prayer in school :: essays research papers

Prayer In School A very controversial widespread issue today is the right to have prayer in public schools. The proposed amendment reads: â€Å"To secure the people’s right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of conscience. The people’s rights to pray and to recognize their belief, heritage or traditions on public property, shall not be infringed. The government shall not require any person to join in the prayer or religious activity, initiate or designate school prayers, discriminate against any religion, or deny equal access to benefit on account of religion. (AVSP)† This would permit but not mandate school prayer. I think that the government should be focused on the school’s academics, not what religion they are to study. The proposed amendments would cause nothing but trouble considering that there would be many arguments on what beliefs should be taught. Religion is private and schools are public. Having any prayer in school goes against the basis in which our country was formed upon. America came into being because colonists wanted religious freedom. Our founding fathers carefully wrote the constitution to grant the freedom of separation of church and state. A prayer created and supported by a government violate the very essence of the spirit in which the US was formed. (Haas35) Therefore, having a prayer in school would be unconstitutional. â€Å"A radical school prayer amendment would attack the heart and soul of the bill of rights which safeguards the rights of the individual from tyranny of the individual.† (Jasper96) Teachers are public employees, paid by the taxpayers. The time it takes to recite a prayer is an expenditure of tax dollars. (Haas36 ) This is a violation of the separation of church and state. This whole issue is a big waste of time because students do have the right to pray at school. No one can stop them from praying individually, silently, or personally. this right has never, and could never be outlawed. (AVSP ) The real motive is to install group prayer.

Five forces for Zappos Essay

The threat of new entrants into the online shoe/apparel market is relatively small due to the fact that Zappos is such an established brand and has specialized their business model. It would be far too expensive for a new company to copy the characteristics of Zappos including their next day delivery and large overhead. The fact that Zappos was losing money initially illustrates this difficulty. Another issue that would create a high barrier to entry is Zappos commitment to the consumer through overnight shipping. Zappos stated that the overnight shipping caused them to leave their warehouses open for the entire day. Any other company would be at a competitive disadvantage if they didn’t match this business practice. In all the way Zappos does business creates too high a barrier to entry for threats of new entry to be high; for that reason we would rate it 2 OF 5. _Substitutes_ We would rate substitutes at 3 OF 5, being that the threat is somewhat average. With the uniqueness of Zappos, not many stores can match such a shopping experience service as Zappos. The reason we ranked the threat of substitutes at 3 of 5 is because there are Brick and Mortar Stores that may be used as substitutes of Zappos. These specialty stores are not up to Zappos standards, but at the same time their specialization with certain products make them a threat to Zappos. The whole person-to-person contact can have a big advantage in terms of customer service. Zappos answers by extraordinary customer service, which really makes the average consumer feel as if they are special and are in contact with a real person. _Rivalry_ The rivalry with existing firms for Zappos is fair, we gave it a rating of 3.5 OF 5. A main competitor for online retail is Amazon; however Amazon recently bought out Zappos. Since their largest competitor is now a sister company, the main competition Zappos faces are highly specialized online retailers – such as Karmaloop and EastBay. These competitors pose a threat to some of Zappos’ sections such as athletic shoes, sporting goods, accessories, and apparel. Both of these sites offer free shipping as well, so that takes away one of Zappos’ main competitive advantages. Zappos still has the premier customer service. Currently their biggest rival is eBay, eBay offers everything that Zappos does, and sometimes at a lower price. However since eBay is an auction site, it cannot guarantee a set price or free shipping like Zappos can. Customer service is where Zappos sets itself apart from its competition, offering a 365 day return policy and 24/7 call center hours based in the US. _Suppliers_ We rated the bargaining power of suppliers at a 5 OF 5 because Zappos has a lot of leverage. A reason behind this is Zappos couldn’t function effectively without a cooperative supplier since they are a distribution company. If the supplier decided that they wanted more money per shipment then Zappos most likely comply. Taking the resources to find new supplies can be very costly. Also, they may not be able to find a supplier that can offer them the same variety of brands and styles that the current supplier does. Another way the supplier has bargaining power is that there are other companies like Amazon or Overstock.com that they could choose to do business with if Zappos isn’t satisfying their needs. The supplier is possibly the most crucial link in the value chain for Zappos and for this reason they have a lot of bargaining power with Zappos. _Customers_ There are two aspects we can look at the bargaining power of customers. (1) Zappos is customer service based and the customers know that. If the  customers lose their power, Zappos may lose customers. (2) Customer’s do not have many direct substitutes. Shoes are a necessity and here are few options like Zappos for buying shoes online. In essence they lose a bit of their power by this fact. Chances are if the customer does not like brick and mortar stores (physical shopping) they will still need to purchase from Zappos but it opens up gap then of which a new entrant may try to take advantage. Keeping both those aspects in mind, the bargaining power of customers can be considered intermediate; thus a rating of 3 OF 5. CONCLUSION Zappos has created a very structural attractive company. There is a lot of room for growth with the recent purchase by Amazon. ‘ZAPPOS FIVE FORCES AND SWOT ANALYSIS’ First prepare a Five Force Analysis of how Zappos operates using Michael Porter’s framework. Provide a short, direct and to the point analysis of each of the five forces as well as a CONCLUSION about the overall structural attractiveness of the industry in which your company operates. Substantiate your analysis with DATA. Secondly, present an overall SWOT analysis of Zappos, discuss the implications of the analysis for future strategic options the company might address. You may use a narrative style or diagram for each of the industry  forces and your SWOT analysis. In all cases you must PROVIDE A SCALE of how you rate each force in terms of its effect on the industry’s competitiveness now and in the future, e.g. High/Medium/Low and Increasing/Decreasing/ Staying the Same. The objective of this case is for you to understand how the choices a company makes about its resources and capabilities will affect its strategic viability.

Observation and Reflection Essay

Observation My partner, Jude, and I were partners and we decided to observe the volleyball game at the gym. While watching the game, there was a group of PNUan girls that caught my attention. So I decided to let them be the subject of my observation. That group of girls was really wild and loud as opposed to the rest of the audience watching the game. They shouted and cheered for the PNU team. Whenever the team scores, they stood up and cheered at full volume. They even had this jingle that goes like this â€Å" P-N-U FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! † and sometimes mentioned a name of one of the players. But, I noticed that when the game started to reach its climax, those girls booed the opposing team every time they scored . Reflection: Maybe those girls are just really fond of watching volleyball games. Maybe they just want to show their support and encouragement to the PNU players that is why they were acting somewhat wild and loud. Actually, they are such good adherents of our Men’s Volleyball team because they were really at the top of their voices in cheering for the team. They also showed effort and commitment in supporting the team. But I find it ill-mannered when they started booing the other team. For me, it is good to support our players but supporting them does not include being rude to the others. They did not only humiliate their selves, but they have given shame to our school. In that simple action, they just showed that we PNUans are no better. But that is just my point of view. I learned from this experience, that simple actions can really affect your character. That even if you do a whole lot effort in doing something, if you stepped on someone’s dignity while on the way, it will never matter. We should always consider those people around us while performing our actions . We should practice thinking twice before we decide and do something. At the end of the day, what matters is on how we treat and associate with the people around us.