GNED101X.003 Dr. Koster

Your final exam is scheduled for Friday, December 7, at 3:00 PM in KIN 315.

1. Be prompt. If you arrive after 3:10, you will not be permitted to take the exam. This is because late arrivals disrupt your classmates, and they should not be penalized for your tardiness.

2. Bring a blue book and at least one working writing implement. If you forget your blue book and have to run over to Thomson for one, and get back after 3:10, you will not be permitted to take the exam.

3. The exam is closed book, closed notes. You may bring this prompt sheet. You may bring a dictionary if you want it. If you wish, you may gloss, highlight, or otherwise make notes on this prompt sheet.

4. The exam will have two parts: several short-answer questions and two short essays (you will have a choice of topics). All will be based on the "case" that follows.

5. The exam is comprehensive. You will be expected to know and use the terminology and strategies we have worked on developing throughout the course.

6. You have until 5:30 pm to complete the exam. However, I do not anticipate that it will take you that long.

7. Your problem-solving papers will be returned at the exam.

8. Because of car problems yesterday and today, brownies will be distributed at the exam. You may bring a beverage if you wish.

 

Plainfield, SC, is a small central Piedmont town. It used to be a big fabric-producing town, but now that many of the mills have closed down, it is mostly a goods-and-services place. People in the town are very proud of their children and of ‘raising them right.’

Nancy Lynne Bagby is a 15-year old 10^th grader at Plainfield High School. Her parents are divorced; she lives in Plainfield with her mom during the school year and with her Dad and his girlfriend in Ohio during vacations under a joint custody ruling. By all accounts she is a decent if not great student; she is not widely popular but has loyal friends. She and her family are not from around Plainfield originally, though they are native South Carolinians. They attend church fairly regularly.

One day in late November Nancy Lynne checks out a book from the high school library—a teenage romance, a genre she really enjoys. It’s called All in Innocence and it deals with a young woman torn between the young man she has a crush on—a ‘fast’ good-looking boy from a bad crowd—and a rather plain-looking boy who likes her from afar. The book is by a reputable young-adult writer with many books to his credit, and is 178 pages long—what Nancy Lynne thinks of as "a nice long book". One scene, about 3 pages long, finds the heroine alone in the bad boy’s bedroom, where he removes her blouse and fondles and kisses her breasts. The language and description of both the acts and the heroine’s emotional response are pretty graphic for a teen novel, but actually fairly standard for a romance novel. (In terms of the plot, the couple is interrupted before the encounter goes any further.)

Nancy Lynne enjoys the book, and mentions the scene in casual conversation with her mother, Sonja. Sonja, who takes her responsibilities as a single parent seriously, is outraged that such "perversity and pornography" are available in the high school library. She gathers 800 signatures outside the local supermarket on Saturday on a petition demanding that pornographic books be removed from the high school library. Armed with it, and backed by several dozen angry parents, she attends the Plainfield School Board meeting on Monday night and demands that this book be removed from the high school library immediately. She is accompanied by her lawyer. Both the Plainfield Courier and Channel 8 news, alerted that something may be up, cover the meeting. The result is a front-page story in the next day’s paper and lots of TV coverage.