Concert in the Park

Today I woke up early. Too early. I set my alarm for 4:30 AM. Waking up that early is not something I recommend, but what followed easily made up for the early hour of the morning. Margaret, Emily, Claire, and I all followed an RA trip to Central Park to see a free Imagine Dragons concert for Good Morning America. When we got there we waited in line for a good hour before it actually started moving. We were very excited and we all piled into the theater with hundreds of other people. At first it was announced that the concert would not start until 8:30, and we were all freaking out! We did not want to only see one song then have to go back so we could still eat breakfast! Thankfully the band came out earlier to do sound checks. Lucky for us they literally played all the songs we came to hear in the soundcheck, so once that was over we were able to leave the concert early. Even cooler, on the way out we met the bass guitarist, pianist, mandolinist, Dan Platzman of the band! He was casually standing outside and we were able to take a few quick photos with him before he had to run off. So far I have seen two famous people this trip, let's go for three!

In class today we discussed such racial equality and civil rights cases as Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and two of the major Brown v. Board of Education cases. It was amazing reading about the racism that existed during the first two cases, which was made apparent by the extremely anti black rulings of the courts. We did end on a lighter note with Brown v. Board of Education. After reading the opinion of the court our teacher Luke asked us (playing the devils advocate) if any of us disagreed with how the opinion was made. Literally not a single person in the class wanted to disagree with such a landmark and historically significant case. In the afternoon session we learned about the Warren Court and the Rehnquist Court's. I think my lack of sleep started to catch up to me during the slow paced documentaries, but I was able to stay awake and I learned so much from both of the videos. In fact, my essay is going to be based off of a Warren decision, Terry v. Ohio, which set the stage for the stop and frisk police tactics used today. In the evening we were too tired to go anywhere, so Emily, Margaret, and myself did some work in the library. High at the top of the library we spent an hour doing work and another hour having fun. We had the whole floor to ourselves so we were being very silly.

Tomorrow I am going to try to see a broadway show (hopefully for discounted prices), and maybe even go to China Town! I am also excited to continue working on my essay which is started to take form now...