Trevor Riggsby
Joe Griffin
English 111
November 13, 2008
Prospectus
Description of Project:
For this next project I will be doing a brochure on Xavier basketball to help aid in drawing recruits to commit to Xavier University. I have been interested in Xavier basketball for as long as I can remember. My dad got his graduate degree at Xavier University and became a huge basketball fan while he was there. Since then he has turned me into a Xavier hoops fan by taking me to games when I was younger. Around ten years ago we started to get ticket packs for half of the games and then a couple years after upgraded to full season tickets. Once this happened I began to pay very close attention to everything related to Xavier. It has become almost an obsession where I hardly ever miss going to a game and watching the away games on T.V. I read up on all the future recruits and commitments and spend too much time reading articles online about the basketball team. I love basketball and think that basketball season is one of the greatest times of the year especially around March. People often make fun of how much I like Xavier because I constantly wear Xavier apparel and always like to talk about it. This is why I think I could make an effective brochure to entice recruits to look further into X by using my knowledge about the program and a little research.

Genre:
As said before this project will take the form of a brochure that highlights much of the information not only involving the basketball program but the school itself. I will talk about the team history and the current team. I will discuss how successful the program has been in the past two decades as a basketball team and moving people to the next level whether that may be playing basketball professionally or getting a solid degree from a great academic institution. I will also list some of the many benefits of going to a school like Xavier and all the great features that it contains like a top notch and relatively new basketball facility.
Intended Audience:
The audience that this brochure is intended for is mainly recruits that are considering attending Xavier University but I’m sure could be read by any fan of the school. The brochure is designed with the intent of helping give recruits a little more knowledge on the school and something to think about.
Purpose:
The purpose of my brochure is to influence recruits to come and play at Xavier where they can make the team better. The brochure will do this by presenting facts and history about Xavier University that makes it seem appealing to the targeted prospects. Recruits are committing earlier and earlier now a days with people committing to schools as early as their junior year and schools need every edge they can get to gain the upper hand on recruits. A brochure isn’t going to be the deciding factor obviously but it might make the recruit notice something small that could potentially push them over the edge into committing. This is why I decided to make this brochure for the Xavier basketball program.

Just Walk on By
After reading the story Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space, I felt pretty bad for the man writing it. I know that stuff goes on like this all the time and many people feel more threatened by African Americans then Caucasians, especially if they don’t have what is viewed as a normal style of haircut or facial hair. I do realize that in inner cities the majority of the crimes are linked to African Americans but that is because the majority of the population is African American and they aren’t the best places to be living. This still doesn’t seem like cause to put all these people in the same category and be any more afraid of them than anyone else.
I have actually met someone just recently here at Miami that is from Miami, Florida that is an African American and had a long beard and an Afro when he came up here. He said that he had to get his hair cut and shave his beard because of all the looks he got from people that he could tell were thinking about him being a criminal. When I hear things like this I feel bad for them and that people get these stereotypes and can’t do anything about it.
I do understand the reasons for paranoia when walking home late at night by yourself in a downtown area. If it’s dark and no one is around I can definitely see your mind start to focus on things that might make you seem a little scared. Even when I walk home along late at night here at Miami and I’m passing by woods or something and no one else is around I see my pace start to pick up even though if I thought about it there probably isn’t going to be anything that comes out of the woods and attacks me. The mind just plays tricks on us sometimes when we are starting to get a little nervous. This doesn’t excuse the stereotypes that we have created today among African Americans and even other races or groups that get undeserved stereotypes.

Rhetorical Analysis

For my Rhetorical Analysis I intend to write about the speech given by Al Pachino in Any Give Sunday called Piece By Inches. This movie is about football and before a big game Coach Tony Damata (Al Pachino) tries to fire up his players with a very moving and inspiring speech. It is a good example of rhetoric and should be an interesting topic to write about because I love this movie and this speech.

Logical Fallacy

I watched a TAG body spray commercial and saw an example of a logical fallacy. In the commercial I watched a boy is going to pick up his girlfriend at her house and before he goes it he sprays TAG on himself. The girlfriend's mom answers the door and as he walks by her she smells him and starts to come on to him. This is an example of hasty generalization because they make it seem like if you spray TAG on yourself women will be all over you which is not true. It might help because it probably does make you smell nice but this by itself won't have girls all over you.

Residence Halls

Residence Halls by Kelley McCormick made some valid points but I can’t say I agree with everything she said. I don’t recall seeing this brochure over the summer but I feel like she did a good job of describing the basics of what was on it. I definitely agree with things like the dorms having good security, the beds probably won’t be matching, you can’t truly personalize your room, and that there were a lot of things that were relative in the brochure. At the same time I think she whined about small things and I don’t have too much sympathy for her in the food aspect.

Starting with things I agreed with the thing that stuck out to me the most was her describing the police situation at Miami. There are a ridiculous amount of police at Miami, I see them almost every night walking back to my dorm on the weekends and they are all over Uptown. According to the brochure there is good security for the dorms so I would have to agree with her when she says this is one of the few true things on the brochure. I also agree when she says that the brochure saying things like “you can have completely personalized rooms and matching beds” just aren’t true. There are severe limitations for personalizing your room; they gave us a bunch of rules when we first arrived of what we can’t use to hang posters and other rules like this. The matching beds part just really doesn’t matter to me because as a guy I really could care less if my roommates bed matched mine but if for some reason I did want them to match living in a dorm wouldn’t help make that happen. I would also think that some of the things she mentioned in the brochure were completely relative. For example living close to classes, I got extremely lucky and all my classes are very close but I have friends that have long walks to class. Saying you will be close to all your classes is just not true for the most part. You might be better off commuting and being able to drive to your classes.

Although I did agree with most of what she said there were small things that I couldn’t help but notice she seemed to be making a big deal about. For example she complains about not being able to study while her roommate is on the phone or sleep while her roommate is watching a show. The studying part is easy to resolve, go down to the study room that all the dorms have in the basement. As for her roommate watching a show she could easily just ask her to turn it down and if there is an issue maybe she needs to request a new roommate. Then she brings up the food, I personally have no problem with the food by my dorm. I can find something good to eat there every day. I’m not a vegetarian and don’t understand the reasoning behind it at all (except for maybe religious reasons) but no one is forcing you to not eat meat and there are plenty of options at my dining hall that contain no meat even though meat to me is usually the main part of the meal.

As you can see I have mixed emotions about Kelley’s opinions on Residence Halls. Some of her points on the brochure were good ones and I can easily agree with them. Others just seemed to be personal problems like maybe being a little picky with the food. It is definitely obvious though that the brochure was trying to glorify residence halls.

My Writing History

My history as a writer contains nothing special. I never took any honors or ap english classes not because I couldn’t handle them but because I have never been a huge fan of english. I have never written any stories, songs, or poems just for fun, it is always because I am forced in school. I just don’t really like to write and its not my strongest subject when it comes to school. I did always seem to get solid grades on papers and would do better then the majority of the people in my classes but there were still people that would write papers that sounded a lot better then mine. I feel like the grading in english classes at my highschool was pretty lenient especially since I wasn’t in honors and this made it pretty easy for me to receive A’s on my papers but I don’t know how my writings would hold up in a more advanced class or at another school.

Writing in college frightens me a little bit but so do other courses. I have been a good student my whole life and think once I adapt and get used to the college lifestyle I will succeed in English and my other courses (or atleast I hope). Writing also bores me and I do not look forward to doing it at all. I can’t say any other school work is different from this but writing a paper or something else usually takes more time and thought. I don’t think english classes are a waste of time. I think that they are very necessary all the way through highschool but in college they should maybe only be for certain majors with a focus on writing or teaching.

My teachers have been good all through out Jr. High and Highschool in helping me develop my writing. None of them ever criticized to harshly and they were good with constructive criticism. They were always open for help but still had us learn to revise and edit our own papers. They helped me become the write I am today.

thick description

Upham Hall sits in front of Paterson Avenue looking out over large amounts of landscape and trees that sit between it and the road. The back of Upham sits in front of a large field with trees scattered across it and buildings on all sides. Signs supporting organizations, fraternities, and politicians are tied from tree to tree. Sidewalks run every which way through the field with benches and bike racks stationed along side of them. The leaves of the trees are starting to change color and fall to the ground leaving the ground littered with dead leaves.

Large windows line the red brick walls of the “U” shaped building that encloses its front field almost like a courtyard. Walking up the stairs to the center of this older building puts you inside Upham Arch. This connects the front and back fields that surround Upham Hall. This arch has an extremely grimy and old stone print floor. The walls are also made out of stone but look much more clean and up to date. On the walls are a few windows and the doors that run sideways through the arch connecting the building. Benches that are formed out of the walls line almost the whole arch way. In the middle of the bright white ceiling hangs a lone lantern that is the key factor of a popular University legend. The legend says that if you kiss your love interest under the arch while the lantern is lit you will get married.

People walk through the arch way and across the sidewalks that cut through the fields on both sides of the building going about their busy days. Some stop and sit on benches to read or do homework. Others sit down to talk with a friend or use their cell phone, but the majority walk past the building going to their next class or meeting. These are the things that stuck out to me while observing Upham Hall.