Minutes 2/13/12

Prepared by: Jacqueline Pfeiffer

Present: Carmen, Leah, Brooke, Remington, Robert, Casey, Jordan, Jacqueline

Presentation: Brooke presented the minutes from the previous class.

Topic:

Memos.  Suzanne finished grading the Howard Schulz response memos.  She said that they were very well done.  Everyone understood the concept and effectively applied it to their assigned division.  The only problem was poor grammar, mainly use of the passive voice and awkward sentences.  She told us to pay close attention to grammar in the future.  The memos were graded out of ten points.  Suzanne returned the graded memos at the end of class.

Topic:

Letters.  Suzanne told us to re-read tab 7 (beginning on page 184) in the BWC book.  She told us to pay close attention to the section about complaint letters because we will be working on these during our next class on Wednesday.

Presentations:

Historical Letters.  Everyone in the class presented their letter, including its historical context and significance.  Casey went first, reading a letter written by Gandhi to Hitler in the month before Germany’s invasion of Poland in an attempt to prevent war.  Jordan followed and presented the first part of Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.  The letter was written during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and outlined King’s nonviolent methods of ending segregation.  The letter was a response to a statement made by clergymen stating that social injustice should be fought only in courts.   Robert read the second half of King’s letter and focused on its message, pointing out King’s concern for the inaction of both the middle class and churches.  Carmen read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet, in which Rilke, a German poet, tells a young man to write about everyday things and write for himself.  Jacqueline then presented Abraham Lincoln’s Bixby Letter, a consolation letter addressing a mother who was initially believed to have lost five sons during the Civil War.  Next, Remington read an exchange between eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon and a newspaper editor concerning the existence of Santa Claus.  The editor responded by saying the most significant things in life, like love, aren’t tangible. Brooke presented Einstein’s 1939 letter to FDR, which urged the United States to focus on uranium development.  Leah concluded the presentations and spoke about a letter from the Tuskegee Health Department, concerning the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, which studied the progression of the disease in poor black men. The men thought they were receiving free health treatment, but were later banned from receiving penicillin.

Discussion:

Panel Q&A session.  The class split into two groups.  The first group was for Civil Rights letters and included Jacqueline, Robert, Leah, and Jordan.  The second group was for World War II letters and included Remington, Brooke, Carmen, and Casey.  Each panel went to the front of the room and the rest of the class was given the opportunity to ask one of the panel members for either clarification or further information about a letter.