Assignment one
The essay “Waking up and taking charge” by Anya Kamenetz is all about how if we stand together, we can change the world. The author starts off by talking about the positives of having a cult in the way of college tuition. She states that if 35 million people can stick together to demand respect from congress then anyone can. College is becoming harder to get into and more expensive due to the inflation and now that college is a normal thing now, not something that just the rich people can do. I think that this article is an effective article, it does have a couple of non-effective traits but most of the traits are positive.
Some reasons why this article is effective would include how the article is written, how she talks about a prestigious university (Yale), and how she tells us how to get things done and how you can change anything you want.
In this essay the author starts talking about Yale and how things are changing there. At some selective colleges, about only ten percent of students came from the bottom of the income scale, which shows that not maybe people can afford to go to prestigious universities. “The Yale action also demonstrates, however, that without a unified voice, individual protests can make only small ripples. Tuition discounting is possible only at a tiny percentage of well-endowed private schools serving a tiny percentage of students. At selective colleges in 2004, only 10 percent of students came from the bottom half of the income scale” (Kamenetz). Kamenetz is trying to say that if we stand together, we can get anything done.
The author tries to get across that students should stand together to make a movement to lower tuition and fix problems at most colleges. This was mainly about how we can take control of college debt and try to fix the problem with it.
In paragraph 21-24, the author states that “the 80% of students who attend public schools are pitted against the immovable object of state budgets. In the past few years, community college and state university students from California and New York demonstrated against big tuition hikes coupled with budget cuts.” The VA21 helped pass a $900 million state bond to put towards higher education. “Lobbying clout is dwarfed by that of the big student loan companies—it spent just $20,000 on lobbying in 2000, compared with $1.5 million spent by Sallie Mae.” This shows that Sallie Mae wants to help students that have to take out student’s loans to go to college.
She talked about the VA21, which is a student led state PAC, which addresses voters who are 18-24 about economic issues like tuition, book costs, and education budget cuts (Anya Kamenetz). The VA21 draws people in by letter campaigns, emails, and rallies. The VA21 doesn’t depend on itself, it depends on money and help from corporate contributions. An example of what VA21 did to get the point across was “They collected and trucked 200,000 pennies to the state capitol in 2004 in support of a one-cent sales tax for education” This essay did convince me into thinking that college students should stick together to make things change for the better. She is a good role model and makes us believe that we can do anything and change the world.
I think this essay was effective. Some reasons why would include how it provides information about how you could change anything you want, and the essay showed how some people have actually stuck together in a cult way and actually changed the environment or government for the better. This essay doesn’t include what other people think it just includes the authors point of view.
This essay provides information about having a Pac and how it works to make the community better. If you are in a Pac, the Pac can get a lot done based on having the numbers to do so. “Canada’s two national student lobbying organizations boast combined memberships of 750,000, nearly half the nation’s college students. James Kusie, a 2002 university grad from Manitoba, served from 2003 to 2005 as the elected national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). His group, founded in 1995, represents 300,000 students at nineteen universities across Canada. Member associations fund CASA’s full-time staff of five, which drafts policy in the nation’s capital and builds relationships with lawmakers, both elected representatives and bureaucrats.” (Anya Kamenetz) This quote from the article explains that having a Pac can work and make a difference for the better.
The author doesn’t use the contradicting method. She doesn’t show you what other people think or other ways you could fix the problem. This essay would be a little better if she included how other people thought about the issue or if there was other ways to fix the problem.
A rhetorical appeal that the author used would be persuasion. She tries to persuade us by encouraging us to change how we deal with college debt. Even if legislative reform is years in coming, a vocal activist campaign about the dangers of student loans could accomplish a lot. After all, excessive student debt is not measured by a fixed number of dollars.
She also used the rhetorical appeal of reasoning. She is a reasonable reasoner because she knows what she is talking about and argues about the ways we could help fix the college debt crisis. “Youth activism could effectively address credit card debt, too. It would be great to reinstate usury laws nationwide and end 29 percent annual interest rates, so that twenty-somethings earning $12,000 a year are no longer profitable customers for $10,000 lines of credit.” (Anya Kamenetz) This quote helps explain how twenty somethings are not able to pay for college because they don’t make enough to get a big enough credit line to pay for it.
I was convinced and persuaded by Kamenetz’s essay. I thought it was a good and informational. This essay was an effective example of an aims of argument.
I learned a lot while writing this essay. What I learned will help me in future essays in this English class. This essay helped me understand how an essay can be an aim of argument not just someone writing an essay to provide information.
Aim of Argument 