TOW #15: "The Civil Rights of Children" by The New York Times Editorial Board

While humorous, this cartoon makes a valid point: public schools are becoming
increasing strict about topics such as violence and drugs and alcohol, even to
the point of punishing students when they do nothing more than
allude to those things.

Nowadays it is not out of the ordinary to hear news stories about school officials crossing the line: punishing students, even young ones, for making gun shapes with their fingers or saying things like, "I'm going to kill you", obviously without meaning it. Sometimes the punishments are as harsh as suspending or expelling students, calling the police, or even arresting students. There has been some backlash, and it has been featured in the article "The Civil Rights of Children", which argues that not only that the constitutional rights of students are violated when "zero-tolerance policies" are enforced, but that those students usually belong to racial minority groups.
In the third paragraph of the article, the Editorial Board name-drops the entire United States government. They state, "Over the last several years, civil rights officials in the Obama administration have begun to focus on this problem, increasing civil rights investigations and forcing school districts to revise disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect minorities." Mentioning the fact that the President of the United States and those who work with him are concerned about the effect of zero-tolerance policies on minorities will cause readers to believe that the matter is much more pressing; after all, it is the job of the President and his administration to tackle tough issues. As the article is meant to convince readers that minority students are much more affected by zero-tolerance policies than non-minority students, mentioning that the federal government is concerned is an excellent tactic.
For the first several paragraphs, the article only says that students who belong to a minority group are "disproportionally" subjected to punishments because of zero-tolerance policies, without giving any real data. However, about halfway through, the Editorial Board writes, "African-American students represent only 15 percent of public school students, but they make of [sic] 35 percent of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once, and 36 percent of those expelled... research has shown that black students do not engage in more serious or more frequent misbehavior than other students." Later the article provides statistics about the unfair treatment of disabled students. Statistics and other forms of data are much more convincing than anecdotal evidence, as they are more concrete and are gathered in a more scientific manner. As the statistics featured in the article show the disparity between the percentage of African-American students in public schools and the racial breakdown of students being severely punished, they help prove that students of color are punished harsher and more often than white students thanks to zero-tolerance policies.
With the combined effects of the ethos of the Obama administration and the use of statistics, it seems that any reader would recognize that minority students receive harsher punishments than non-minority students and that public schools are becoming too harsh when it comes to disciplinary infractions.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/the-civil-rights-of-children.html?ref=editorials

TOW #14: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Richard Preston is the author of The Hot Zone and numerous other works about
bioterrorism and infectious diseases.

Published in 1994, The Hot Zone tells the terrifying true stories of viral hemorrhagic fevers, a group of deadly diseases that includes the infamous Ebola virus.  The book focuses on the discovery of the Reston virus, related to Ebola, that popped up in a monkey holding facility in Reston, Virginia, not far from Washington, DC.  Since the Reston virus killed nearly all the monkeys it affected, the prospect of it crossing into the human population scared researchers and medical experts out of their wits.  The process of identifying the disease and decontaminating the holding facility takes up about half the book, which is told through the perspective of any one of those at the site of the Reston outbreak or of Preston himself.
The Hot Zone is mostly made up of testimony from people who are experts on viral hemorrhagic fevers or where at the Reston holding facility, so a lot of the book does not have a very 'personal touch'.  However, the book's last section is entirely about the author's own experiences visiting two places central to The Hot Zone. The first is Kitum Cave in Kenya, where two people fatally contracted the Marburg virus in the 1980's.  Their experiences were crucial to the beginning of the work, as the research done on their cases set the stage for later exploration into similar diseases.  When Preston writes about his own visit, it is somewhat of an appeal to ethos, as it makes it seem like he understands the topic better; nothing is better than first-hand experience.
The second place Preston visits is the monkey holding facility where the Reston virus had broken out, but this involves a different rhetorical device.  Long abandoned, vines had grown up the sides of the building, which was inhabited only by spiders and other insects.  Preston writes at the very end of the book, "Life had established itself inside the monkey house.  Ebola had risen in these rooms, flashed its color, fed, and subsided into the forest.  It will be back" (Preston 411).  By the end of the book, readers know that the Ebola virus is deadly to humans and that the Reston virus would be equally devastating.  By wrapping up with a phrase as ominous as "It will be back", Preston ensures that readers will think about his book for a long time and even be haunted by it; I can attest to this idea, as I certainly thought about The Hot Zone for a long time after finishing it.