CEREAL KILLERS
We decided to talk about the negative aspects of releasing animals to the wild from entertainment centers that torture animals for the sake of entertainment. At first, we really wanted entertainment centers, such as circuses and Sea World, to be banned because we did not like how the animals were treated. In general, we both like animals and we’ve all had pets before. When we see these animals being tortured and physically abused for the entertainment of the people, it emotionally affects us. However, as we continued researching about this controversial topic, we discovered that there are many different perspectives to this issue. As we took on the perspective of not banning entertainment centers that torture animals, we realized that animals should be released into the wild because they have a slim chance of survival. Animals are normally raised and “spoon-fed” by humans, not by their mothers. The employees give animals food, water, and shelter, without teaching them survival skills. Therefore, if animals were to be released in the wild, they would not be able to survive for themselves. Most animals that were released from places such as circuses or Sea World die in a short amount of time. Therefore, we would understand why some people would not want to ban circuses. However, we still believe that circuses should be banned because we do not agree with the physical abuse that the animals have to go through.
A ban should not be implemented because then wild animals would be exposed to the harsh environments and targeted by poachers. We researched further into the negative consequences of poaching and found astounding statistics. More than 100,000 African elephants have been captured and the rhino population have visibly decreased over the years. We realized that many people are not aware of these consequences. In our case, we were aware that poaching is a cruel activity; however, we were not aware of the extent of the cruelty behind poachers and their actions. This applies to numerous people around the world. Through the researching process of our issue, we have also become advocates of anti-poaching. But more importantly, advocates of an action that is harmful to animals who are innocent.
At camp, we had a lot of fun and also experienced many new challenges. Our group consisted of seven members and we had times where it was difficult to communicate with each other. However, we all had outgoing personalities and we felt very confident that we were striving to be one of the best groups. All of us have many different personalities which makes it difficult to pitch in ideas and agree on it, but our teamwork was better than expected. We were able to choose a topic that we liked and choose sides that we wanted to take on. It was an interesting experience, and we were really able to test our teamwork through this camp. We can agree that we all learned how to be like a leader. We learned many interesting, cool new things in regards to technology. We learned about editing and certain ways to create the website, and these techniques helped us gain knowledge about how to use our technology in the future. We learned in this camp that working with other people and trying to get out of comfort zone and experience unfamiliar activities will help us greatly in the future.
Donghoon: I strongly believe that circuses are torturing places. Animals should get rights as humans do. Instead of being fed by trainers, animals should naturally follow the food chain. Animals should not starve because of circuses. Marine animals should be free at sea. We should make the bullhook, a tool that harms animals, illegal. Tiger collars should also be illegal.Circuses should not make the animal starve.Circuses should not separate the baby animals from their mom.Circuses put animals in such a small cage and they put chains to elephant.
Circuses should let all the animals to zoo to have freedom. Because of circuses and SeaWorld’s mistreatment of their animals, people should stop visiting these places.
Writing the article was not that hard because Yeon Taek has helped me a lot. I am a slow typer, but Yeon Taek helped me write the words out clearly. Whenever I do not know what to do, Yeon Taek is always there to guide me. Whenever I do not know what to say, Yeon Taek is there to help “articulate” my ideas (Yeon Taek taught me this word too). At first, I did not want to be with Yeon Taek because he always slept during group sessions, but I judged him too quickly. On the second day of camp, he was very energetic and was eager to help me learn. For the research, I learned how to find reliable sources so that the information I find is correct. I really like Yeon Taek as my mentor, and I want to keep working with him.
Yeon Taek: Circuses and SeaWorld remind me of the Gilded Age. During the Gilded Age, America looked very glorious from the outside while on the inside, the country was in a wreck. This concept applies to circuses and SeaWorld. During performances, we believe that the animals are happy in their environments. Of course, many of us are fooled. I visited SeaWorld with my family when I was very young, and I really enjoyed all of the whales’ performances. If I knew, however, that the whales were being heavily mistreated, I definitely would have been unhappy during the shows. In order to preserve captive animals’ happiness, I think that new regulations should be created and enforced to ban all entertainment venues that mistreat animals. Of course, letting the captive animals out in the wild is not an option as they have not developed their survival instincts. Instead, we should build a new, suitable environment for them to live in. It is not a permanent and effective solution, but it is a great start towards the animals’ happiness. For example, orca whales’ dorsal fins are bending because they do not have large water containers to live in. Their homes’ cramped size began the deterioration of the straightness of the dorsal fins. Seeing how the whales are physically deteriorating, I strongly believe that we should work towards their speedy recovery. Doing so will lessen the amount of the stress that whales hold, and the whales would stop becoming aggravated to the point where they want to hurt other whales and trainers.
I have never visited a circus before, but I still think that most of the points described above apply to many circuses. Numerous circuses lock up animals in small cages, a great similarity between the whales’ environment and circus animals’. Circus animals in performances look clowny and fun to watch, but behind their acts, who knows how they actually feel? Again, my strong conviction is that the government should be more involved with the enforcement of animal cruelty laws. In extreme cases of animal cruelty, circus trainers torture their captive animals to make them obey the trainers’ commands. Some circuses use bullhooks to cut elephants’ legs whenever the elephants do not obey. The stress accumulated in the animals have caused incidents in which they went rampant and hurt or killed humans.
Overall, working with Donghoon was a pleasure. Because I understood from the start that I have seven years of experience more than Donghoon, I empathized with his struggle to write. He does, however, always have great ideas to share with me. The only problem is that he does not know how to articulate his ideas that well, but he is gradually improving. Donghoon is also very passionate about our topic, so he is overfilled with energy whenever our group discusses about circuses and SeaWorld. He listens to the mentors, especially me, extremely well. Overall, Donghoon is probably one of the best mentees who I could have worked with.
As a mentor, it was kind of a struggle for me to help out a fellow camper to think of what to write and what to do. But thanks to this program of leadership camp, I have been very fortunate to acquire such a skill of leadership. Things like researching and writing an article was especially both a first for me and William because we both are not that great of writers ourselves. Even though me and William had a lot of debating and arguing(like a LOT of debating and arguing), He was an extremely great help not to me, but the whole entire group he served in. I think the most difficult time for me overall was getting the whole group together and thinking about what to do and how to prepare for it. For example, our group focused on animals being trained to perform like Seaworld. A film called the “Blackfish” showed that people at Seaworld abuse their animals by starving, isolating, kidnapping, and snapping the dorsal fins to say that they have saved it. Before this film, I had so much respect for Seaworld and had absolutely no idea how bad of people they were. Thanks to this leadership camp I have been learning so much things such as actually being a leader, helping and caring for others, and also learning about Seaworld. Even though I did not want to come here to leadership camp in the first place, I am very glad I did because I got to meet brilliant people in my group like my partner William. He reminded me a lot about myself when I was in seventh grade and that is why it is always fun to hang out and talk to him. Not just William but other mentors like Tammy, Sydnie, and Young Taek made it ten times better by helping me and William out when we were in a time of need. The Campers also had a role in fun like Donghoon’s crazy and energetic attitude, Olivia’s quiet but cool personality which was interesting, Tammie’s awesome attitude and funny personality, and Young Taeks comedic sleeping habit which was SO funny. Overall, I think this helped me a lot to become my journey to become a leader and have more courage in life. I thank the camp very much and I am definitely impacted by this camp and I will hopefully come back to this camp next year!
I liked this this camp, the mentors and staff were generous. Due to the new age of technology, the mentor, Kenny, became the mentee and the mentee became the mentor in website design. The website I had created crashed because we didn’t save it, but everyone gathered their strength and pushed through. We recreated the website and made it better than before. My mentor Kenny was very tolerant with my weirdness. He helped me in getting closer to the group and I helped him with the website.
Sydney, Tammie, & Olivia
Donghoon & Yeon Taek
Kenny & William
