Discussion and homework questions for week 5

For each reading assignment, please write a paragraph in response to those questions with an asterisk (*). Turn in your paragraph at the beginning of class on the day we discuss that reading assignment. Your homework should be typed or legibly handwritten. Make sure you put your name, date, course number, and the reading assignment on your homework. Each assignment is due at the beginning of class.

Brewer and Miller (due Tuesday, March 7)

*1) Imagine you live in a city that has a large amount of illegal Hip Hop graffiti.  The city council is trying to curb the problem and has proposed several responses.  These include:
a) banning the sale of spray to minors,
b) enacting stiff sentences for persons caught writing graffiti,
c) starting a media campaign (tv ads, billboards, etc.) with celebrities discouraging graffiti writing,
d) launching an education program in the schools that highlights the cost of the property damage due to graffiti,
e) beginning a paintbrush murals program for youth, so that graffiti writers and those at risk of becoming graffiti writers can express themselves in a more appropriate way, and
f) requiring that property owners remove graffiti from their property within 1 month of the time that it appears.

Based on the information in the article, evaluate the likelihood that these responses will be effective in reducing illegal graffiti.  Pick three of these responses for your evaluation, and point to reasons why or why not such strategies might work.

2) Why do you think that Hip Hop graffiti writers are overwhelmingly male?  Draw on material from the second and third weeks of the course.