The Kilachand Honors College takes on big questions in the arts, sciences, and professions that go beyond the classroom. Write an essay of 600 words or less in response to one of the following issues:
1. Which corrupts more, power or powerlessness?
In Africa, illegal poaching is destroying one of the world's most beautiful wildlife. In fact, the black rhino population has gone down 97.6% since 1960. The people who poach these animals must be rich and evil in order to decimate this population. This is actually not the case. The majority of the people who poach Africa's wildlife are poor substantial farmers and these people truly do appreciate and recognize the beauty of these magnificent animals. Then why do they do it? Because they are the Powerless. They have no money, no food, no power, and would do absolutely anything for just a little bit of money. This is how the Power get the Powerless to do their dirty work; because the Powerless are so poor, they're willing to destroy the wildlife they love at any cost.
When I think of this question, I think about this scenario. The Power and the Powerless are both corrupt in certain aspects. As stated above, the Powerless continuously kill beast of all kinds like elephants, gorillas, lions, and rhinos, pushing these animals to the brink of extinction. Their actions show corruption. But the Power are the reason why these people have to go against their own beliefs. Because the most important thing to these people is their family and that is above their dedication of preserving nature. Desperate for money, they're willing to do anything for just a tiny amount and the Power know this. They make the Powerless poach and collect ivory, horns, and pelts; then the Power sell them at a much higher price than what they paid the Powerless, gaining a massive profit.
Both show corruption, but the Power's nature is so much worse and more dangerous than the Powerless. The Powerless are motivated by survival; They do whatever it takes to provide for their family. It's all about ethics. Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family? The same question applies to these people but their version is: Would you kill a rhino to feed your family? Their corruption is not because they are greedy or evil, but because they need to survive. The Power are motivated by greed. They are cheating the system and finding the quickest way to make money and that's by taking advantage of the Powerless and destroying nature itself. They don't do this because they're starving and need to survive. They do this because they're selfish and love money. Material wealth is so important to them, they don't care about the people they pay, the animals they kill, and the ecosystems they affect.
Which corrupts more, power or powerlessness? Both corrupt, but how the Power corrupt is unethical and motivated by pure evilness, something the Powerless cannot stand up to.
(Word count: 458)
Do you guys have any criticisms or corrections I need to make for my essay? The harsher, the better. All help would be appreciated!
Charisma, what I am going to do is that to mention your weaknesses. I hope this would help you improving the quality of this essay to be more academic than before. You can see them in the detailed descriptions below.
- In academic writing, there are certain rules that are usually neglected by the writers. According to "Academic Writing" book published by Cambridge University Press, FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So) are considered as coordinate connectors and it weren't supposed to be appeared in the beginning of the sentence like what you have written in this essay. Using them in the beginning of your sentence would make your essay becomes less formal/academic in terms of its format. Therefore, my suggestion is that you can just simply switch "But" to "However,...", "And" to "In addition,...", and so on.
- Another academic writing rule that you have violated is that the use of contractions. Contractions like "They're.." "don't.." that appeared in your essay are not supposed to be there. Using contractions will only weaken the academic sense of your essay. Instead, try to make them appear as the usual format. For instance, you can just write "They are" instead of "They're" and "do not" instead of "don't".
Hope this helps :)
@poorwriterhelp
"illegal poaching is destroying some of the world's most beautiful wildlife/one of the world's most beautiful animals."
"substantial subsistence farmers
You could also put something in about how these animals are often killed just because they're dangerous to have around, not even for money, but the powerful still see it as corruption.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,835 
4783 Charisma, here the thing, your opening statement should be a presentation of facts based upon the paraphrased prompt. That means that your presentation should first, paraphrase the prompt so that you don't have to do it in an indirect form in the second paragraph and second, you manage to present the topic discussion overview for the rest of the paper. That would be one way of making the paper more academically relevant and professional in presentation.
Save the presentation of the facts about the illegal wildlife trade for the second paragraph. The evidence for any academic discussion must be presented starting at the second paragraph because that is where the actual discussion begins. A simple adjustment in your presentation should help to remedy that problem in your essay.
Your discussion regarding corruption of based on power or powerlessness should be made stronger. There is a lack of clarity in the way that you discuss that scenario. Basically, you should say that the powerful manipulate the powerless into corruption because the powerful have the money, which the powerless wish to have. Therefore, they gain the power to gain access to the money of the powerful through the illegal wildlife trade. So in a way, corruption begets corruption. Having power and being powerless corrupt to the same degree but for different reasons. Consider this point of view in order to adjust your essay towards a more relevant discussion of the prompt.
