Lauren Barnett11/9/09ENG 111-CBBlog Reflection PaperHomosexuality in the Military: Yes or No?For the group blog project, our topic was Homosexuality in the Military. We chose thistopic because it seemed interesting and we wanted to learn more about homosexuality in themilitary. I have a couple of friends in the military, so that is another reason I thought it would beinteresting to research on this topic. No one in my group knew much about this topic, so wethought it would be good to focus on som

ething we didn‟t know much about

.I learned a lot about homosexuality in the military that I never knew before. I actually

didn‟t really know anything about homosexuality in the military at all. I never thought about it

and never really heard much about it in the news. One thing in particular that I learned about was

the “Don‟t Ask, Don‟t Tell” policy. The “Don‟t Ask, Don‟t Tell” policy was passed in 1993,

under President Bill Clinton. It states that anyone can serve in the military, but to keep toyoursel

f about your sexual orientation; you don‟t ask others, and they won‟t ask you. However,currently President Obama is trying to eliminate the “Don‟t Ask, Don‟t Tell” policy and make it

so that anyone can serve in the military and can be open about their sexual orientation. I think

that it is interesting that after 15 years something is finally being done about the “Don‟t Ask,Don‟t Tell” policy. Another interesting fact I

learned regarding homosexuality in the military isthat throughout the past four years the polls show the increase of people in favor for openly gayservice members. I found this interesting because I would have thought that if 4 years ago there

was over 50% of the national public who wanted to get rid of the “Don‟t Ask, Don‟t Tell” policy,

that it would already be gone. Another interesting thing I realized while doing research on

homosexuality in the military was that there weren‟t many sources about banning homosexuality

in the military. It was hard to find information to support this side of the argument. This made

me start analyzing this situation more. If there isn‟t a lot of information out there about banning

homosexuality in the military, then most people must be for allowing homosexuality in themilitary, which leads me to the questio

n of why is the “Don‟t ask, Don‟t Tell” policy still in

action?I liked working in groups for this project because it was something different. We wereable to get a lot accomplished working together. However, I think it took us longer to finish it asa group because we kept trying to find times to meet outside of class to work on it, but couldnever find a time that worked for all of us. We were still able to complete the blog within atimely manner once we knew what we were supposed to include in the blog and how to set it up.This was one of the issues we faced with this online blog project. We had so much freedom to do

whatever we wanted with the information we collected, that we didn‟t know where to begin. We

were confused on how to set the blog up and what needed to be included in the blog. I think thatif there would have been a list of what contents needed to be in the blog, it would have beeneasier to start it. However, once there was an example presented in class it gave us a better ideaof where to get started.I did like working with a blog even though we had a rocky start. The one thing I really

liked about the blog was that it was a different way to present our research. We didn‟t have to sitand write a paper about “homosexuality in the military”, we were

able to express our researchthrough the blog with pictures, videos, and straightforward facts. I also liked how we were ableto design the blog they way we wanted to, with the colors, page layout, fonts, etc. The otherthing I liked about working with the blog was that we had time to work on them in class. I think

that if we didn‟t have time to work on them in class, we would not have gotten it finished in a

timely manner. I also liked that we presented the blogs in class. I liked learning about the

different issues in today‟s society and found it interesting how different all the blogs were from

one another.

The responsibilities within our group were almost all the same. We all know each other‟s

expectations and we are all working towards getting the best grade possible, so we knew howmuch effort we had to put into the project in order to accomplish what needed to be done. This is

another reason why I liked picking our groups ourselves. Because then if we don‟t get the work done, or we don‟t

do what we are supposed to do, we can blame ourselves for picking thosepeople to work with, and not someone else. I think that all of our responsibilities were equallydistributed. My responsibilities included working on research for the background informationand for the side of the argument, allowing homosexuality in the military. I also helped work onthe works cited. I think I was able to complete these tasks successfully and in a reasonable time. Iwas a little confused on how much information to put

on each post because I didn‟t really know

what was considered enough or too little, but I think I put enough information.I think that the other group members did their part in contributing to our blog. We allworked together and put an equal amount of time into making the blog the best it could be. I

don‟t think there were any tasks that were considered “uncompleted”

. Considering we all workedtogether and put in the same amount of effort, I think our grade should be pretty decent. If I hadto give my group members a grade based on their participation in class and outside of class andtheir overall willingness to participate and complete their tasks I would give them either an A oran A-. In my opinion I think that they did a good job and put a lot of effort into this blog projectand that should be reflected in their grade.