Allie Christisen

Corrine Holke-Farnam
Cornerstone 21
30 April 2015
Reflection on Civility
Over the course of Cornerstone I have learned a lot about civility. In our textbook civil
communication is defined as making a decision to be open to hearing different peoples views
and perspectives, even though we may not agree with them. I have learned about civility through
many class discussions and activities. Many peoples persuasive speeches dealt with some form
of civility, for example Conners speech on police brutality. We also talked about civil behavior
after the library chat incident happened. There are also many times where I have experienced or
witnessed uncivil behavior throughout this semester outside of Cornerstone.
A lot of uncivil behavior that I have witnessed was on social media, more specifically Yik
Yak and Twitter. On Yik Yak all people seem to do is argue over everything, even if there really
isnt anything to argue about. One of the most argued things on Yik Yak this semester was the
announcement of Hillary Clinton running for president. There were so many hate comments
based on political views, which isnt very civil. Just because someone doesnt agree with another
persons political views that doesnt give them the right to send them death threats over a social
media app. I have also seen negative tweets posted on UNI Confessions twitter account, which is
supposed to be anonymous. I think the reason people use Yik Yak and UNI Confessions is
because its anonymous, therefore if they act uncivil no one would know it was them.
There was also one incident on Snapchat that I can recall happening that was uncivil. One
of my very close friends, Cory, was photographed and put on someones Snapchat story. One day

Cory was wearing shorter shorts than you would typically see on the average male in Americas
society. One person decided that it would be funny to post a picture of Cory, without his consent,
saying Stop gay white boys 2k15. This incident was very uncivil due to the fact that he was
shaming someone for their outfit and sexuality by posting it for all of his friends to see. Now,
another one of my friends happened to see this picture on Snapchat and immediately asked the
original poster to remove it, which thankfully he did. This incident couldve been avoided had
the person who took the picture actually thought about how uncivil his action was and how it
could harm someone.
The two pieces that I chose to put in my portfolio relating to civility are my group
presentation proposal from Intro to Women and Gender Studies and one of my student
engagements. The presentation my group did in Intro to Women and Gender Studies dealt with
domestic abuse against women. In this paper we talked about how uncivil it is to physically,
sexually, and emotionally abuse someone in a relationship. The student engagement activity that
I chose to include in my portfolio was when I saw the film Dear White People. This film deals
with the subtle racism in American colleges. I really learned a lot about how racism towards
black people is uncivil and its a bigger issue than it seems.