Missed Movie

I woke up today, just I have every other day: at the second installment of my alarm, around 9:00 AM. Nothing of any importance happened in between waking up and the start of class.

Class, this whole week had been centered around the First Amendment and freedom of expression. Today's focus was on the relationship between religion, the state and the constitution. All of the cases we read were Supreme Court decisions relating to religion. We covered everything from prayer in school, to animal sacrifice. Jeffrey lectured on the difference between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, of the 1st Amendment. There have been many different approaches to the relationship between church and state, which made for some interesting Majority and Dissenting Opinion.

I didn't attend any events at lunch today. I spent my time in my room, studying cases and preparing for the debate.

We started the afternoon session, with a quiz. I missed a few questions, but I got all of the extra credit. After the teacher had gone over the answers, we set up for the debates. Our round was first. The topic of our debate was a hypothetical court case. Rita Smith burned a flag in an anti-war protest. She was arrested for disorderly conduct, and is suing the state for compensation. We were the plaintiff, Smith. The defendant argued that she deserved to be arrested, because the public burning was a reckless and illegal endangerment of onlookers. We won, because she wasn't arrested for dangerous use of fire, she was arrested for disorderly conduct, which she didn't commit.

After class, we met with Ms. L., to go to the main office. There, we saw the head of the high school program. We talked with her about the nature of the program and about Columbia undergrad admissions. We took a group photo with her, but I had trouble with my camera today, so I can't post it here.

Tomi and I tried to meet with an RA at 7:00 PM, to go see the movie, Moonrise Kingdom, but we missed the group. We couldn't go on our own, because we didn't know where the theater was, so we just grabbed some food and headed back to our dorms. I decided that if I couldn't see a movie in theaters, I would watch one online, so I saw The Big Lebowski. That, was a fantastic film.

After that, I just hung out in my hall with some other students. At some point, one of my roommates suggested ordering pizza, so we all pitched in to buy some. It was really delicious. Who would have thought there was good pizza in New York?