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Teacher Spotlight: Jessica Harsh

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Teacher Spotlight: Jessica Harsh

     Stepping into a new phase of life is often exciting and opens up new opportunities that were not possible before. However, picking up and moving to a new set includes an opportunity cost.

     Marsh grew up in rural Ohio on the outskirts of a small village called Radnor, Ohio nearly a thousand miles from her home in Nashville, Georgia. Radnor is a tiny community composed of a U.S. Post Office approximately thirty houses and what was once an elementary school.  Harsh attended Purdue University for her undergraduate and earned her Master’s at The University of Florida. During her time at Purdue University, Harsh met her now fiancee, Chandler, who is a Nashville native.

     The pursuit of love and career success led Ms. Harsh to accept her dream job in the field of agricultural communications which entails a teaching position at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia.

     While Harsh has felt there was always something more to her life than Radnor, Ohio, there are parts of life in Ohio that she still holds dear. Leaving behind life on her family’s grain and cattle farm was a new experience for her. Ms. Harsh often reminisces about time spent with her small, close-knit family and their home-cooked meals. When asked what her favorite meal from was, Harsh described her mother’s meat-shell potato pie that’s complete with “potatoes, hamburger, mushroom soup, cheese, corn and just all of the good stuff.”

     Harsh spent her years growing up in a cozy, brick home with a midwestern decor. The house that Harsh calls home is over two hundred years old and has survived three tornadoes. The banners and plaques the walls wear tell the story of the years of hard work that Harsh, and her younger brother, spent working with their different breeds of show cattle.

     Harsh explains that her favorite memory from her back home stems from an unruly show-steer, that seemed to have a “wild hair.” Her steer had a mind of his own and many doubted her ability to successfully show the animal. However, she dedicated extra time and effort in order to overcome the challenge and became the overall winner of Senior Showmanship at the Ohio State Fair.

     Harsh’s knowledge learned while spending endless amounts of time in her family’s barn and cooling room, preparing her animals for show, and the warm memories of overcoming challenges with difficult show steers will follow her wherever she may go in life. Harsh values Radnor, Ohio, but knew in her heart that “it wasn’t where she was supposed to be in life.”

ABAC Fillies take a fall on soccer field

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ABAC Fillies take a fall on soccer field

     This season the fillies played a scrimmage game against Wesleyan where the Fillies won 3-2.

     On Wednesday, August 29 the fillies played South Georgia State College, and those girls showed no mercy. The game as a whole was a great game, where both teams pushed back and forth. In the first 20 minutes, South Georgia scored three points putting them in the lead.

     Just before the end of the first half, with a minute and thirteen seconds remaining the Fillies put their first point on the board. During halftime, because of the weather, the coach announced that the rest of the game was canceled. However, before the clouds cleared up, and the storm passed, they continued the game.

     Although the Fillies lost they never quit trying.

     While the second half wasn’t as action-packed, the Fillies did manage to score one more time, cutting the lead to one, but as the second half progressed the Eagles got the better of the Fillies and scored another goal near the end of the game.

     The next home game will be Wednesday, September 5, against Gordon State, and the game will begin at 5:00. The Fillies will then travel to Milledgeville to play against GMC on September 7.

Baseball team gets a new improvement

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Baseball team gets a new improvement

     Although the baseball season is far from the beginning, that doesn’t mean they’re not making some kind of improvement. Earlier this summer, the baseball dugout were torn down to make room for the much-needed renovations.

     The dugouts have been under construction since the beginning of the semester. Coach Brandon Reeder proposed a five-year plan for the facility upgrades to administration. It wasn’t something the team wanted, rather needed.

     “That five-year plan included irrigation, a new scoreboard, grandstand, press box, batting cages, and dugouts,” Reeder said.

     The renovations will include more field storage, better bathrooms and enough room in the dugouts for 30 to 35 players at one time. Reeder said that all of the issues are being addressed with their new and improved setup.

     The renovations will be finished before the start of the preseason. Reeder said he had to move all of the Fall home games to the end of October to accommodate construction. Although it looks like a mess, the construction hasn’t gotten in the way.

     “Our practices are also pushed back to later in the evening to ensure the safety of our players, construction workers, and their equipment. It’s only another obstacle we must overcome,” Reeder said, “Progress and growth are sometimes painful but I’m excited to see the finished product.”

     The baseball players have plenty of time to get ready for their first game, with the regular season beginning next semester and upcoming games being announced later in the year.

Pro-chance, not pro-choice

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     While abortion has been a taboo topic for the past century, no one likes to talk about the facts behind the opinions. According to Danyelle Hughes, the advancement director at Woman’s First Choice, located at the Pregnancy Care Clinic here in town, “Aborting the baby is actually the first option considered”.

      As stated in Care Net, Top 40 Abortion Statistics; from 1973 to 2017, more than 57 million lives have been lost to abortion. Care net states it is thought to be this way because the mothers have not been informed enough about their other options. While adoption is known to be another avenue in this situation, many mothers who even consider the abortion want the actual conception to disappear and adoption would mean carrying the child to full term which would rule this option out.

     Sadly, abortion is still considered more often. Care Net states in 2016, there were 17.3 infant adoptions per 1,000 abortions. While there are far more positive cases and stories of adoption, the rare and few horror stories that go around hinder any thought for most mothers to even consider it. Pregnancy care clinics should ideally start off with adoption as the initial option, if the mother is positive she doesn’t want to keep the child. Death should not be the “go to” if there are any other options.

     While there are many reasons people may stand for or against the option of abortion, one should know the real-life statistics behind each. A popular argument given, is what should happen in the case of pregnancy as a result of rape. A shocking fact on these cases is that only one percent of women who received an abortion reported that they were survivors of rape. It simply doesn’t happen as much as the public assumes.

     Another rationalization for a particular position is a moral or religious standpoint. Care Net states that 51 percent of women agree that churches do not have a ministry prepared to discuss options during an unplanned pregnancy, and 48% of self-identified evangelicals strongly agree that abortion is unbiblical. The choice between supporting pro-choice or pro-life is simply the choice between life and death of an innocent; that is what it comes down to.

     All situational aspects aside, there is a life in the balance. It’s ironic how every person that is pro-choice is indeed alive and has already been born. And that’s simply because the babies that were aborted have no voice because they weren’t given the chance. Is it nice having a voice isn’t it? Or an opinion? I am not Pro-Choice, I am Pro-Chance. Every child created at the very least deserves a chance.

Could decriminalizing drugs work?

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Could decriminalizing drugs work?

     In 2001 the Portuguese government, desperate to find a solution to a growing drug problem, took a new stance towards recreational drug use — decriminalization, access to treatment and management facilities, as well as public access to clean needles to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS — the number of new cases of both HIV and AIDS reported among those with substance abuse has been in decline from 2000-2013.

     This once radical policy change, now called “The Portuguese Decriminalization Model,” makes possession of a personal amount of any drug an administrative violation, and can carry a small fine, but more often is limited to a “dissuasion commission,” accordion to a fact sheet by “Drug Policy Alliance.” Since enacting this policy, drug use has leveled off, those incarcerated on drug charges has declined by 60%, drug overdoses from 2001-20012 has declined by 80%, the number of people seeking treatment has increased by more than 60% from 1998 to 2011 with 70% of those seeking treatment doing so voluntarily.

     Portugal is among the countries with the lowest death rates from drug overdoses, at 6 deaths per million, as reported by the New York Times, while the United States sits among the countries with the highest death rates from drug overdoses, at 312 deaths per million. The New York Times also reports that the United States has spent roughly $10,000 per American household on the war on drugs, and over a trillion dollars over the decades, on a drug policy that has led to the death of more than a thousand people a week, while the Portuguese spend close to $10 per citizen a year on their drug policy.

     Critics to “The Portuguese Decriminalization Model” feared that Portugal would become a hotspot for drug tourism and while the numbers for the first year did show a slight increase in drug use that quickly leveled off. Recent polls also indicate a decline in the number of young adults who have used drugs in the month prior to the poll.

     With reports from the “Center for Disease Control” and “The National Institute on Drug Abuse” reporting more than 72,000 deaths from drug overdoses in the United States during 2017, it is clear we as a nation are not only losing “The War on Drugs”, but also our friends, family, co-workers and fellow Americans.

      If the United States were to adopt a model of decriminalization similar to the one implemented by Portugal, maybe those in “the land of the free” would finally be able to break free from their addiction.

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The Stallion is Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College's award-winning student-run newspaper, published tri-weekly during the fall and spring semesters with sporadic updates during the summer session.

Content does not reflect the official opinions of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College or The Stallion unless specifically stated.