St. Ray’s H.S. for Boys participates in urban plan competition
On Tuesday, May 21, St.
Raymond High School for
Boys’ seniors Angel Carrasquillo,
Aaron Ayala, Christian
Garcia, Kobe Avalos, Kishan
Ramrattan, and Liam Rosario,
attended the fi rst ever Urban
Land Institute New York’s
citywide UrbanPlan program
competition at Wells Fargo’s
offi ce in Manhattan. St. Raymond
was selected as one of
three student teams to attend
this citywide high school competition.
Joined by Brooklyn Technical
High School and Urban
Assembly School of Design &
Construction each team was
given direction to respond to
a Request For Proposal for a
14-acre, mixed-use development
project by addressing
community needs, economic
incentives and the trade-offs
required to achieve its stated
goals. The teams spent the day
using skills they learned while
in the UrbanPlan program to
create a proposal that represented
their vision for the best
neighborhood redevelopment
plan and offered the highest
return to their development
team - experts from the real
estate fi eld, who volunteer on
the UrbanPlan Steering Committee
BRONX TIMES R 46 EPORTER, JULY 5-11, 2019 BTR
and presented as judges
throughout the day.
Though St. Raymond High
School for Boys fell just short
of coming in the top ranking
spot for the event, the
day was both successful and
exciting. The St. Raymond
team remained dedicated to
their presentation to the very
end. Even though they had
already graduated the week
before and are preparing to
head off to college, they spent
days prior preparing and presenting
their proposal. The
entire St. Raymond community
is proud of their accomplishments
and how well they
did.
The UrbanPlan curriculum
is offered in over 30 high
schools throughout the United
States and was created to allow
students to participate in a vigorous
problem based learning
activity, where they form development
teams and compete
to be awarded the job of redeveloping
a fi ve and a half block
parcel of land in a fi ctional
town. UrbanPlan’s syllabus
revolves around teaching economics
and showcasing the
complex tradeoffs of land use
with the purpose of promoting
student understanding of the
interconnectivity between local
government and our market
economy’s relation to land
use.
(Above, l-r) St. Raymond High School for Boys’ UrbanPlan citywide competition team memebers, seniors Angel
Carrasquillo, Aaron Ayala, Christian Garcia, Kobe Avalos, Kishan Ramrattan, and Liam Rosario.
Photo courtesy of St. Raymond High School for Boys
Action
Association
BY FRANK VERNUCCIO
July 4, the anniversary
of the signing of the Declaration
of Independence, is rightfully
celebrated as America’s
national holiday. In a larger
sense, however, it is even more
than that. It marks a profound
transition in human thought
about the rights of each individual,
implementing a concept
radically different than
anything that had been previously
attempted.
“We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent
of the governed.”
That dramatic phrase repudiated
the concept and practice
that has existed for far too
long, that individuals were
mere cogs in a larger wheel
of society. It is a debate that
continues to this day. Far too
few nations acknowledge the
sovereignty of each man or
woman.
Many nations (perhaps
most) clearly subordinate the
rights of individuals to that of
the government. An Edwatch.
org study provides an example
from the Cuban constitution,
which states:
“’Citizens have freedom
of speech in keeping with the
goals of the socialist society.’”
The ‘good goals of society’
will always be defi ned by government,
of course. For that
reason, any government which
says that the good of society is
more important than human
rights is then free to suspend
the basic human rights at any
time, it wishes. Human rights
cease to be genuine ‘rights’ if
they can be suspended by the
government for any reason…”
Unfortunately, and with
disturbing and growing intensity,
it is a battle being fought
within the United States, the
very land where the concept of
‘Unalienable Rights’ was originally
instituted. Some Leftwing
journalists, politicians,
and judges are engaged in a
singular effort to overturn
the central tenet of American
rights and government,
the concept of “unalienable
rights” which should not be
limited or abolished by elected
offi cials.
News commentator Chris
Cuomo disturbingly displayed
what has become a major
thrust of Progressive political
philosophy. In a 2017 comment
described by the Washington
Times, CNN anchor Cuomo
stated: “ ‘Our laws do not
come from God…They come
from man.’ Obviously, Cuomo
fl unked civics….The framers
of the Constitution clearly understood
that in order to put
certain rights out of the reach
of government, whose power
they wished to limit, those
rights had to come from a place
government could not reach.”
If this exchange was an
isolated incident, some might
feel comfortable in ignoring
it. However, that is clearly not
the case. No less a person than
an incoming United States Supreme
Court Justice has also
expressed a similar lack of respect
for the central principle
behind the entire structure
of American government and
law. During the confi rmation
hearings of Obama Supreme
Court nominee Elena Kagan,
Sen. Tom Coburn had a blunt
exchange. Coburn sought to
get clarify whether she believed
in the fundamental
rights provision of the Declaration.
She evaded answering.
Neither Cuomo nor Kagan
are isolated examples. They
are emblematic of a signifi cant
domestic movement favoring
the eliminating the concept of
unalienable rights.
The primacy of unalienable
rights in America’s governing
concept is neither complex nor
obscure. The Declaration of
Independence is crystal clear.
It is also enshrined in the Bill
of Rights, which specifi cally
states in Amendment 9: “The
enumeration in the Constitution,
of certain rights, shall
not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by
the people.” Amendment 9
recognizes that the government
only has those rights
specifi cally provided in the
Constitution. The concept of
limited federal government is
fortifi ed as well by the Tenth
Amendment: “The powers not
delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.”
The concept is not a Republican
partisan one. In his
extraordinary inaugural address,
President John F. Kennedy
stated: “…the rights of
man come not from the generosity
of the state but from the
hand of God.”
A study by Lonang Institute
described unalienable
rights as those that are “incapable
of being lost or sold. Unalienable
rights are retained
despite government decrees to
the contrary because civil government
does not grant them
in the fi rst case. Moreover,
no future generation may be
disenfranchised of any unalienable
right by the present
generation…The Declaration
translated the common principles
of equality and unalienable
rights into positive law.
Civil government was and is
obliged to observe the rule of
legal equality. It must recognize
that all human beings enjoy
certain unalienable rights
from God–rights that are not
created by the civil government,
but which that government
is nevertheless obligated
to protect to the extent that the
people articulate such rights
in their constitutions or statutes…
The modern lament
is even more sweeping. Not
only are there philosophers
who deny these principles, but
their protégés are appointed
to the judicial bench, they percolate
through the state legislature
and through Congress,
they occupy the state house
and have occupied the White
House, and they teach and are
taught in the law schools.”