Summary of Bok

I wrote my original summary of Derek Bok’s “Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus” essay. I reread my summary, along with Laura Lukes’, Brenda Porter’s, and Beth Guthmiller’s summaries. I noticed similarities between our summaries, along with a few differences. I noticed that all four of the summaries had the general idea of the original essay, however, each person has put her own ‘spin’ on the summary.
Each summary mentioned the First Amendment, which is Freedom of Speech, but not all of the summaries mentioned the examples that were used in Bok’s essay. Laura and Beth both made some mention of the two Harvard students hanging the Confederate flag, while Brenda and I left that out. Beth mentions that the public universities versus the private universities deal with this differently, but the rest of us did not mention the public vs. private scenario. All four of us did mention that the best way to handle such situations is to educate the offender(s) and encourage him or her or them to change his or her or their behaviors.
Brenda made an interesting comment on how “Prohibiting these acts even though they are offensive only adds to the publicity the offenders are trying to provoke.” I hadn’t thought of that. I noticed that she was the only one who did make mention of that. I suppose that all the offenders really want is publicity and attention.
While all of us summarized the same essay, we each put in our own spin on the article. I believe this is due to the fact that each of us has a unique writing style. I noticed that even though each of us summarized the same essay, each one of us got something different out of the overall piece. We interpreted which parts were most important differently. This is portrayed through Beth’s and Laura’s summary including the Harvard students, but Brenda and I not including it in our summaries. It is interesting to see the different ways we interpret each article differently. Each person takes something different from the article. There is also the difference of length involved. Each person summarized the essay differently, some with more words, others with less. Each person used her own words to portray the significant information. While Beth and Brenda expressed their ideas short and sweet and to the point, Laura and I wrote longer summaries. All four of the articles are summarized differently, yet all of them portray the same information.