We wanted to see how a possible Mardi Gras experience would rank
for you as "a good time."
Today's poll is,
"Which, if any, of the following types of 'fun'
would you prefer to being at a Mardi Gras
celebration?" (You may select more than one answer.)
a) Informal socializing with friends. b) A "private party" as opposed to a "public party" in
which you know most of the people present. c) A quiet
night at home reading, watching TV, or playing games. d) Going to a sports event such as a Cardinal baseball game or
one of your school's football or basketball games. e)
None of the above. Click
here for the survey:
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Previous Survey
Results!
Last newsletter's question was:
Why
Are The Television Ratings For The Olympics So Low This
Year?
The Kansas State
Collegian newspaper reported this morning:
"Olympic athletes are having a hard time holding their own
against performance prisses.
Nielsen weekly
ratings for Feb. 6 to 12 place Saturday's prime time Winter
Olympics on NBC at seventh place - after CSI, Grey's Anatomy and
both airings of American Idol.
Crunching the numbers, USA
Today said the viewership numbers are down 36 percent from the
2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
For broadcasters
and, especially, advertisers, the million dollar question is why
are the Olympics' ratings down by almost half from four years
ago?"
Our question is, which of the
following (you may select as many as you wish) reasons do you
think have contributed to the lower ratings of the Olympics in
2006?
a) None or few of the American contestants in
the Olympics have that "American Idol" appeal. -- 3 (18%)
b) The way in
which the Olympics events are presented is that they are too
chopped up -- there is frequent switching from event to event. --
4 (24%)
c) Many Americans are hooked into their favorite programs such
as CSI, Grey's Anatomy, and American Idol. They are
unwilling to pass up episodes of these programs to watch the
Olympics. -- 6 (35%)
d) Americans are retreating into a form
of isolationism in which they have little concern or care about
activities that take place outside of the United States and in
which most of the participants are from other countries. --
4 (24%)
e) Not Sure -- 1
(6%)
COMMENTS ON THE
ISSUE
Bobbi Clemons; Civitas Staff
The real reason is that the
Olympics are boring.
Brett DeLaria;
S.L.U.H.; 2009
As
Americans have we really been so engrossed in reality TV that
good old and real competition is out? Or is it just simply
that the Olympics are not able to compete with TV contest like
eating worms? Who knows...
Tony Keel; S.L.U.H., 2006
I think the real
reason is a combination of 2 and 3. People do get hooked on
shows, and the networks still run new episodes despite the
Olympics. Also, the coverage is so long; they show everyone and
everything and keep cutting from event to event so it's hard to
keep up. The Olympics is a hard thing to watch. However it's the
Olympics people! You got to watch figure skating, speed skating,
and hockey... even if there is a series of commercials every 5
minutes.
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