Black Friday and Cyber Monday... Consumerism at its Finest

You all know what I am talking about.  The days that follow Thanksgiving are supreme shopping days.  The most popular of these days are black Friday and cyber Monday.  While home on break I must have seen 30 commercials for Wal-Mart black Friday sales within an hour time span.  It was absolutely nuts! I understand that we are in a recession and retailers have to make their money, but come on now, do advertisers really need to shove it in our faces?  It kind of makes me want to avoid Wal-mart all together.  Cyber Monday commercials are not much better.  I saw like 10 of them within the hour.  Again, NUTS!  It is almost as if holiday shopping has become a religion.  Some stores have even went  as far as to open their doors on Thanksgiving night.  So much for celebrating the holiday with family.  The most depressing part of the whole thing was the fact that most of the stores that were opening Thanksgiving night were those that targeted children, like Toys R Us and Wal-mart.  What the heck is this teaching kids...for real1

Why is sexual assault still so prevalent in today's society?

In one of my other classes, we were talking about the prevalence of sexual assaults on college campuses nationwide. The stats are absolutely mind- boggling!  According to 2009 stats, 1 in every 5 students is sexually assaulted!  This is just wrong!  After I heard this startling stat, and I wondered why the media does not take a more active roll to bring more of an awareness to this issue.  I know that the media alway reports when a girl has been sexually assault should, but I have to wonder why they do not report on the positivity that some colleges are doing in order to raise awareness.  I feel like of more people know the positive steps some colleges are taking, people would feel as bad or ashamed to talk about it!  The media could help out with this.  Let's say AACC does an event to raise awareness, we could get the media involved in the positivity, because the more that people know about it, the more people could know about how to help victims  who have struggled to talk about what happened.  There would also be less of a stigma attached to sexual assault. It is important to remember that no one is alone.  Help spread the word!!!