Op-Eds

Seeking serendipity: A hacker’s revelations in the face of frienship

I am usually the kind of guy who likes to have everything planned out, especially when I’m traveling somewhere: I need to know what I’m going to do, who I am going to meet, at what time and so on. On a recent weekend, I had no such plan. I just knew I was going […]

Fight the patriarchy, with pockets

Last week, I purchased a new pair of jeans through the magical world of online shopping. Now, jeans are a very complex piece of clothing that have to fit perfectly in all the right places. Purchasing jeans without trying them on runs the high risk of staring at your behind for approximately seven-and-a-half minutes and […]

Seeking refuge: With Syrians displaced en masse, we need to uphold our virtues

It’s a testament to our arguably valid cynicism about national politics that so many core American axioms have become occasion to roll our eyes. It’s torture to hear politicians use the rhetoric of “the city on a hill,” “the land of opportunity” and “the nation of immigrants,” not because these creeds are false—they’re not—but because […]

Avoiding ticket mayhem

There were hundreds. They shuffled around the first floor of Wilson Commons, starting from the Common Market, snaking through the Ruth Merrill Center and back to Rocky’s Sub Shop. The students waited for hours, inching along as the line moved forward. Their reward: a chance to score tickets to see millenials’ favorite “science guy,” Bill […]

Iran deal: Critics’ claims fall flat upon further inspection

In a surprising twist to the recent narrative of the U.S. and other powers’ deal with Iran to limit the latter’s nuclear weapons program, the head of a major anti-deal lobbying group, Americans United Against Nuclear Iran, resigned after reading the controversial deal and deciding that it was, in fact, worth honoring. Indeed, if more […]

Iran deal: Negotiated from weakness, deal is destructive

Diplomacy can be amazing when done correctly. It’s a testament to the unwavering ideal of peace that the United States is even trying to make a deal with a country like Iran, which has been as violently unhelpful to its own cause as one could be. Though the clear goal of the Iran deal is […]

We’re on the rise

You can see the tower of Rush Rhees Library from almost anywhere on campus. I think there’s one spot—if you stand directly in front of the Frederick Douglass Building—where you can’t see it. Other than that, it’s visible from basically everywhere, including inside some buildings and within a decent radius off campus. There’s been a […]

2015: A momentous year 

This has been a momentous year. At the end of April, the community celebrated the grand opening of College Town, which now boasts approximately 20 retail facilities, including Barnes & Noble, the Corner Bakery Cafe, Constantino’s Market, Breathe Yoga, Insomnia Cookies, Jimmy John’s and many others. In March, we surpassed our initial $1.2 billion goal in The […]

An eye for an eye shouldn’t be our solution

  On April 8, a federal jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on 30 charges related to his role in the bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon, an event in which three people were killed and over 250 others were injured. Of those charges, 17 carry the possibility of the death penalty. There’s really no surprise […]

RFRA: More harmful than advertised

In March 26th, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed SB 101, also known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), into law. There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding how this actually came about. Let’s take a look at the recent history of religious freedoms. In 1993, President Clinton signed the original RFRA into […]