The lecture I attended was part of a lecture series called “Globalization lecture series: Language and global culture.” It was hosted by Dr. Lois Spitzer and she talked about if making English a global language I a good idea and what the advantages and disadvantages are to having a global language. She talked about why English would be the best choice for a global language and not any other popular languages. She described what we may lose with a globalization of one language but also what we would gain. The main point in this presentation was the concern for culture around the world and the impact it would have on all these different cultures that exist.

The reason for wanting to make English the global language is not because of how many people speak it but because of how widely spoken it is. If it was decided by how many native speakers there are of the language we would all have to learn Chinese. But Chinese is not the native language of many countries. English is the native language of almost fifty countries in the world.

The main problem with a global language, and making other languages die off is the loss of cultures. In many languages across the world there are unique words that we do not have words for in English. So we would lose all those unique words which will then develop to a loss of culture. Losing all these cultures will be very bad for the future of the world. There will be nothing for kids to learn about other countries. If we all spoke the same language we will all eventually fall into the same culture. There will be no differences between countries so there will be nothing interesting to study anymore.

A global language does have some benefits though. It will help to communicate better in business markets and fields of research. If a German scientist discovers something he can easily share it with the rest of the world because everyone will have the same language. There will be no more confusion in business markets and no more miscommunications. But along with a global language should come a global currency if we are doing it to make things easier. We will not have to convert Dollars to Yen or Pounds anymore so there will be no mistakes in those conversions and no money lost.

On Friday, September 11 the men’s soccer team went up against Rensselaer. Both teams entered this game with an undefeated record (Stockton 3-0 and Rensselaer 4-0) to begin the Stockton Seashore Classic.

The game started out slow, having the first goal coming at minute 41 with a penalty kick by Clevon McPherson giving Stockton a 1-0 lead heading into halftime. Unfortunately this would wind up being Stockton’s only goal of the game. As we entered the next half, McPherson received a red card so Stockton had to play down a man. Rensselaer was able to score on the following free kick. It took just a few more minutes for them to score their second goal, bringing the score to 2-1.

Even though the Ospreys were playing down a man, they still put up a good fight toward the end, with their total of 10 shots throughout the game, but Rensselaer’s goalkeeper Ryan Nealon did a great job protecting his goal. The last few minutes were full of suspense as Stockton consistently came closer and closer to making the game tying goal, but they were just unable to overcome the fact that they were down a man. The Osprey’s suffered their first loss of the season to start the Stockton Seashore Classic. They can only hope to be better prepared for their next game against Mary Washington.

On the morning of September 19th I was lucky enough to be involved in Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s roadside cleanup. SAE is a fraternity that is recognized on the Stockton campus as the Rho Sigma chapter, since 2012. Their philosophy is the Children’s Miracle Network and they pride themselves as being “true gentlemen”.  Since SAE is the fraternity that I would like to be a part of second semester I decided that going to this rush event would be very beneficial to me, especially since it was community service based. A rush event is an event held by a fraternity (or a sorority) and is used as a way for current brothers and sisters to get to know future members.

The morning of the event was beautiful. The sun was shining and it could not have been a better day to go make the community better. We met together at the Dunkin Donuts in the Campus Center. This is where they explained to us the basis of what will be going on that day. They told us how it will be a good time and how beneficial of an experience it will be. They got me all ready to help out the community. The brothers and other potential rushes like myself were able to bond over picking up trash on the side of the road. Each of us were given a job, my first job was to hold the garbage bag to make picking up trash easier for someone else. Later we switched jobs and we were able to have fun out of the whole thing. At the end of the day though, most importantly, the streets were now a lot cleaner thanks to the brothers of SAE.