The air was tense in 8th period American Studies when our class learned the horrible news: in only one week of blogging, our privelage had been revoked. Apparently there were several cases of acedemic integrety and copywrite violations that had forced Ms. Logan and Mr. Lawler to end the student blogs and replace them with a much more boring assignment. The class of about 36 students was devastated, and the reactions to the peril were very interesting. I first noticed the shared feeling of guilt throughout the room. We all felt like we blew it. Classmates began to accept it and give in to the teachers. Very few argued a case against them. Rather, our shared feelings gave Logan and Lawler more authority over the situation. We felt like the fate of our blogging community should be up to them. The scene was looking grim.
Then they started laughing at us.
When the class sighed in relief, a discussion on our reactions sparked up. Many students shared thier individual thoughts, but most of the class noticed how in the peril it became an "us versus them" kind of situation. Our class was at fault, and the control was handed over to the authority figures willingly. This kind of reaction seemed to be very common in real-life situations. Some well-known examples like the September 11th attacks and Katrina show this in common. The people turn to leaders to handle the authority to help the community as a whole. The sense of individualism is somewhat lost in these times of peril.
Over the weekend, the word on most people's lips was rain. As many watched news reports on Hurrican Ike and the devastation left behind in Texas, a continuous downpour soaked the north shore and surrounding areas. Our storm was no hurricane, but the damages were still felt.