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(09/05/11 12:00am)
The SATs — and, occasionally, the ACTs — rear their heads in the
lives of every college-bound high school student. It's a challenge
each of us must overcome in order to get into a good school,
graduate and go out into a successful life in the workforce.
Because the SATs, ACTs and college careers seem to many of us
inextricably intertwined, it is somewhat shocking when a school
decides these standardized tests are no longer required. DePaul
University is the latest in a lengthening line of colleges who
decided to make ACT and SAT scores optional for applicants. While
these tests do have flaws, we do not think making them optional is
the best way to get around that.
(09/02/11 12:00am)
Why is it that "socialist" is the dirtiest word in politics
these days? Opponents of President Barack Obama's every move never
hesitate to fling the word at the president in hopes of denigrating
him in the eyes of the public — and it works surprisingly well.
More recently, N.J. Representatives Donald Payne (D-10th Dist.) and
Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.) were accused of being members of the
Democratic Socialists of America by a variety of political bloggers
and pundits. Politifact.com quickly dispelled the rumors, but the
fact remains — "socialism" is a slur in modern politics, and using
it as such reduces a nuanced system of theories and practices to an
overly simplified swear word. We dart the people who engage in this
sort of behavior, and we encourage those who do not understand what
socialism is exactly to do some research on their own.
(08/31/11 12:00am)
Readers are of course aware that the massive Hurricane Irene
swept up the East Coast this past weekend leaving extensive
flooding, wind damage, widespread power outages and a multitude of
casualties in its wake. What readers may not be aware of, however,
is that this was not your average natural disaster. In fact, it was
an act of God, a sign warning American politicians to take heed of
the public's discontent — at least, it was if you take Republican
presidential candidate Michele Bachmann seriously.
(08/31/11 12:00am)
With the 10-year anniversary of Sept. 11th approaching,
publisher Really Big Coloring Books created an interesting memorial
to that fateful day — a 9/11-themed coloring book. The book, called
"We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids' Book of Freedom," is
"designed to be a tool that parents can use to help teach children
about the facts surrounding 9/
(05/01/11 12:00am)
After all the trouble Donald Trump gave President Barack Obama
over his birth certificate, Obama finally had a chance to fire back
on Saturday at the annual White House Correspondents' Association
Dinner. Traditionally, the dinner is a chance for the president to
show off his humorous side, cracking jokes instead of talking
policy. Obama took full advantage of this. In a pretty hilarious
display, Obama essentially roasted Trump, taking shots at him for
his participation in the birthers movement as well as his
television show, "Celebrity Apprentice." All things considered, it
was a highly entertaining show. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trump was
not entirely amused. In an interview on "Fox & Friends," Trump
said the event was "inappropriate in certain respects" and that he
"didn't know that [he'd] be virtually the sole focus." We think
that Trump needs to lighten up, and we applaud Obama for taking the
chance to use humor to combat his detractors.
(05/01/11 12:00am)
State universities all across America are suffering as they
watch government funding dwindle away. While some schools are
reacting with strong protests against these cuts — including, we're
proud to say, our University — schools in Pennsylvania are being
told to take a different approach. In response to concerns about a
proposed 2011-2012 budget that includes slashing aid to higher
education by half, Gov. Tom Corbett, R-Pa., suggested that six
public universities which sit on the Marcellus Shale start
extracting natural gas from the shale in order to make up for their
lack of funding. We wish we could say that Corbett was just joking,
but the unfortunate fact is that he was not. Even if he was,
though, we would still be upset. The higher education crisis is no
laughing matter, especially not to students like us who are
experiencing it firsthand.
(04/28/11 12:00am)
In a column for The Huffington Post yesterday, journalist Dan
Rather implored readers to "remember this week of silliness in
April." He makes a great point: With all of the big issues in the
world today — including, but not limited to, the storms that tore
through the South, a still weakened economy and the uprisings in
Syria and Libya — media outlets are spending an inordinate amount
of time and money covering the royal wedding in London. We get it:
A prince is getting married. That doesn't happen often. However,
there are far more important things we should all be worried about
right now, especially the media. We agree with Rather's sentiment
that, while the royal wedding does deserve at least some coverage,
it makes no sense to devote so much attention to it, at the expense
of all the other things going on in the world. We give the media
outlets squandering their resources on Prince William and Kate
Middleton darts.
(04/27/11 12:00am)
As technology advances, print media suffer the consequences.
Nowadays, everyone runs to the Internet instead of thumbing through
books, newspapers or magazines. But for those of us who still enjoy
or rely on physical texts, there's always the library, right?
College students and professors especially can vouch for the
usefulness of books. Sometimes, Google is not enough: What you
really need is a trip through the stacks. Unfortunately for
students at the University of Denver, this is a luxury they will
not have for much longer. The administration has decided to remove
80 percent of the books from Penrose Library in order to turn the
space into an "Academic Commons," where students can come to study
or access digitalized databases. The removed books will be kept in
a storage space off campus, and students will have the option to
order specific books from the collection and have them delivered.
The library shouldn't just be for getting together to study and
surf databases, though. A good University library should be a
student's gateway to a wealth of information that they would not be
able to access otherwise. We think Annabeth Headrick, an associate
art history professor at the University of Denver, said it best
when she told Inside Higher Ed, "You would never ask a scientist to
get rid of his or her laboratory. But that's exactly what's being
done to us."
(04/27/11 12:00am)
After being hassled by citizens and politicians for years —
especially members of the tea party — President Barack Obama
produced yesterday his long-form birth certificate. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, not even this could appease the cult of birther
theorists. Donald Trump, for example, is now calling for Obama to
release his college records. Why? Other, less prominent birthers
are calling for the document to now be certified — a clear example
of grasping at straws, but not a completely unexpected move. Still
others are criticizing Obama for "blinking" in the standoff, citing
it as a clear sing of weakness. That's right: The people who were
calling for Obama's birth certificate are now the ones condemning
him for doing what they asked in the first place. When will the
madness end?
(04/26/11 12:00am)
Personalized advertising is nothing new. Facebook does it all
the time. Every time you log in, ads appear on the right-hand side
of the screen and try to sell you things based on your posted
interests, likes, etc. Even before Facebook, we had to deal with
more primitive forms of the practice — for example, the department
store worker accosting women who pass by with perfume samples. Now,
a company in New York City is taking it to the next level:
Immersive Labs is producing billboards which will use facial
recognition technology to detect people's age and gender. Then,
based on this information, it will display an "appropriate ad." To
quote The Huffington Post, "If a 50-year-old man strolls by an ad
for tampons, the ad will morph seamlessly into an ad for running
shoes before he gets there." While this may be a good move for
advertisers, for us average citizens, we find it to be invasive
and, in some ways, offensive.
(04/26/11 12:00am)
If you are a member of the School of Arts and Sciences Honors
Program (SASHP) class of 2012, or if you took Honors Colloquium in
the fall of 2008, you've read "Three Cups of Tea." Or Maybe you
just skimmed the Wikipedia page. Whatever the case, you became
acquainted to some degree with the feel-good tale of Greg
Mortenson's philanthropic efforts to build schools for children in
Central Asia. Now, however, people have come forward to levy
accusations of falsehood at Mortenson's memoir. Some say Mortenson
and the Central Asia Institute have not set-up anywhere near as
many schools they claim. Others say the company is spending more
money on Mortenson than on the schools it actually has built.
(04/25/11 12:00am)
Texas often gets a bad reputation in liberal-leaning
Northeastern states like New Jersey, where many people see the
state as an uptight bastion of oppressively conservative values.
While we do not condone stereotyping, we have to admit that,
sometimes, Texans bring that negative light upon themselves. Take,
for example, a bill awaiting a vote in the Texas Senate, which
would make it mandatory for any state universities with
"alternative lifestyle" centers to give equal funding to
"traditional values" centers. According to the ridiculous
legislation in question, "alternative lifestyle" center refers to
centers "for students focused on gay, lesbian, homosexual,
bisexual, pansexual, transsexual, transgender, gender-questioning
or other gender identity issues." There are so many flaws in this
bill that it almost doesn't seem worth it to take the time to point
them out. But, seeing as people actually thought it necessary to
introduce this bill, we will do our best to bring to light some of
its most egregious problems.
(04/25/11 12:00am)
There's no two ways about it: strip searches are degrading.
Albert Florence, a man who is currently engaged in a legal battle
with Essex and Burlington counties, can tell you that from
experience. Florence spent seven days in jail in 2005 after
officers arrested him under a dismissed warrant which had, through
clerical error, remained active in their system for years. While in
jail, Florence was strip searched twice – once in the Burlington
County Jail and once in the Essex County Correctional Facility.
Because of the terrible experience, Florence is suing both
counties, and the case is heading for the Supreme Court, where the
justices are expected to decide whether or not blanket strip
searches for inmates are constitutional. While we certainly feel
sorry for Florence, who was arrested because of police error, we
cannot put our support on his side of the case. We think
correctional facilities should be able to strip search whichever
prisoners they feel it is necessary to strip search.
(04/24/11 12:00am)
As students, we've come to expect professional conduct from our
professors. Of course, this isn't always the case, as evidenced by
the actions of University of Iowa Professor Ellen Lewin, who sent
an email to the school's college Republicans group which simply
read "F--- you, Republicans." According to Lewin, the email was in
response to the group's announcement of "Conservative Coming Out
Week." Lewin found the declaration of the event offensive, because
it seemed to belittle minority groups. While this may or may not
have been the case, Lewin is a professor. It is her duty to act
maturely and responsibly when interacting with students. If the
event truly offended her, there were many better ways for her to go
about it, instead of firing off such a childish and profane
missive. We give Lewin a dart.
(04/24/11 12:00am)
Your iPhone is tracking you. No, really, it is. The device
constantly collects information on where you are and stores it in
an unencrypted file, meaning that it is relatively easy to access.
Once this information came to light, people started to get
understandably upset. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Rep. Ed Markey,
D-Mass., are two public figures who have raised a bit of a ruckus
over the fact that Apple is apparently tracking customers, as both
of these politicians have publicly called out Apple and Steve Jobs,
demanding answers for the tech company's oddly Orwellian software.
It isn't unusual for devices such as iPhones and Androids to keep
track of where their users are. Not only that, but these devices
also offer their owners the option to turn off the tracking feature
so the device no longer records their whereabouts.
(04/24/11 12:00am)
You would think the federal government would herald 9/11
first-responders as heroes. They did, after all, come to the
nation's aid during one of the darkest and most devastating moments
of American history. Instead, these people had to fight for their
right to receive treatment for the various ailments many of them
have suffered as a direct result of getting involved in 9/11
clean-up and rescue operations. Unfortunately for these heroes,
that isn't where the insult ends. Now, as the 9/11 health bill is
being fiercely debated in Congress — a debate which should not even
have to happen in the first place — Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., has
added a provision which would make it so anyone seeking medical
care through this bill would have to first be screened by the FBI
for any possible ties to terrorist organizations. If that sounds
downright crazy to you, that's because it is.
(04/21/11 12:00am)
We usually find ourselves impressed with Google, both in terms
of the company's products and how it carries itself. This time,
however, things are different. In Spain, 90 citizens have filed
complaints against Google with Spain's Data Protection Agency in an
attempt to have the search engine erase less-than-flattering search
results about them from all future searches. Google is staunchly
refusing, arguing that altering search results would harm the
integrity of their search engine. It would be one thing if these
were public figures, whose lives are and should be largely matters
of public knowledge. But many of the people filing complaints are
just normal, everyday citizens. They should have the "right to be
forgotten," as many people have taken to calling it. Google,
recognize that personal information that has no impact on the
public need not be retained. We give Google a dart for failing to
make this distinction.
(04/20/11 12:00am)
With one email, University President Richard L. McCormick put a
swift end to the longstanding tradition of Rutgersfest, every
student's favorite day of raucous debauchery. Of course, people are
not letting it go without a fight. In many ways, that's completely
understandable. Why should we have to give up our tradition because
rowdy outsiders ruined it? This is a shortsighted view of the
problem. Like it or not, the media has not been very kind to the
University in the past year. In some cases, we brought it upon
ourselves. In others, small situations were blown out of
proportion. Regardless of the reasons and whether they were
warranted, the University has to get to the hard work of cleaning
up its reputation. The canceling of Rutgersfest is the first step
in doing just that.
(04/20/11 12:00am)
Matt Cordeiro has made quite a name for himself as one of the
most outspoken members of the University's student body. He
currently serves as the vice president of the Rutgers University
Student Assembly (RUSA). Perhaps his biggest claim to fame as of
recently is his part in organizing the "Walk into Action," in which
hundreds of students rallied in support of lower tuition and
marched into University President Richard L. McCormick's office.
He's also the University chapter organizer of New Jersey United
Students (NJUS). Throughout his University career, Cordeiro has
been involved in a slew of other forward-thinking campaigns,
including a recent press conference on later voter registration in
New Jersey held on the steps of Brower Commons on the College
Avenue campus, among others. It's clear from Cordeiro's conduct and
the level to which he immersed himself in the University community
that he really does care about making our school the best it can
be. As a representative of Rutgers United — and as the same party's
presidential candidate in the RUSA elections — Cordeiro has done a
fine job of proving his ticket's worth. His actions are enough to
convince us that Rutgers United is the party to vote for in this
election.
(04/19/11 12:00am)
Depending on who you ask, Gov. Chris Christie is either bluntly
honest or a mean-spirited loudmouth. As is to be expected,
Christie's penchant for saying exactly what is on his mind at all
times — often, it seems, without pausing to think about it first —
has proven to be perhaps the most divisive aspect of his stint as
governor. Sometimes, it seems like Christie is called out more
often for his words than for his actual political moves. According
to Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) in a recent nj.com article,
Christie has "had this very nasty approach to dealing with people
that has been masquerading as honesty." We think this may be a
needlessly cynical way of interpreting Christie's outspokenness. He
may not be the most diplomatic politician, but there's a lot to be
said for a governor who says what he means and means what he
says.
