In his article, Strauss brought up his religious convictions pertaining to LGBT issues, and although I personally disagree with them, it needs to be pointed out that those opinions must be accepted by everyone in order to move forward with the issue. As an LGBT individual I felt no personal assault by Strauss’ article, even though our opinions on various social issues do not align, and why should I? I have my opinions and others have theirs, but they should not influence how I treat them or vice versa. This brings us to a very important realization that many on both sides of the social argument need to adhere to: Instead of promoting the childishness of a playground argument (which most of the debate on LGBT rights has become), both sides of the issue must be willing to listen to and respect the opinion of the opposition. Society has experienced a very minimal amount of this basic courtesy. Especially in recent years, words such as “bigot” and “homophobe” have been thrown around without any real consideration or respect. These personal attacks serve no purpose in bettering the image of the LGBT community and only propagate an image of hostility.

In almost a militant fashion, both sides of the argument have used their rhetoric and actions to increase tension against the opposition. As a result, many LGBT individuals harbor a deep resentment to religion when, in reality, they should be content with the fact that the Catholic Church even has a compassion-driven position in its Catechism. LGBT rights may not be a desired outcome for more conservative organizations such as the Catholic Church, but their position should be respected. For many Catholics to adhere to this doctrine by disagreeing with LGBT issues such as marriage is perfectly acceptable; no one should be forced to accept something that goes against their personal moral convictions. Additionally, their opinions do not make them bigoted any more than your own personal beliefs in opposition to theirs make you a bigot. The system of religion-bashing and name-calling does not help either cause any more than it does in any other argument.

This brings me to a very caustic point that I feel needs to be reiterated in detail in order for the point to hit home. In my last column I wrote about abstaining from pride events and LGBT activist groups because I believed them to serve more of an alienating purpose than a universal approach. The main reason for this analysis is negative media portrayal of pride events. While such events do invite a sense of community and culture, it is important to be careful about how we approach them. With mass media honed in on anything that is deemed “out of the norm,” portrayal of the LGBT community lingers in the minds of the outsider as a queer fetish culture. Instead of telling the story of the happy couple, America’s television screens are bombarded with images of kink, hypersexuality and promiscuity. Additionally, many were upset with my statements regarding protection of the ally status under certain legal clauses. Most cited that heterosexual cisgender individuals already possess protection from discrimination based on their gender and sexuality. I respectfully disagree; in a work environment where personal opinion and political affiliation can still make or break a career, it is important that allies are included in such documents, as even support of LGBT individuals can spark tension.

When it comes down to it, most of what the LGBT community is doing today seems to be a gigantic waste of energy. A majority of time and energy wasted intensifies the standoff between LGBT detractors and the community as described above. Controversy, hatred and intolerance will only subside once one side makes the first move toward empathy. Tearing down the foundation of another’s opinion does more to offend than it does to comfort. Unfortunately, with animosity between both parties rising to higher levels by the minute, the playground debate doesn’t look like it will be ending anytime soon.

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman environmental sciences major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
Queerview publishes biweekly in weeks 3, 5, 7 and 9 .

The post Queerview | Moderation has a place in LGBT rights issues appeared first on The Triangle.

Marion County Judge Sheila Carlisle scheduled Shuai’s trial for Sept. 3, 2013. The prosecution assigned Terry Curry, the chief prosecutor of Marion County, to Shuai’s case. On the other side, Linda Pence, an experienced defense attorney, is defending Shuai.

I believe this case definitely opened the Pandora’s box of women’s rights. Based on the verdict of this trial, pro-life and pro-choice advocates can both either strengthen or weaken their arguments on abortion’s legality. Therefore, it is obvious that women’s rights groups ought to advocate for a verdict of “not guilty” through protesting against the prosecution and creating petitions for her innocence. I do understand that this case is very crucial; it represents one of the most controversial issues in the United States. However, we should not forget that the duty of this nation’s judicial branch is to bring justice to everyone who rightfully deserves punishment or compensation. Therefore, we must not let external circumstances cloud fair judicial rulings in this case. Furthermore, it is indeed very painful and cruel to force a woman who lost her newborn daughter to go through the intense procedures of a criminal court. If she truly deserves the punishment for murder or feticide, the judge should not hesitate to declare her guilty.

On the other hand, if she is not guilty, not only does she need to be treated properly, but the government and interest groups should also cooperate to help any pregnant women who are experiencing psychological difficulties. Every mother has the right to protect and successfully deliver a new life.

After reviewing the facts written by Pence, I came into doubt that the baby died because of her mother’s attempted suicide. I will review the situation of Shuai at the time of attempt of suicide. She was experiencing severe depression from her breakup with her boyfriend just before the tragic incident. While she was pregnant, she attempted suicide at least three times in front of her boyfriend before that. Clearly, anybody might think about killing oneself after being left alone with a heavy burden. However, Shuai was not in an ordinary situation at all; the baby was almost fully grown in her womb. Obviously, she was aware of the baby’s existence and the consequence of her action. Anybody with even the slightest maternal love would think again if the suicide attempt would have cost the life of a baby.

Yes, it is true that her mental state might have been so extreme that she did not consider her baby, but when she was rescued by her friends and taken to a hospital, she did not refuse treatment. Moreover, testimony from hospital employees stating that she sincerely cooperated with doctors was more than enough to prove that her maternal love was real. How does this contradiction occur?
Regarding the rat poison, it is roughly 60 times stronger than any regulated poison. Chinese women have traditionally used it to ensure quick and definite death. Rat poison does not have an expiration date and is just as deadly no matter how old it is. Miraculously, the poison did not kill Shuai. She recovered completely in a matter of days, and her baby survived for at least three days, which is remarkable considering the damage that rat poison can do to a baby.

The question arises: If the poison was not enough to kill both of them, did Shuai underdose? I seriously doubt that she mistakenly consumed less poison because studies have shown that people who commit suicide with poison often use a large dose to ensure a quick and relatively painless death. If she intentionally consumed less rat poison to survive, why would she risk her baby’s life?
With limited information, I will not jump to conclusions. However, I do wish for the truth alone to be revealed in this case. In order to obtain the truth, the judge should exclude the external matter of woman’s rights even if this matter is very crucial politically.

Alex Cho is a political science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Infanticide case causes controversy appeared first on The Triangle.

Drexel’s study abroad program has several features that make studying abroad easier for students. For example, DrexelNow announced May 14 that an international area studies student was recently awarded a Boren Scholarship to study abroad in Russia for the 2013-14 school year. The scholarship awards up to $20,000 to undergraduate students interested in studying and working in a foreign country. Other scholarships include the CIEE Global Access Initiative Scholarship, the Gilman Scholarship, the Sharif Rahman Scholarship and several others. The abundance of study abroad scholarships available at Drexel gives students the opportunity to travel to a country of their choice without dishing out obscene amounts of money in addition to high tuition. Additionally, Drexel also offers short-term trips that students can apply for if they have summer term off and are unable to leave Philly while class is in session.

Unfortunately, upperclassmen often lead other students to have misconceptions of other countries and their inhabitants. These fast-spreading stereotypes often influence students’ decisions to study abroad. For example, tensions have recently increased between the U.S. and Russia in lieu of the Boston Marathon bombings, which could deter students from choosing to study abroad in Russia. The Editorial Board believes that we shouldn’t use the actions of the few to judge the whole. General stereotypes can cause students to think wrongly about foreign countries, making them unaware that in opting out of traveling to a certain country, they could be missing out on a fun and unique experience. Students should take the time to research countries before allowing societal misconceptions to make decisions for them.

We’ve often heard that people who didn’t study abroad during college regret it. It’s one of those things that we should take advantage of before we’re tied down with full-time jobs, families and/or other adult commitments. It will probably be difficult to plan an economical trek around all of Europe if you have kids or to explain to your boss why you’re requesting three months off to soak in the culture of South America. There may not be another time in your life where you’re relatively unattached and could ditch your life for three or six months — let alone have people encourage it! Drexel trains us to think practically, and so naturally we consider what we have to gain professionally from studying abroad. In the U.S., almost all industries have gone international, and we all have something to learn from our educational or professional counterparts abroad.

Part of going to college is being exposed to the world in ways you never knew in your high school cocoon. Studying abroad is an opportunity to see everything from a different perspective and to taste the real world in its entirety instead of reading about it online or seeing snippets of it on television. Depending on where you choose to study, you’ll face different challenges. Even if there’s no language barrier to worry about, being thrown into unfamiliar waters and potentially living with a host family is something that will probably make you a little uncomfortable. That’s the point! Not only will you get to experience a new culture firsthand and potentially learn a new language, but you’ll also learn to adapt and appreciate other cultures and avoid the ethnocentrism that Americans are stereotypically known for feeling.

Even if you’ve traveled around the country, you’re kidding yourself if you think we can even begin to comprehend the variety of worldly cultures and lifestyles. At one point or another, most people refuse to expand their taste buds, and a friend replies, “How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it?” The same goes for the lives that we’ll be choosing in the next few years.

How do you know what you’re missing if you never try it? Don’t waste your youth planning and putting off traveling the world. Be proactive and spontaneous, pick a country, and just go. It’s that simple.

The post Pick a place on the map and go appeared first on The Triangle.

“It’ll boost our economy!” they say. “It’ll create jobs!” “It will give the U.S. energy security!” “It will make our gas cheaper!” The list goes on and on. Now I want you to think about these statements as I delve deeper into our two root issues: tar sands and pipelines.

Tar sands. It already sounds gross. Tar, as we know it, is a black, gooey substance that our roads are made with. Sand is the stuff we find on beaches that is composed of ground-up rocks, seashells and coral. Now let’s put the two together, and what do we get? The Alberta Tar Sands. But how does that make oil? Well, the process is quite simple, actually:

Step 1: Clear cut the precious Boreal Forest that represents more than half of Canada’s land area, sustains countless plants and animals, and plays a critical role in mitigating global climate change.

Step 2: Start digging. And by digging, we mean use some of the largest mechanical machines known to man that are capable of gouging out 16,000 cubic meters of earth per hour, filling up dump trucks that are 22 feet high and nearly 50 feet long, then hauling 400 tons of sand per load.

Step 3: Crush the sand into tiny particles using crushers. Mix the crushed sand with hot water with added chemicals to draw out the sludge (known as bitumen). This tar is so thick that you have to cut it with solvents in order to transport it in the pipeline.

Step 4: So you added solvents. This makes it difficult to process, but there is a solution: just hydrotreat your sludge (use a lot of water, natural gas and oil) to get rid of those solvents like nitrogen, sulfur and other metals. Now heat it again to remove the carbon and add hydrogen. No big deal, we fixed it, guys!

Step 5: Now we’re ready to send it through another pipeline to refine it, but because most of our refineries aren’t built to handle the task of the heavy bitumen, we’ll have to build new ones. We got this.

That’s a lot, but what else? It takes as much as four tons of sand and four barrels of fresh water to make a barrel of synthetic oil, which is good for about 42 gallons of gas, or one fill-up for a 1997 Chevrolet Suburban. This process of extracting tar from sand to feed our fossil fuel dependence is just absolutely ridiculous. In addition, the greenhouse gas emissions are 19 percent higher than traditional fossil fuels. The European Union attempted to single out tar sands as “highly polluting,” and Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the British Liberal Democrats, compared them to land mines, blood diamonds and cluster bombs. Sounds great, right?

So then, let’s talk about the pipeline. There are obvious issues with it like leaking, explosions, damage to wildlife, imposing on people’s property, etc. (We’ve seen about five pipeline issues in the past few weeks not relevant to the Keystone XL Pipeline, which are signs of what’s to come), but there’s also a lot of false information about the benefits created by the pipeline that the U.S. State Department has put in its State Impact Report of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The U.S. State Department stated that the pipeline would create many jobs. In reality, it will create 35 permanent jobs and 3,900 construction jobs (for one year), and only 10 percent of those jobs will be filled by local people living in communities along the route.

But we won’t be dependent on foreign fossil fuels, right? The State Department found that the purpose of the pipeline will likely be to export Canadian crude from the U.S. after it’s refined. An estimated 60 percent of crude oil will be exported after it’s refined. Well, that does us a lot of good, especially because it will not lower gas prices for Americans by a single cent!

So the State Department got a few things right, but there are also some things they missed, like the fact that the Keystone XL Pipeline will drastically expand the tar sands industry and increase carbon pollution. The pipeline will also be a major threat to fresh water. The total carbon pollution impacts of Keystone XL increase to the equivalent of over 9 million cars on the road when considering the total emissions to produce tar sands and the combustion of the crude oil. Despite alterations in the route of the Keystone XL Pipeline, it will still cross more than 1,000 water bodies across three states and 875 miles, threatening fresh water for millions of people if there is a bitumen spill. Tar sands oil is almost impossible to clean up because it sinks in water, costing billions of dollars to recover. TransCanada’s first Keystone pipeline has spilled 14 times in the U.S. within one year of operation, including the spill in Kalamazoo, Mich., where 40 miles are still contaminated and may never be recovered.

I’ve had the privilege of attending both anti-Keystone XL Pipeline rallies on the National Mall in Washington. This past year in February, I gathered with over 50,000 like-minded friends and individuals to stand up to Big Oil and the government that it chokes with money. The Keystone XL Pipeline is not our future — in fact, it’s the end of the future. Please take a stand.

Nicole Koedyker is the president of the Drexel Sierra Club. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

The post EnviroWeekly | Stop the KeystoneXL oil pipeline now appeared first on The Triangle.

Firstly, I have great respect for people who are religious. I fully believe in the constitutional right to practice whatever religion one chooses and to be free from persecution while doing so. However, I equally believe that religions should have no influence on public policy, using the same First Amendment justification. Congress may not “make … law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This has, in over 200 years of United States history, come to be understood to provide a separation of church and state, which the U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld in its jurisprudence. Strauss follows Catholic teaching and says that his faith “would require [him] to vote against [LGBT rights].” While this is not direct interference by a religious organization in public policy, it certainly shows a certain blind deference to faith. I’m not suggesting that we can stop people from voting based on their religious beliefs, nor do I think we should. However, the influence of religious organizations, such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, must be scrutinized. These organizations are tax exempt, but that is dependent upon them refraining from political discourse. We should be taking a better look at these organizations when the speech of their leaders seems to be political or politically related in some way, and if they are found to be violating Internal Revenue Service rules, they should have their tax-exempt status revoked.

The other problem with using religious reasoning on civil issues, such as gay marriage or an LGBT-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, is that these are civil issues, not religious ones, as obvious as that sounds. Catholicism teaches that marriage is a divine institution created by God. That’s absolutely fine; it’s a religious belief, and I have no problem with the church teaching that. What I do have a problem with is when religious people make the argument that because the church has this religious belief, we, as a country and society, must make laws following that teaching. Marriage has become a civil institution. It is an important part of many religions, but it is also part of our civil society. There are over 1,000 benefits provided to married straight couples on a federal level that are denied to same-sex couples, even if those couples are legally married in a state. For the church to claim that same-sex marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage, or that marriage is inherently religious and not a civil issue, is ludicrous. There are people who made similar arguments against interracial marriage in the 1960s, and yet today, decades later, marriage is still an integral part of our society. Prohibiting same-sex marriage is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, as it discriminates against a particular group based on their immutable characteristics. In the oral arguments for Hollingsworth v. Perry, a Supreme Court case addressing the issue of Proposition 8 in California, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the lawyer arguing for those opposed to same-sex marriage whether he could think of “any other rational basis, reason, for a state using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them” outside of the context of marriage. The lawyer was unable to provide a rational basis for such discrimination. Why should the LGBT community be discriminated against in marriage if there are no other contexts in which it would be admissible? Additionally, why should we use the Catholic Church’s position on marriage specifically? There are many other religions, including both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage. To use the views of one religion on a civil issue is to foist them unwillingly upon everyone who is not a member of that religion, thereby violating the First Amendment.

I’m all for religious understanding and having a dialogue about the issue. As Strauss said in his article, a dialogue works toward the common good. However, it’s fairly black and white that on this issue, the common good is equality for all Americans. Just as discrimination based on race, gender or religion is unconstitutional, so is discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. And just as it took decades for those forms of discrimination to be recognized, so it is taking time with LGBT rights. Now, though, is the time for it to happen. Public opinion is swaying, with several national polls showing that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage. In less than two weeks, three more states legalized gay marriage, bringing the total to 12 states and the District of Columbia. So yes, let’s debate, let’s dialogue, let’s reach the common good. But recognize that opposing rights for all citizens puts you on the wrong side of history, and please, don’t try and force me to follow your religion.

Sean Craig is a co-chief copy editor at The Triangle. He can be contacted at sean.craig@thetriangle.org.

The post Take a stand on LGBT issues appeared first on The Triangle.

Sports might seem larger than life, but they are not. Life itself is complex, but sports are relatively simple. Athletes play games that result in wins and losses. This can bring people together or tear them apart. Fights between rivals in the parking lot balance the scale of high fives between pals at the bar.

Whether friend or foe, there have been, and will always be, moments in sports that anyone can appreciate. Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier showed that the nation’s pastime could finally be integrated. Michael Oher making it to the NFL showed that anyone can succeed in sports, no matter what background he or she comes from.

Yeah, sports sure do have some great stories to fall back on, and some even better moments. The 1980 Miracle on Ice and the David Tyree catch in Super Bowl XLII, among many others, are unforgettable. However, these special occasions in sports are the exception, not the norm, and sometimes we lose sight of that fact. For every comeback win there are countless wire-to-wire victories, and that is just fine.

Not every athlete is special, either. People have good qualities and bad. People do the extraordinary and underwhelm. Athletes are the same way because athletes are people. We should not glorify the athlete, just as we should not glorify the person who makes a meatball sandwich at Subway. Too often we put an athlete on a pedestal only to realize that he or she is not perfect in every way.

Athletes are made into gods, just to be broken down when they do not live up to those unrealistic expectations. Roy Halladay does not owe you an apology for being injured while playing a game that you casually watch while eating nachos on your couch. Ryan Howard does not deserve to get booed because he is not “living up to” a $125 million contract.

Philadelphia fans are a prime example of this, but we are all guilty in one way or another. Morality does not spawn from talent; good players are not always good people. Tiger Woods can be the greatest golfer of all time and still be the worst husband. Floyd Mayweather can be the greatest boxer of his generation and still be the biggest stooge. Really, it is OK.

A defendant is innocent until proven guilty in the court of law, but an athlete is wonderful until proven inadequate. Should it not be the other way around? It is that way in basically every other part of life, but why not sports? Is it the stage? Is it the money? Is it the media influence? I do not know.

However you care to evaluate it, the ultimate conclusion is that our view of sports is skewed. We do not allow great things to happen in sports; we make them happen through predetermined storylines and heightened expectations. If they are to “transcend,” we must make sure they actually deserve to do so. Sports should be celebrated for what they are, not for what we want them to be.

Bryan Fyalkowski is the assistant sports editor at The Triangle. He can be contacted at bryan.fyalkowski@thetriangle.org.

The post Sports aren’t perfect appeared first on The Triangle.

I bought seven brands of bottled water yesterday. I got the good stuff, waters from around the world. I am fascinated by regional-specific goods, especially foods. When these products come directly from the earth, I am even more interested. Location-specific waters, which most of these are, are luxury items for sure. Some of these waters are from islands, and others come from remote areas of Europe. They are expensive … and I’m not even talking about money.

Bottling water takes a vital commodity from the earth. The ecosystems in these areas are dependent on historical levels of groundwater and aquifers. I often feel as though my Western lifestyle allows for me to rob a pristine land of its most important resource, pack it in small toxic packaging we call plastic, and ship it over the ocean on massive boats. This happens partly because my own culture is too destructive to take care of its own water supply.

I feel like this bottled water issue speaks to a larger concern. The planet’s water is in a dire state, contaminated with everything we have tossed its way, including industrial waste and household refuse. Our inability to limit our waste or manage our consumption has resulted in a serious situation. Deserts are spreading. Oceans are diseased. Rain is toxic. Aquifers are being depleted. Drinkable water is limited, and the supply is shrinking. Life, which depends on water, is feeling the pressure.

We must begin acting now if we hope to keep the planet looking anything close to the way we found it. The speed at which we are changing the planet is rapid. The severe problems mentioned above arise because human-induced changes to the environment are occurring faster than the natural systems can accommodate them. Our goal moving forward is to begin consciously creating the future with manageable changes. We must think of how our decisions affect the world around us and attempt to minimize disturbances. Bottled water is one example of many.

One way to minimize disturbance to our environment is to learn how to slow down our lives. Sometimes technology and new products help make our lives better, but other times our possessions make things more complicated. If you can learn to be happy with owning less, you will have made a large, fundamental change in your life. With fewer things to think about, you can spend your time and money on things that will improve your life rather than distract you from it.

The post EnviroWeekly | Water: a resource in serious danger appeared first on The Triangle.

Religiously motivated opponents of same-sex marriage often make very poor choices of how to defend their cause. I’m not just talking about the Westboro Baptist Church or radical Muslims here. The Catholic Church gives very clear guidelines on how its members ought to approach the issue, but many Catholics instead take approaches that only further alienate the church from the LGBT community. That’s largely our fault; we need to do a better job of understanding what the church really teaches about homosexuality, and all of us (not just the clergy) need to be more consistent in how we live out those teachings and share them with others if we ever want to gain the respect of those who disagree with us.

In case you’re not already familiar with the church’s actual teachings on homosexuality, I’ll try to dispel some of the most commonly held misconceptions. First and foremost, the church does not hate LGBT people, nor does the church teach that God hates them. Paragraph 2358 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that LGBT individuals “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

Needless to say, supporters of same-sex marriage perceive opposition to their cause as unjust, but they often forget or are unaware that the primary Catholic motive of this opposition is love and concern for the well-being of all people. We don’t believe what we believe solely because “God said so.” Many people of faith consider the most important anti-LGBT lifestyle arguments to be rooted in theology, but research on the sociological effects of the LGBT lifestyle also plays into the discussion. Different studies have reached different conclusions. Some have suggested that people in LGBT relationships are at greater risk of finding themselves in harmful situations, while others have concluded that there is no statistically significant difference between such risks in LGBT relationships and heterosexual relationships. The church wants all people, whether they believe in God or not, to be happy and free from unnecessary suffering. It is with a sincere, compassionate desire to minimize people’s risk of unnecessary suffering that the church opposes LGBT lifestyles.

As recently as last year, I struggled to accept the church’s teachings on this issue because unlike similar issues on which the church requires its members to hold a particular position, such as abortion and euthanasia, LGBT rights aren’t a life-or-death matter. I’ve known all along that there are some happy, committed same-sex relationships out there. Even now, after making so much progress in my spiritual journey, the church’s outright opposition to same-sex adoption still troubles me. I imagine the options of a poor, drug-addicted single mother who doesn’t want her child anymore. Perhaps no heterosexual couples are offering to adopt. Would it really be better to have the child stay with such a parent, or be bounced from foster home to foster home, than to let a healthy, financially well-off same-sex couple have a chance with the child? I sympathize deeply with LGBT rights supporters on issues like this, though my faith would require me to vote against what they want regardless of the circumstances.

In other words, there is still an extent to which my position on LGBT issues is based entirely on faith, and I can’t expect anyone who doesn’t share my faith to agree with me on those grounds. But secular reasoning does support much of my stance, so I think it’s a shame that we as a society have struggled to start a civilized dialogue on the issue. Notice that I used the word “dialogue,” not “debate.” A debate is an argument between opposing viewpoints in which the participants strive to win by proving themselves right and their opponents wrong. Most of the public discussion of LGBT rights these days is nothing but a big, ugly debate. A dialogue is different in that the participants strive to work toward a mutual understanding for the common good rather than to defeat each other. We won’t start making any progress toward an agreeable long-term outcome until we turn this debate into a dialogue.

Religious opponents of LGBT rights need to be more willing to listen to what the LGBT community has to say. They need to love LGBT persons as fellow human beings and act with their best interests at heart. Likewise, I encourage the LGBT community to heed the advice that Shirey has given in his first two columns. The dialogue we need can’t begin until people on both sides make some major attitude adjustments.

Aaron Strauss is one of the co-chief copy editors of The Triangle. He can be contacted at aaron.strauss@thetriangle.org.

The post The other side speaks appeared first on The Triangle.

But graduation time at Drexel also makes for a class of would-be seniors standing on the sidelines at the graduations of friends who opted to go to different colleges. It’s not that these Dragons aren’t graduating because they didn’t take enough credits per term or took a leave of absence from school. It’s by virtue of being a Drexel student in the five-year program that makes you a “supersenior” by the average college’s standard.

But Drexel is no average college. The co-op program, which offers students a choice between the four-year, one co-op or five-year, three co-op options (for anyone who’s been living under a rock or isn’t Dragon-affiliated), is an invaluable asset well worth the extra time spent with your nose in the books or butt in the office chair. Here’s why you should be happy to be at Drexel year-round and maybe even an extra year:

1. In five years, Drexel students accrue up to 18 months of work experience at companies with competitive names in various industries. We’re building our resumes so that when we do catch up to our graduating friends in the job market, we’ll be better candidates for the positions they’ve been pining for ever since they got out of school. Sometimes we even get job offers from the employers we impressed during these co-ops, which is even better!

2. The job market is still formidable, especially for recent grads. The unemployment rate for this demographic between March 2012 and February 2013 was 8.8 percent, according to CNBC. And this doesn’t account for those who consider themselves underemployed, which should be the majority of recent grads because their average wage is $16.60 per hour. These students come out of school expecting the job of their dreams to land in their lap, and instead they’re tending the yogurt bar at Kiwi. Why settle for mediocrity when you can make yourself the more appealing job candidate while you’re still in school?

3. “The race to graduation” is a fallacy. It’s one thing to load up on credits each term so that you can get out of paying Drexel’s sky-high tuition for a few terms. Or, for example, maybe you’re a transfer student whose credits don’t mesh with the University’s quarter system. It’s OK. But you shouldn’t legitimately be concerned that it’s taking you an extra year to graduate. The real goal is education, and you should be soaking up as much as you can while you have the opportunity. Plus, graduate school is always an option, especially in a turbulent job market. Again, making yourself the most knowledgeable and experienced candidate for your desired job should be your chief goal.

4. Most are familiar with the fact that Drexel divides its co-op students into two groups (with some exceptions) – there’s the “spring-summer” workers and the “fall-winter” ones. And if you’re not working, you’re in classes, fulfilling the University’s “LIVE IT 24/7” mantra. With summer fast approaching, many students are lamenting still being tied to Drexel.

But instead of saying goodbye to our friends in May, we get to spend the summer together doing fun activities, like taking day trips to the beach. Of course our friends from home are always complaining that we’re never around, but we’re content with where we are. We are able to keep the friendships from the past year and grow them stronger during the coming months, and we have the opportunity to meet more people.

5. Students who get a six-month co-op get a real taste of the workforce, learning what it feels like to work 40 hours per week, working through breaks and around holidays, and getting that blessed paycheck every two weeks. Many Drexel students claim that once they finally get comfortable at their co-op, the six months are up. If six months is what it takes to get fully acclimated to the work atmosphere, then a three-month summer internship surely isn’t enough to make you feel like you’re part of the team. So yes, it may be tough watching your friends ditch their textbooks in pursuit of their life goals, but you’ll get there sooner than you might think.

Be patient, bide your time, and relish each time you update your resume with your latest accomplishment. No, Drexel may not be shooting diplomas out at lightning speed, but it’s a “career prep” school that will inevitably get you hired somewhere impressive. Graduation is really just a formality.

The post So you’re not graduating with your friends… appeared first on The Triangle.

On the volcanic mountaintop of Mauna Loa, a Hawaiian Island, atmospheric carbon dioxide has been measured accurately for over 50 years. The graph of this data is called the Keeling Curve, and it is one of the starkest, most intimidating images in all of science. The graph is not awash in political discourse. It is not confusing or intended to be confusing. Rather, it is a clear and simple depiction that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing rapidly. This means many things to many people, but one thing is for certain: It means that humans are going to face tremendous change in the coming decades.

Orr said that change can be difficult. In the 1980s many institutions were not concerned about sustainable building practices. This was before LEED, before Passive House, and before the popularity and profitability of sustainable products. Orr told us that while he’s now recognized as a leader of sustainability, his role wasn’t always so glamorous. Like the Drexel Smart House, his story began humbly. When he and his students sought to build one of the first significantly green buildings in the country on their school’s campus, they were met with very little support. In turn, Orr and his students independently funded and built what is now regarded by the Department of Energy as one of the 30 milestone buildings of the 20th century.

What does one do with a milestone building? For starters, one makes money from it. The building produces 40 percent more energy than it needs. The extra energy is either sold to the grid or used for other buildings on campus. The concepts nurtured and funded by Orr and his students were demonstrably successful. He proved that innovative, sustainable design has a place on college campuses. This story bodes well for the Drexel Smart House. Its living-learning laboratory in the Victorian home on the corner of 35th and Race streets will continue Orr’s mission of sustainable design. The Drexel Smart House will foster students’ innovative ideas and thereby contribute to new sustainable initiatives.

With the completion of his “substantially green” building, the college began to notice some of its own changes. For starters, high school students interested in the environment began visiting the school more often. Application rates are increasing because young students, the immensely perceptive among us, realize how important sustainability is to the future of our planet and our species. Over the course of years, the college has been able to charge more for tuition. The surrounding community feels the benefit as more students bring more spending money. These secondary benefits, Orr said, are the real game changers for making sustainability ubiquitous. If you ignore the secondary benefits, the extra cost for sustainable construction is often overwhelming. Yet when these derivative benefits are factored in, the decisions are so much easier to make.

One of the really neat things about a sustainable future is that it’s a future built around systems. When one component of the system improves, everything surrounding it improves — it’s contagious. The real question we must ask ourselves is, “Do I proactively change for the future, or do I spend the future changing as a response to it?” Drexel Smart House is taking the proactive approach. Orr was impressed with the student-developed ideas of solar-powered ventilation; living roofs; plumbing systems that filter, reuse and monitor water consumption; and carbon capture products.
Drexel Smart House is a collaborative student group devoted to designing a better future.

Joe Massott is a freshman materials science and engineering major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post It isn’t easy being green—or is it? appeared first on The Triangle.

One could argue that the personal computer is what will stand out in the chronicle of history. While we certainly live in the age of technology, those heartless machines cannot compare to the passionate feelings of sports. Can you connect to a computer? Can it make you feel? Of course not. Sports, however, embody emotion and storyline. They are the national unity of “USA 4, USSR 3”; Michael Jordan’s raw tears from winning the NBA title on Father’s Day, just weeks after his dad passed away; or the New Orleans Saints returning to the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina.

Sports are more egalitarian than any democracy. The last four presidents have all gone to Harvard or Yale, but in sports, greatness comes from anywhere and everywhere. Who was the last senator to spend the first 15 years of his life in the slums like Michael Oher? The best soccer player on Earth is 5 feet six inches, but only once since Kennedy has a president been shorter than six feet. How could one forget Jesse Owens putting the smack down on Hitler’s master race during the 1936 Berlin Olympics or Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier almost 20 years before the Civil Rights Act?

Sports are an outlet; they are where we go when the world is too overwhelming. All the importance in the universe is contained within a few chalk lines. There is a score and rules to be followed, and it is fair. If my team is ahead when the time is up, you can argue all you want, but my team won. Results make sense and are not interpreted based on personal feelings — well, except in figure skating.
Sports are community and connection. There is still nothing like going to the ballpark on a warm summer’s eve surrounded by fellow lovers of the game. I’ve met a thousand people but have never felt more intimate than when executing a perfectly timed give ‘n’ go with a complete stranger. Our country is divided over every single political issue, but we can all agree on the doomed heroism of Colin Kaepernick in the Super Bowl.

Sports are magic. There’s a saying in Europe: “The ball is round so that anything can happen.” Sports replace childhood belief in fairy tales with the belief that no matter how far behind your team is, a comeback is still possible. Anytime you watch or play a game, something amazing could happen. Sure, we might get crap or monotony 99 times. But that 100th time, we watch the Red Sox come back from three games down to win the American League pennant over the hated Yankees, or we see Trey Burke’s 30-foot game-winner swish through the net. After 99 times, we jump to our feet as David Tyree desperately clings to a pass against his helmet, or we drop our jaws as Leo Messi runs past defenders as if they were training cones.

Sports are important. They are a form of dramatic art, the greatest. Real blood and sweat are poured into every moment, none of this corn starch stuff. It is art that can be created by anyone, from the young boy playing catch with his dad to the physical geniuses who rule the NBA. Sports are enjoyed by everyone who loves seeing great men and women do amazing things. Sports are not mere entertainment or work, as are computer games or construction. Sports are like music or painting, literature or photography, theater or poetry. Sports transcend.

Micah Watanabe is a freshman at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Sports have substance appeared first on The Triangle.

I was recently part of an online debate over the acceptance of LGBT allies as belonging to the protective umbrella of nondiscrimination clauses put forth by many educational and workplace constitutions. Overwhelmingly, many LGBT individuals did not support the inclusion of “ally” in these protective clauses, citing that heterosexual supporters of the LGBT community need no guaranteed protection under these clauses. I couldn’t disagree more; LGBT individuals and their allies are both in need of protection regarding their viewpoints on many issues. To isolate allies by saying that they should not be included in such corporate laws is ridiculous and selfish of the LGBT community. Coming from a community that stresses equality among all individuals, rejecting this protection toward others is hypocritical and makes the community look like it enjoys playing the victim.

Placing sexuality on a pedestal as the defining characteristic of an individual is what the LGBT community as a whole works to remove from a stereotypical standpoint, but in a strange turn of events, they define themselves by that sexuality. Who you love should not become you, your life or your career. In fact, sexuality should be the least important aspect of your life, and by moving it to the forefront, issues in pride extremism occur. In an almost cultlike mentality, modern movements in sexuality and gender aim to pick out every miniscule detail of society and label it as inherently sexist or homophobic. This is where difficulties arise because there are many out there who feel the way that I do, yet are reluctant to join an official community because of such pride extremism and self-victimization.

The most helpful thing that the LGBT community could do in an effort to stop the negative portrayal and alienating mindset is to regain some consciousness of reality. There is no elitism in the world, no group that deserves more respect because of who they are or are not. It’s time to take a step back and really look at the situation. Are we going to continue to be the thorn in the side of detractors just as they are to us? Should we continue to congregate and display pride when the mass media portray our actions and identity as a fetish culture? Finally, should we really be concerned about placing our sexuality at the forefront of our lives for all to see?

You might have different answers to those very questions, but just because you speak for a majority in the LGBT community doesn’t mean your answers are the best. Sexuality and gender cultures have morphed into an exclusive club for the elite; it’s almost as if the message of acceptance and understanding has been translated to “conform or be cast aside.”

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman computer science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
Queerview publishes biweekly in weeks 3, 5, 7 and 9 .

The post Queerview | Are we “playing the victim”? appeared first on The Triangle.

Sure, we all hate more campus construction, but hear me out. There are many qualities that make a building a “good” one, but let’s start with some of the basics:

A good building should be mixed use. Different uses on different levels (shops on the ground level, apartments and offices above, for instance) lead to a building that has some kind of activity during all times of day.
A good building should “engage with the street” — that is, it ought to have a facade abutting the sidewalk and not recessed behind some enormous lawn, parking lot or vast expanse of concrete.
A good building should function well and be convenient for its users. This can be anything from well-functioning HVAC and elevators to adequate lighting to aesthetic concerns.

Well, everything that could be wrong with a building is wrong with 3101 Market. Instead of a facade that abuts the sidewalk, the building is recessed from the street, isolated by a giant surface parking lot. Pedestrians on Market Street are surrounded on all sides by cars, without any barriers to protect them from either insane drivers on the road or maniacs in the parking lot. There aren’t even any street trees!

This building does not “engage with the street.” In fact, it actively and aggressively denies the existence of the street. There is no ground-floor retail, there are few entrances facing the street, and there are no features to break up the monotonous facade. The whole block is completely devoid of any shade for pedestrians, which makes the walk unbearable in the summer. The JFK Boulevard facade is even worse, offering no entrances whatsoever.

Functionally, the building is a mess. The classrooms are two floors underground and can only be accessed by a seemingly endless corridor. Drexel calls these classrooms “the Garden Level” because the administration has a wholly sadistic sense of humor. Most of the building has no natural lighting, which is not only unpleasant but makes the building energy inefficient. Couple this with bland and windowless classrooms and the ever-present sound of the Market-Frankford Line echoing throughout the floor, and you realize that even these newly renovated areas are functionally deficient.

The facade transcends blandness to the point where it is actually offensive. It’s a gray brick wall all the way around, with no windows on the ground floor and only one small public entrance. There is generally nothing to even suggest that this is an occupied building, let alone one that actively holds offices and classrooms.

The building is an active assault on our campus: bland, boring and blatantly refusing to engage in any way with the street. In turn, it may discourage students from venturing farther than 31st Street from campus because the walk is so unpleasant.

There is, of course, no ground-floor retail, save for the Sovereign Bank on the corner of 31st and Market, done in matching gray brick. This is a shameful use of land, and it leads to our missing out on some significant real-estate potential. Market Street from 32nd to 30th Street Station is a natural location for a significant retail corridor: it’s already busy, it’s easily accessible by transit and car, it’s right next to a major railroad terminal, and it’s ripe for redevelopment. The only potential issue is that the land is currently zoned for industrial use, but Drexel has easily overcome this in the past; look at the recent rezoning for the proposed Lancaster Square. The monetization of this parcel is stupidly easy, so why hasn’t anyone built anything better here yet?

This building is right at the gateway to campus. Anyone coming from 30th Street Station has to see this building, as does anyone coming from I-76 and anyone walking from Center City to Drexel. Everyone has to look at and walk past 3101 Market at some point, and I’m certain that it’s a significant contributing factor to Drexel’s numerous “Ugliest Campus” awards.

Drexel has been focusing on shoehorning buildings between MacAlister Hall and Chestnut Street and demolishing the existing, occupied Hess labs to put up new student housing. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room, 3101 Market, remains standing. This would be a great place for, say, a couple 30-story towers with offices, classrooms and ground-floor retail. The construction would be on the periphery of campus and probably wouldn’t interfere too much with student life, unlike Chestnut Square and the new LeBow building. It’s a win-win situation, so I call upon our university’s president: Mr. Fry, tear down this building.

The post Get rid of 3101 Market appeared first on The Triangle.

There is an obvious caveat that should accompany this new report: Political situations like the one in Somalia make it incredibly difficult to generate accurate and complete numbers. Not only is the government basically paralyzed in the capital city, but the widespread dysfunction and rampant violence make it very difficult to get an accurate count of the number of people who have died and from what causes they have died. With that said, these new numbers are staggering. No matter what we might think of American foreign policy (and it has its flaws), there is no justification for turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Somali people. Some reports have suggested that the aid that was sent was long delayed by militants in control of certain regions of the country. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that there were early signs in 2010 and 2011 that the people in East Africa were going to run into a food shortage. A more concerted effort should have been made earlier.

In my last article I discussed the importance of a preventative domestic policy instead of one that just reacts to tragedy; it would seem there is a similar problem on the international scale. America has long enjoyed a comfortable position on the international stage; we have the surplus resources that allow us to offer a hand of benevolence when we see people in need. But that kind hand is useless if it comes too late. Somalia is still navigating the murky waters of a violent internal conflict, famine and other setbacks that make it harder for the people to begin to rebuild their lives. Americans have run into tough economic times, but we can’t forget that there are people all around the world who have it so much worse, and the least we can do is offer lifesaving support when it’s clear that there is need.

Brie Powell is a freshman political science major at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Bringing an end to hunger in Somalia appeared first on The Triangle.

Moreover, a study from eMarketer says that by 2016 almost 90 percent of college students will own a smartphone. Why bring your computer to class when you can carry it in your pocket? The technology is just too good to pass up, and never being out of the loop is of vital importance to Generation Y.

Distinguished lecturer Arianna Huffington spoke April 30 at Drexel about this shared addiction to connectivity. Huffington, whose two daughters are in their early 20s, remarked that while they grew up in a time where human interaction was still valued, she fears for the ability of today’s children to cope with the overstimulation generated by constant screen time.

Much of Huffington’s lecture stressed the importance of making a conscious effort to disconnect and refocus our lives around the tangible people and things that really matter to us. Remember, this is a woman whose livelihood revolves around one of the most viewed and shared websites in the world. It’s in her best interest for you to stay connected, but yet she warns against overindulgence in media technology. If that isn’t a wake-up call, we’re not sure what is.

Like Huffington’s daughters, people our age have a concept of human interaction, but more recently they have become enslaved by computer-mediated socializing. It’s just so easy to send a Facebook invite to get the word out about a party, to tweet someone “I miss you” or to text a classmate about that homework assignment.

Ask your parents how they most frequently communicated with people when they were in their early-to-mid 20s. You’ll likely hear stories of throwing pebbles at windows in the middle of the night, writing letters in class, or meeting up at some special hangout spot after school.

“Social media” in the ‘70s and ‘80s meant television and radio, technologies that families would consume together, in the car or at the end of a long day. People talked about what they were seeing and hearing — it was a point of discussion. Now our social technologies inhibit our engagement with each other. Today’s youth can simply chat somebody on Facebook from the comfort of their bed, erasing the need to meet up with friends in person.

While the instant gratification of online chatting is convenient, there is something much more gratifying in updating your friends and family about your life in person. There’s no real way to sense someone’s emotions in an online conversation because so much gets lost in translation. We bet you don’t have enough hands to count the number of times somebody has misunderstood your tone, mistaking your playful sarcasm for a bad attitude. Or when you do talk to somebody face to face, how often have you tried to tell a story that was interrupted with “Yeah, I saw it on Facebook”? Facebook has taken away the joy of telling somebody something for the first time and really savoring their reaction.

On top of that, there is almost a sense of obligation to make a statement via social media in response to the latest news event or even change in weather. This mob mentality has proliferated the trend of news stories becoming exaggerated. Take, for example, the 2009 Iranian presidential election, during which protesters used Twitter to communicate the fact that there were 7,000 activists present, a figure which grew exponentially to 700,000 after misreporting and uninformed tweets.

With all this misinformation, how can one tell fact from fiction? Some users believe everything the Internet tells them, and now they believe everything that social media tells them. When these users don’t check to see if the information they are about to share is accurate or not, they are contributing to the viral spread of misinformation.

Nonstop interaction with these social platforms, and the devices that run them, is diluting our sense of self, of social interaction and what is newsworthy. As Huffington said, it’s time to reflect.

As with any decision, we should weigh the pros and cons. Is it worth losing the personal interactions because texting is so convenient? For some things — quick questions and locating people in a crowd — it just makes sense. But consider how much is being lost every time you shy away from a situation and text about it instead. Awkward situations, fighting and making up, complete happiness, true love — all are diluted when we interact through technology. So drop the phone, log out of Facebook, meet up with your best friend, and have some solid human time.

The post Our shared addiction is diluting our reality appeared first on The Triangle.

Now imagine the ocean: that vast tract of blue that occupies the majority of the planet’s surface, containing specks of green, white and brown. Every single day, many, not just one, of those large and porous blankets, called trawl nets, scrape the ocean floor, leaving destruction in their paths and claiming the lives of billions of marine life forms. Yet when looking at marine life depletion, there are many things other than trawl nets that contribute to the decrease of marine systems in the Earth’s oceans. I want to explain some causes and effects of marine life disruption, point to local outreach groups working in the area, and suggest solutions for Drexel affiliates.

One of the easiest ways of understanding detrimental behavior to the oceans is to look at pollution. With the coverage of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, one could see that the devastation to the Gulf of Mexico was vivid. At the disaster’s peak, it necessitated the closure of commercial fishing activities over 88,000 square miles by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to the Federation of American Scientists, “coastal areas are especially vulnerable because oil can be stranded in wetlands and other coastal ecosystems after being washed in by waves and tides.”

In addition to mentioning that oil can coat and suffocate small animals and plants that live on shores, the FAS says that oil can remain on the Gulf floor, affecting corals and bottom-dwelling organisms. Oil left unattended in wetlands can cause long-term damage to growth, as these areas provide shelter to many organisms. It literally affects the entire food web as organisms dwell in the polluted areas, and it outweighs the devastation to individual fish species in the open ocean. The BP oil rig explosion is just one out of many examples. The Exxon Valdez disaster, Nigerian oil spills and the Gulf War oil spill have all added their share of oil to the oceans around the world.

Besides fossil fuel extrapolation and transportation pollution, waste and agricultural runoff have created dead zones in the Gulf and around the world. As I mentioned in an earlier op-ed, almost 173,000 miles of dead zones populate U.S. waterways due to agricultural runoff from intensive farm practices and factory-farmed sewage runoff. Because this type of pollution is ongoing with increased production in factory farms, thousands of dead fish wash up on shores every year.

Consider the effects of climate change and our warming planet. Some of us have heard of carbon sinks. The ocean acts as one, but it is losing its ability to absorb carbon every year, just as the Amazon is losing its ability to act as an effective carbon sink with more deforestation taking place. As the planet absorbs carbon less effectively (in addition to increased anthropogenic emissions) and produces less oxygen in the atmosphere, more carbon will remain in the atmosphere, causing heat absorption from the sun. As the planet increases in average temperature, the ice caps that help reflect sunlight and divert heat absorption will decrease in size and melt, not only accelerating the rate at which future ice will melt but also unbalancing the sodium levels and temperature in seawater. The cold and fresher water that was kept in ice for centuries will enter major currents like the North Atlantic Current. This will not only affect the marine life system (which is used to a warmer current as the current continues the Gulf Stream northeast) but also decrease the temperature of the current that provides moisture and warmth for Northern Europe.

Sea life will be affected particularly with warmer ocean temperatures in areas like Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. The collection of coral reef acts as a filter for ocean waste and as shelter to many different marine species. Factors like increased water temperature, reduced salinity, acidification, overfishing and sedimentation cause large-scale coral bleaching, which kills the reefs and thereby reduces the efficiency of the corals at filtering the ocean and providing a habitat and protection for marine life. Humans that rely on coral reef organisms for food and trade will be negatively affected if more coral reefs undergo bleaching events. Although it sounds like the ocean is heating up and cooling down simultaneously, the ocean is on average warming up. Despite this, the decrease and increase in ocean temperatures in different areas of the world causes various effects on marine ecosystems that will ultimately lead to rising temperatures.

Human waste contributes to marine life depletion as well. As of now, there are floating plastic islands in the five gyres of large ocean currents, with the plastic pollution in the North Pacific Gyre measuring to almost twice the size of the U.S. There are a few other gyres that have accumulated plastic waste, but the five gyres have the largest amounts of plastic whirlpooling and breaking into smaller particles, affecting marine life health and ultimately human health. Persistent organic pollutants, such as PCBs, DDT, pesticides and hydrocarbons, are absorbed by these plastic particles and build up enough that marine life will unknowingly consume them.

Going back to the fishing industry, we find increasingly more devastating practices used by the industry to capture and trade marine animals for consumption and consumer products. Tyler Kruszewski, representing Shark Angels and Fin Free Pennsylvania, also a biology major at Drexel in the cellular molecular genetics biochemistry concentration, spoke to the Drexel Sierra Club about the need for banning the sale of shark fins. Seventy-three million sharks are killed each year for their fins, the main ingredient in shark fin soup. Regional shark populations have already decreased by 95 percent, and the continued sale of shark fins will lead to even fewer populations. Sharks are necessary predators of the marine ecosystem, as they regulate the food web and control the fish populations’ effect on marine plant life and micro-organisms.

The fishing industry also uses environmentally destructive fishing techniques that not only decrease the levels of fish populations but also do not allow those populations to grow back to sustainable levels. As I mentioned earlier, the use of trawling nets results in large amounts of by-catch (fish species that are not intended to be sold) that die as a result of the inability to escape and thrashing against other fish as changes in pressure cause rapid decompression of the swim bladder. Little is known about the deepest depths of the ocean floor, and areas around the seamounts and vast sea forests contain estimates between 500,000 and 5,000,000 unknown species. Bottom trawlers are able to destroy these areas within our own lifetimes and leave these undiscovered species virtually unknown.

Gill netting, a less intensive fishing practice, also contributes to overfishing, leaving fish trapped for hours and days, causing some to die from lack of movement and predation. The economics of these techniques may stand to show profit in the short term, but the long-term effects of these standard fishing techniques will eventually bring economic collapse to the industry as fishermen have less fish to haul back in the coming decades.
I don’t think we’ll end up like Kevin Costner in “Waterworld,” but current trends certainly don’t deny the plausibility of that plot. So what can we do, particularly for marine ecosystems? One easy solution is to decrease the amount of plastic you use and buy, as that positively correlates to a decrease in plastic pollution. While not using plastic bottles and bags, you can either reuse old canvas bags and secondhand clothes, or you can buy from organic clothing and accessory companies. Brian Linton, founder of United By Blue, a Philadelphia-based apparel company that sells organic shirts and bags, spoke to the Sierra Club about its efforts to remove trash from U.S. waterways. For every item sold, UBB removes one pound of trash. Three years since their founding, they have removed over 140,000 pounds of trash, including 22,000 plastic bottles.

Another behavior to consider changing is fish consumption. The above data have shown that not only are wild caught fish subjected to cruel practices that destroy marine ecosystems, but intensively farmed fish (one solution in the eyes of the fishing industry) are equally concerning, environmentally speaking, with respect to poor diet, lack of welfare concern, economical waste, biological waste and lack of sustainability. It would be wise to reduce or even eliminate fish consumption, as these fish populations and other marine life need time to repopulate and recover. With current amounts of fish being caught (over a trillion fish per year), the consumption of fish is not environmentally sustainable.

Although there are many hazardous practices taking place at this moment, there is still some time to act. Fin Free Pennsylvania and Shark Angels are two great organizations to support, as they focus on one of the root problems in the fishing industry. You can decrease the amount of plastic you use and discard as well as volunteer or donate to organizations that are working to clean waterways. Most importantly, you can get more informed and inform others.

Benjamin Sylvester is a member of the Drexel Sierra Club. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

The post EnviroWeekly | Overfishing only one of many threats to our oceans appeared first on The Triangle.

After the most recent presidential election, Bill McKibben and 350.org toured the U.S. over eight days. He moved across the U.S. with his “Do the Math” campaign to educate students on fossil fuel resources. Here are some numbers I learned about:
390 — the parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide currently in our atmosphere
275 — the ppm near the dawn of human civilization
350 — the ppm that was chosen by lead climate scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen over 20 years ago as being a safe zone for life on Earth

NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also reinforced this number. McKibben emphasized how a moral and political strategy such as divestment would display the youth’s concern while hitting the dirty energy companies in their sweet spot (their wallets).

Knowing Drexel’s reputation as a science, technology, engineering and mathematics school, I feel that an appropriate explanation of divestment is needed. Every year Drexel takes a portion of your tuition payment and includes it in its endowment. An endowment is invested into buying bonds and public equities of other companies for profit, and the said company benefits as well. As of 2012, Drexel’s standing endowment is $555,381,000. The most profitable companies will give Drexel the largest return. Many of those businesses are also within the 200 publicly traded enterprises that hold the majority of the world’s proven coal, oil and natural gas reserves. My hopes were that Drexel knew well enough to avoid investing in these companies if they were apparently promoting themselves as a sustainable campus. Yet when members of the board of trustees were approached by Drexel Green earlier in the year, they refused to release any information regarding the endowment and simply said they were doing enough in environmental activism as it is. So the question that arises is: Why wouldn’t Drexel endorse a lack of involvement with the fossil fuel industry if it is prominently displaying a banner across the Drexel shuttle saying “100 percent wind-powered campus”? The obvious explanation is that Drexel falsely advertises its commitment to sustainability to encourage enrollment.

Now the Sierra Student Coalition is going to push the boundaries of “doing enough” and demand that Drexel divest its money from the industries that are the world’s largest source of air pollution. Our initial request: The board of trustees should immediately freeze any new investments into the top 200 offending corporations. This will prevent a fiscal shock and allow them to explore new clean energy companies and companies using eco-friendly practices to supplement the change. Then, having such an ultimatum planned by 2018, Drexel can fully divest any direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within five years. We consider our request rational enough to allow Drexel to make conscious decisions about where its endowment is being placed and whether or not it is morally right to invest in these companies.
Could this work? The idea is so foreign to younger students that they may have forgotten about college divestment from South Africa. Universities divested in protest of the apartheid system being used in South Africa’s government practices. It succeeded! Negotiations and policy changes in the mid-1990s changed South Africa’s racial segregation drastically. In regard to 350.org’s divestment campaign, success stories have already formed in the early years of its existence. These include Sterling and Hampshire colleges, the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee and the entire city of Seattle. We could be next, but it is a matter of our students’ determination to make the changes we want to see in the world. The carbon addiction needs to end, and we’re starving ourselves from innovation and success by ignoring the problem of climate change.

The post EnviroWeekly | Divest Drexel! appeared first on The Triangle.

President George W. Bush was right when he called our struggle a war on terror. We are not fighting other people; we are fighting the human condition. There are men and women who are basically evil, and to them, freedom means blowing things up and causing mayhem. There are men and women who hate the very idea of free expression. It is up to us to accept this reality and acknowledge that, despite reasonable precaution, our freedoms mean that we could die.

We still speak as if only soldiers can make the ultimate sacrifice for this country, but let me tell you, this notion is unequivocally untrue. Not since the First World War have men lined up and attacked each other head-on like you see in the movies. The images from Boston resembled a war zone because it was one. The battle came to the city, and there were casualties and wounded — just like Oklahoma City, Columbine and 9/11. Would you lay down your life for your country? Lincoln spoke of soldiers sacrificed upon the altar of freedom. We are no longer given that choice. The battleground could be anywhere.

Sanctuary is not guaranteed because there is a balance between personal freedom and security. Complete freedom would be anarchy; complete security would mean stifling restrictions. Although we currently side with liberty, we are slowly inching toward safety. I am not referring to small changes such as tweaking gun controls or items allowed on aircraft; imagine control on the level of Soviet-era communism. Look at the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance, The Military Commissions Act, invasive airport screenings, etc. Have these actually made us safer? With today’s technology, Orwell’s Big Brother is not so far-fetched. We could end terrorism, but it would come at a cost: intrusion into every facet of life and an end of privacy. Would you be willing to live under those conditions?

The men who created this nation believed that personal rights were more important than public safety. Benjamin Franklin saw the future and warned us that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” What has changed since Franklin’s time? I have been through airports over 40 times since 2001. Every pat-down has felt invasive, as have the several times I’ve been through body scanners. I believe that these measures invade privacy and set dangerous precedents, even if they prevent terrorism. Our Founding Fathers would have died to protect our right to privacy — the impassioned cries of a certain Mr. Patrick Henry come to mind.

I would never have called myself patriotic, yet after this week, I realized that I am in love with a principle: the inane sentiment that I deserve the same respect as you. That no one — no government, person or institution — can infringe on me without consent. The men and women who have died in acts of terror should be commended as martyrs who sacrificed for this idea, not victims of needless attacks. Their gift should not be forgotten.

The human evil is always ready to strike. Our nation might be in its dying throes, or it might yet endure for countless millennia. But right now, our freedoms are in danger of being curtailed in the name of safety, the freedoms that are the only things worth protecting. Two hundred years ago, a few lunatics decided that liberty was more valuable than safety. And after all these years, it is still worth it.

Micah Watanabe is a freshman at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Sacrifices on the altar of freedom appeared first on The Triangle.

As a mother, grandmother and educator, I can’t stop grieving over the stunning loss of life that occurs every day in the Philadelphia area where my children and I live and work. And I can’t stop thinking about the resistance to practical steps that Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other responsible lawmakers have recommended be taken in an attempt to avoid future carnage. Many Democrats, as well as most Republicans, clearly love their guns more than the people they represent. As I watch them on TV trying to defend their outrageous neglect, I’m overwhelmed with frustration, disappointment and disgust. Where is their humanity? Where is their shame at their own inaction? Are they genuinely serious when they say that they can’t support background checks for gun purchasers or the elimination of assault weapons because they are defending the Second Amendment? How do these changes endanger the Second Amendment? Nobody has ever threatened to take all of their destructive toys away from them, and they know it. They say they are worried about the “slippery slope.” The only things that are slippery in Washington are their slippery tongues. They believe they can say anything at any time, and with the right amount of money behind them, get away with it regardless of the harm their ideas and policies may do to fellow human beings. Anybody who is intelligent enough to get elected to a public office is smart enough to know that it is reasonable to ensure that guns should only be sold to law-abiding and mentally competent people and that nobody really needs an assault weapon to go hunting or to protect oneself.

The fact that these legislators would rather implement a filibuster than permit the American public to witness its leaders discuss, debate and vote to expand background checks and other legislation to reduce gun violence is a sign that they are afraid to be exposed any more than they already are. But what right do these people have to prevent the American people from witnessing their government representatives doing their job? This is supposed to be a government of the people and for the people! Who are these lawmakers representing when they refuse to officially vote on the gun bill? Especially when they know that 90 percent of Americans want background checks, and a majority of Americans want a ban on assault weapons! Who is being served when topics of great importance to the general public are not even allowed to be publicly aired?

Time and time again, we are all witnesses to the cowardly, self-serving behavior of our government officials, who are much more concerned about protecting their jobs with money and positive ratings from the NRA than protecting the lives of the people they serve. It’s not President Obama whom people should worry about; he doesn’t want to diminish the freedom of responsible citizens. He certainly doesn’t want to take away our guns. It’s our Congress we should fear — the members who are doing an amazing job of using the government to serve themselves at any cost. I can only hope that those responsible for blocking the passage of improved gun legislation will pay a penalty for paying homage to the wrong people. Until then, I’m grieving for the terrible loss of each life we hear reported and for the loss of faith in the ability of too many of our legislators to fulfill their obligations to the people they have sworn to represent.

Alexis Finger is an associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post A time to grieve for our losses appeared first on The Triangle.

The North Korean military force has a clear superiority in numbers against the South Korean military. According to the Defense Report of National Intelligence Service of South Korea, North Korea can theoretically raise an army of 8.87 million, including reserve forces, while South Korea can only raise an army of 3.67 million. North Korea also possesses more military equipment, like tanks and artillery.

With no military knowledge, people may assume that North Korea is an imminent threat to both South Korea and the United States. However, many fatal disadvantages of the North Korean military clearly prove that North Korea desperately wants to avoid the total war against South Korea and the United States.

Most importantly, North Korea is suffering from an extreme scarcity of resources, including food and fuel. With desertified land and primitive farming technology prevalent in most areas, many North Korean military personnel are forced to farm instead of train for battles. In most times, even these methods are not enough to feed all personnel, so the majority of them suffer from malnutrition. Most of North Korea’s fuel is supplied by China, and its energy self-sufficiency is slim to nonexistent. With the limitations of North Korea’s economic situation, there simply are not enough resources to maintain a standing army of any practical size.

Even the geography of the Korean Peninsula is not in North Korea’s favor. Since the establishment of the North Korean Navy, two separate commands were formed because it was impossible to exchange forces between the Yellow Sea and the East Sea. However, in the case of South Korea, naval forces can freely move from one sea to another through the South Sea. On land, the vast majority of North Korean terrain is covered by mountains, making air-base construction difficult. As a result of this, there are few North Korean air bases. It would be trivial for the U.S. or South Korea to put the entire North Korean air force out of commission.

Lastly, the South Korean military is of a much higher quality than the North Korean one. During the Korean War, the only reason that North Korea was able to push as far south as Pusan was the element of surprise and some Soviet tanks. North Korea still uses those same tanks, which cannot even scratch modern third-generation tanks. Although North Korea has 200 third-generation tanks called “Pok-Poong” (Thunder Storm), which are merely a cheap knockoff of Russian third-generation tanks, South Korea has1,800 third-generation tanks. Furthermore, South Korea recently finished development of a fourth-generation tank called “Heuk-Pyo” (Black Panther), which can annihilate a North Korean armored platoon in a matter of minutes. On the ocean, the South Korean Navy owns three Aegis-equipped destroyers. One Aegis ship can locate over 200 enemy ships and strike 24 enemy ships at the same time. To make a boxing analogy, North Korea’s navy is a couple of toddlers while South Korea’s is an angry Joe Frazier. Lastly, North Korea’s 40 MiG-29s may be a threat, but with their poor maintenance and inexperienced pilots, I seriously doubt that they can match against any modern jet fighter. Any North Korean jets lesser than a MiG-29 are really just target practice.

With the support of the mighty United States Pacific Fleet, which could obliterate all of North Korea in days, North Korean military forces are simply no match against the joint forces of the United States and South Korea. But why does North Korea keep provoking hostility and speaking of unceasing war? I believe the answer lies in the internal situation in North Korea. The only reason that the North Korean people silently allowed iron fisted-rule of the Kim family is the belief that the government will protect them from the imperialist forces of the United States. If the Korean War or perceived “hostile acts” cease to exist, there are no reasons to follow the unjust rule of Kim Jong Un. This is why the propaganda ministry keeps the North Korean people on edge.

However, North Korea’s recent successful nuclear tests suggest that the DPRK may be an actual threat. Fortunately, this development is only the early part of the weaponizing of nuclear power. With midrange missile technology, the only possible targets for North Korea are South Korea and Japan. However, if we let North Korea develop long-range ballistic missiles and minimize nuclear warheads, North Korea will ultimately become uncontrollable. In a worst-case scenario, if North Korea sells a minimized nuclear warhead to an extreme terrorist group, no place in the world could be made safe from a nuclear apocalypse. It could even happen right here in Philadelphia.

I doubt that North Korea will actively launch nuclear missiles pre-emptively because the primary role of these weapons is to protect Kim’s regime from outside threats, unless the situation in North Korea becomes “irrational,” in which case even the assumption that North Korea will only use them to protect its government will be a null theory.

Therefore, the fate of the world relies on decisive actions by the United States and South Korea, either to let North Korea own “the grip of the sword” or to strike before the North can pose any more threats to world peace.

Alex Cho is a freshman political science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Will North Korea attack? appeared first on The Triangle.

I can tell you this: No one since the New Deal-era Republican Party has waged as assiduous a campaign against Social Security as Barack Obama, and to be waking up to the fact at this late date argues either a powerful lack of attention or an intense state of denial, which pretty much amount to the same thing.

Social Security used to be the third rail of American politics. Al Gore promised to put it in a lock box during his 2000 presidential campaign. George W. Bush got away with luring the country into war on false pretenses and making us take off our shoes at the airport, but his attempt to privatize Social Security was the blunder from which he never recovered. Republicans, though, did learn from this, and they have been silent on the subject ever since.

It was President Obama who revived the question of Social Security. He tried to give this a patina of respectability by creating the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which raised alarms that the Social Security trust fund was about to go bust (it is in fact an actuarial illusion). Obama’s initial response to this was to suspend Social Security tax collection and freeze cost-of-living adjustments for two years. So seniors’ benefits have already been cut by somewhere between 5 and 10 percent, depending on which government price index you’re following, or maybe just the bill in the shopping cart.

Obama introduced a permanent cut via the Chained CPI as part of his negotiations with Republicans in August 2011 to avert a default in the national debt. The Republicans didn’t suggest it, nor did they respond to it; it was entirely the president’s project. Similarly, no one is forcing him now to revive it as part of a budget proposal that Republicans have already pronounced (as expected) dead on arrival. Obama has advertised it as a pre-emptive concession to encourage Republicans to consider the tax increases that the budget also envisages. The GOP hasn’t risen to the bait this time either, though. If the president wants to put Social Security on the chopping block, it’s strictly his affair.

So, why is Obama so gung-ho to go after the most important part of the country’s social safety net? What kind of Democratic president, in the absence of any pressure but that generated by himself, would attack the program that most crucially defines the party’s legacy and identity?

Democrats, I suppose, will have to answer that question for themselves. Watching Obama’s first year in office unfold in 2009 — a doubling-down on the failed war in Afghanistan, a free pass to the Wall Street banksters, the abandonment of the public option in the health care reform bill, and so on — I suggested in these pages, only partly tongue-in-cheek, that he was a Manchurian candidate fashioned by a murky Trilateral Commission to carry out the Republican agenda until the party had recovered sufficiently from the debacle of the Bush years to run an electable figure on its own. Four years later, I have no better explanation.

It’s the Left, though, whose state of denial is most comprehensive and, at this point, most risible. The burning question of the hour for page-turners of Mother Jones and The Nation is, “Is Barack Obama really a progressive?” Or is he merely the happy drone warrior who still runs Guantanamo and checks off his kill lists while the banks continue to foreclose and the middle class recedes into memory?

How old is this debate? I clipped out a page of The New York Times in July 2008 after then-Sen. Obama had just come out in favor of a Bush-backed bill to authorize warrantless wiretapping. The Times was disappointed in Obama, but the readers’ column was more instructive. A couple from Wilton, Conn., declared themselves so disillusioned by Obama that they might not vote at all in the November election. A lady from Tiburon, Calif., wrote that it disheartened her that he could not “find the courage to uphold the vision of the Founding Fathers against an overbearing state.” A gentleman from Manorhaven, N.Y,, observed that “hope springs eternal — but not in 2008.” Laura Stern of New York City signed off, too, noting that Obama was “a roll of the dice, and I’m not a gambler.”

Enough people did roll the dice, not once but twice. We are where we are: four more years. Only, please, let’s can the debate about whether Obama is a failed progressive or only a misguided one. They’re laughing all the way to Manchuria.

Robert Zaller is a professor of history at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Leftists: living in a state of denial? appeared first on The Triangle.

The post Society’s body image expectations are unrealistic appeared first on The Triangle.

So why Meatless Mondays? How can the environment benefit from Meatless Mondays? Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future backs the Meatless Monday campaign, which dates back to World War I to reduce consumption for aid in war efforts and has been providing resources to public health centers and students since 2003. Meatless Monday means something different than it did back in 1917. Today, Meatless Mondays is a campaign focused on environmental and health responsibility as well as better welfare for animals.
Meat production uses a great number of resources, including land, water, grains and energy. In 2003 the American Society for Clinical Nutrition wrote in “Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment” that “The U.S. food production system uses 50 percent of the total U.S. land area, 80 percent of the fresh water and 17 percent of the fossil energy used in the country.” One might argue that most of the land used for food production is due to grain, wheat, soy and barley production. However, 70 percent of that food is fed directly to 10 billion factory-farmed animals every year.

By reducing your meat consumption once per week and finding meat-free alternatives, you help to decrease the amount of resources used for meat production because you are directly lessening the demand for animal products and eating plants that require many fewer resources. For instance, production for one pound of beef takes between 1,800 and 2,500 gallons of water, based on whether it is home cooked or retail purchased. Meanwhile, for tofu production or even rice production, the amount of water used is between 220 and 250 gallons of water. For every day you avoid meat, you can save up to 2,000 gallons of water.

Livestock operations also account for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, which actually exceeds emissions from the transportation sector. Air quality around these factory farms is negatively affected by the release of significant quantities of toxic gases, particulates and bioaerosols that arise from feed, animals, manure and micro-organisms. These noxious vapors are then transported through the air to neighboring communities. In addition, the waste accumulated by animal agriculture adds up to 500 million tons of manure annually, which is three times the Environmental Protection Agency estimate of 150 million tons of human waste produced annually in the U.S. This waste goes back into our environment. Some of it is used as fertilizer, but because the amount of waste produced is more than what is needed, it usually ends up polluting our rivers, streams and drinking water. Agricultural runoff is a major cause of dead zones, accounting for 173,000 miles of dead zones in U.S. waterways. Runoff from animal farming also accounts for 55 percent of soil and sediment erosion and more than 30 percent of excess nitrogen and phosphorus presence in drinking-water resources.

One attempt at a solution is to raise animals in a manner that respects their natural lives. For example, one might feed cattle on a free range with grass rather than on a concentrated animal feeding operation with grain. On the surface, this might seem like a step in the right direction. Certainly for the cow, the quality of life increases because the animal experiences life outside a CAFO, but its alleged sustainability still remains in question. Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist and professor at Bard College, has illustrated that not only do plant-based meals require half as much acreage per person per year and emit a third less greenhouse gas emissions than the average U.S. diet, but “grass-fed meat is more, not less, greenhouse-gas intensive.” Eshel demonstrates that grazing animals emit two to four times more methane than feedlot animals due to diet — essentially, grass-fed animals release more methane due to eating a more cellulose-rich diet than feedlot animals eating mostly simple sugars and not ruminating. From another logical perspective, because both intensive farm animal production and organic animal feeding operations are occurring in the U.S., the methane release from cattle alone is detrimental to biodiversity and the environment. Even with an increase in organic farms and a decrease in factory farms, the amount of methane and carbon dioxide emitted by agriculture would still increase due to the need for more grazing land, resulting in equal agricultural runoff and an increase in energy and water used.

We’ve established why factory farms are bad and can conclude that organic free-range farms aren’t a solution; we know that plant agriculture has a much smaller carbon footprint and is less devastating ecologically than animal agriculture. Therefore we can conclude that plant-based meals are a solution, as emphasized by Meatless Mondays, to many of the environmental challenges we face.

Abstaining from animal products at least one day per week has a significant and measurable impact on the agricultural industry. Although this is a very rough figure based on mean averages and estimates, the following equation provides an idea of how many animals could be saved through Meatless Mondays. If you take the amount of animals a vegetarian spares every year (around 50, including fish) and divide that number by 365, that vegetarian saves about 0.14 animals per day. Students spend 34 Mondays at Drexel during their freshman year. Assuming that a freshman goes to the dining hall every one of those Mondays and participates in Meatless Mondays by choosing plant-based meals, that freshman will save almost five animals in his or her first academic year.

Obviously, there are more than just freshmen eating in the dining hall, and not every freshman will participate in Meatless Mondays or even be guaranteed to be in the dining hall on Mondays. Yet even if you take a fraction of those freshmen, say 500 of 2,700, those freshmen will save 2,500 animals from the beginning of fall 2013 to the end of spring 2014. Considering that it would take one vegetarian 50 years to save 2,500 animals, this is an astronomical amount for a community to save in a single year. The amount of water saved and greenhouse gases not emitted is almost inconceivable, considering that it takes 660 gallons of water to produce a pound of chicken meat, and chickens comprise 90 percent of the animal population in the U.S. Beef and pork take even more water to produce, transport and shelve. The environmental sustainability of eating plant-based meals is unmatched by any other attempt at a solution.

Meatless Mondays is a step in the right direction to reducing our impact on the planet. It is good for us and the rock we live on, and Meatless Mondays helps to reduce animal cruelty.

Benjamin Sylvester is a member of the Drexel Sierra Club. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club publishes EnviroWeekly every week.

The post Enviroweekly | Meatless Mondays appeared first on The Triangle.

So what sparked me to write about this in particular? Recently I had a discussion with several LGBT individuals who seemed to express great animosity toward those who did not agree with them. One went so far as to state that according to their views, anyone who thought that being homosexual was a sin was automatically less of a person At first I agreed, but the more that I thought about what this person had said, the more I sympathized with the “homophobe” in question. The truth is that we live in a diverse country that provides a place where people of different beliefs can practice those beliefs freely. While I support same-sex marriage across all 50 states, I do believe that the LGBT community as well as the opposition can come to a compromise on the issue.

Providing a framework based on the separation of church and state is the best approach to the issue. Allowing individual religious groups to choose who can and can’t marry but still providing secular marriages to all who wish to marry is a fairly reasonable solution, if not the most practical. Yet this still seems to offend some in the LGBT community. My message to those individuals is to stop acting like children. Not everyone who disagrees with marriage equality is a homophobe, and by claiming that they are, you are only further alienating your cause. This is why progress within the LGBT community has been an uphill trudge with consistent setbacks. Calling for equality does not mean a right of way for a specific group but rather that all opinions are heard on that issue, including your own. While the cause is certainly an emotionally charged one, radicalism should not be the go-to solution for both sides.

Yes, marriage equality is a very prevalent political and social issue, and there are no doubts that tensions arise from both sides of the aisle. In many cases it might seem that supporters and their opponents may never come to some agreement, when in reality a solution lies right before our eyes. Unfortunately, radical voices from both camps prevent a logical and legal end to the debate from ever happening. So the cycle continues: the individual is brainwashed into rallying behind a cause with such intensity that it separates an entire group from the middle ground, and actual results are never achieved. Now, more than ever, it is important to deradicalize the movements from both sides and adjust toward a mutual compromise.

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman computer science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
Queerview publishes biweekly in weeks 3, 5, 7,and 9 .

The post Queerview | Compromise is always an option appeared first on The Triangle.

The trademark feature of Facebook is not friend requests or status updates. It is the “like” button. For example, when Google attempted to enter the social media market, the first thing it did was create a “+1” button to compete with “like.” We live in the time of the loose connection: Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and supporting causes from couches. The term “like” is so generic, so harmless, so versatile even, that it has become the word of our generation. Centuries from now, historians will call these decades “the age of ‘like.’”

It is well documented that social networking websites are not offering services to the public; they are selling people’s information and views to advertising agencies. To the number crunchers at Facebook, everything is extraneous except likes. The bands, causes, movies, foods and anything else that you like are what gets sold back to you. Strangely, though, not only have we accepted this, but we have also altered our language and culture to reflect our obsession with liking things.

Truthfully, I am more interested in our side of the “like.” When one is creating an online profile, think of how much one’s personal tastes in food, music, clothes, etc., factor into the equation. The average Facebook user is said to like around 70 pages, which doesn’t even include statuses and photos. Or consider Pinterest, literally a social networking site that is nothing more than boards of what one enjoys, while Twitter is a maze of favorites and retweets. Defining not only our avatars but also our personalities through what we like is what we do.

This strange desire to associate by likes carries over into everyday conversation. It is how we connect with new people: online forums, interest-based websites, clubs, etc. It is what you say to acquaintances: “I don’t like the professor. On the other hand, I do like the sports team.” More importantly, we have to make sure our likes are acceptable and relatable to our peers. When was the last time you heard someone say, “Hey, what do you think about the Jonas Brothers?” Five years or more, right? We constantly manage our likes and dislikes to keep them relevant because we are judged by them.

This brings us back to Bieber. He either thought about the message he was writing for a few seconds or had planned it in advance. If he had thought for a few seconds, it is an easy jump from, “I want this to be relevant, related to me and complimentary at the same time,” to “Hopefully, she would have been a Belieber.” If he had planned it in advance, what reason would he have to write anything but, “I thought this girl was amazing. Hopefully she would have thought the same of me”? It isn’t strange he tried to convey the desire for mutual admiration. It was bizarre because there is a label for things.

What I found so strange about the blowback of Bieber’s comments was the cognitive dissonance it represented. In our culture we pretend to judge people by deeds, but we define people by what they like. Hundreds of years ago, when men and women began giving each other surnames, they focused on family ties or things people did: Edward, John’s son or Robert the baker. To our ancestors, occupation and family were the most symbolic and indicative of a person. Considering the society in which we live, if we began renaming people, wouldn’t we start with Danielle the Belieber or Anthony the Whovian?

Micah Watanabe is a freshman at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Writing on the wall appeared first on The Triangle.

The Manchin-Toomey Amendment, as it’s called, planned to expand background checks to include private sales at gun shows and all Internet sales; most sales via friends and family would be excluded from this bill. To pass the Manchin-Toomey Amendment, 60 out of 100 possible votes were needed. The final vote was 54 favoring to 46 opposing, including most Republicans and four Democrats.

A poll conducted by CNN/ORC showed that 86 percent of Americans support expanded background checks. Congress also voted down the proposal to reintroduce the 1994 ban on semiautomatic weapons that expired in 2004. This ban included the possession, transfer or manufacturing of 19 named firearms, semiautomatic rifles, pistols and shotguns that have certain features. Congress also voted down an alternate plan that better reflected the views of the National Rifle Association. The plan did not include any expansion of background checks but instead asked for more funding to better support the existing system.

Proposals like the Manchin-Toomey Amendment seek to make it so that anyone who buys a gun must undergo a background check. Internet buyers, who have long taken advantage of the fact that they aren’t uniformly required to be checked, would be under notice, and even people selling out of cars would be obligated to undergo checks before making sales. The National Instant Criminal Background Check, run by the FBI, references names against state and federal records to check for qualification.

After all, the goal is not to prohibit hunters and those who seek protection from owning guns. But screening every potential gun owner would flag convicted felons, domestic abusers, the mentally unstable, drug users and people with a warrant out for their arrest. These individuals would be deemed unqualified to buy these weapons. It’s frightening to consider that we live in a country where these people are free to access such destructive devices.

When we herald our nation for being a democracy, it can be frustrating to see our government at such a standstill about something that a majority of the public supports. If our representatives in Congress were elected to vocalize and represent the views of the people, and 86 percent of the people are in favor of the changes that this bill includes, then it seems logical that the bill would have passed without a problem. Even the watered-down version of the proposition (changes were made in anticipation of this very problem) didn’t pass.

In the wake of the recent tragedies, we thought that this would be something everyone could agree on — not necessarily banning guns but making sure that we aren’t facilitating the acquisition of guns by lunatics. How many more people must die before we have meaningful gun control reform passed?

The post A shameful day for the Senate appeared first on The Triangle.

Twenty-four-hour news outlets were using Twitter to send updates to the public about breaking news this week, often before an article was even published with the information. This up-to-the-second information shows how far we have come as a society of communicators. On Monday I was proud of how quickly information was being shared concerning the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Of course, there was nothing new The Triangle could have added to the reporting of the event, so I shut down social media operations for the rest of the day with peace of mind.

On Wednesday, the Twitter world was a different story, and I was not proud to say that I am a member of the media. A little after 1:30 p.m., The Associated Press broke a story that an arrest was imminent in the Boston bombing case. Shortly after, CNN reported that an arrest had been made regarding the bombing, and then all hell broke loose on Twitter. Members from the media rushed to the U.S. District Court in South Boston to be there when the alleged suspect arrived. The “alleged suspect in custody” would never show up because the whole media frenzy was sparked by a false report. Twitter flatlined after that. Oh, and then a bomb threat was called in for the Boston courthouse, which was evacuated immediately. There weren’t many tweets about the bomb threat, and I’m assuming that was because no one wanted to be the one to report false information again. Shouldn’t this be the way 24-hour media outlets act all the time?

I got into a discussion with a friend after this happened about how differently 9/11 was covered when we were younger. There was no Facebook or Twitter and fewer 24-hour channels. I was 9 at the time, and the only way I knew what was going on during the day of, and the days following, was by watching Matt Lauer on “Today.” I mean, I could have read the paper, but I was 9. I remember feeling scared during 9/11, but oddly enough, I felt more scared this past week. Putting the Boston bombing into perspective by looking back at the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks makes me question why. Should I have been more scared? Granted, I was a child during 9/11, and it was my right to be blissfully ignorant. But there were also far fewer channels of communication for me to hear and read about 9/11 and far less “BREAKING NEWS! OH MY GOD, LOOK AT THIS HEADLINE IN ALL CAPITALS!”

A few months ago my younger sister, a senior in high school, tweeted about how she reads Twitter every morning like it’s The New York Times. I can’t speak for all of the younger generation, but most of the students in my hometown have some sort of social media account that isn’t monitored by their parents. When the 9/11 coverage got intense, my mother would just turn off the TV and tell me to play outside. Do parents have that option anymore?

As an adult now, I can read a tweet that starts with “BREAKING NEWS” and warily take in the information. Although I’ll admit, the 24-hour blasting of breaking news wore me down this week. I was exhausted after the media roller coaster on Wednesday. But can a child or teenager decipher what news is important? Were they able to put the Boston bombing into perspective by looking at the other events that happened this week?

On Tuesday a student in my sister’s high school wrote on a wall in the school that a bomb would be going off in their school. After talking to another member of The Triangle staff, I learned that the threat in my sister’s school wasn’t an isolated incident; there was a bomb threat in a middle school and the courthouse of that staff member’s hometown. I am worried that with a communication channel such as Twitter — where there are fake accounts, comedians spewing jokes, and many statements of hyperbole (due in part to the 140-character limit) — children won’t be able to tell what is real and what is not, especially when the race to get the story out first leads news outlets to tweet things that aren’t true.

I am not saying that children’s use of Twitter and other social media outlets should be brought to a complete stop, but I believe that as adults, we have a social responsibility to teach them how to use the platforms. I think that just as a student takes classes in English language arts and writing, they should also be taught how to use social media at a younger age. It’s become one of the top ways they receive and disseminate information. The 24-hour hour news giants aren’t going to change anytime soon. Children and teenagers need to be taught how to put the events from the 24-hour news cycle into perspective so they can be children and not have to live in 24-hour terror.

The post The social media circus appeared first on The Triangle.

The images flooding the 24-hour news cycle are images that we expect from places like Iraq or Afghanistan — images of innocent citizens fleeing for their lives, when just moments ago, they were living their lives. The streets were literally red with blood. I’m left wondering how this attack will figure into the future for all of us. Will there be annual memorials? Will there be a follow-up special 10 years later, asking, “Where are they now?” All evidence suggests that the Boston Marathon will go on next year, as it has for the past 117 years. Maybe that’s the best course of action: We continue our lives, refusing to let fear dictate our actions, all the while remembering that we must be proactive instead of reactive.

Most of us never questioned our safety in the pre-9/11 world, but now we are hypervigilant when it comes to our mass transportation. How far will our fear take us this time? We, as a nation, have to start thinking about preventing tragedies instead of reacting to them. No one is perfect, and no one system is perfect. It’s most likely a tribute to our security system that we have seen terrorist plots thwarted. We will never be able to prevent every act of violence, but our own recent history has shown that when we build an efficient system of prevention, lives are saved.

As we wait for new details to help explain what happened and who is responsible, we will begin to draw a more complete understanding of what went wrong. We will feel compelled to try and fix every hole that this attack reveals. We must make sure that the lesson we learn from this event is one of observance and logistics. But above all, we have to learn how to better protect ourselves instead of letting our fear run rampant.

Brionne Powell is a freshman political science major at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Lessons from Boston appeared first on The Triangle.

“Ding Dong! the Witch is Dead” reached No. 4 in the U.K. singles charts. Celebrations were held in towns all over the U.K., most particularly in Scotland and other areas more heavily affected by her policies. Obituaries in the British papers were almost universally harsh and critical, save for right-wing newspapers like the Daily Mail.

So why was Thatcher so hated in the U.K.? How could anyone’s death, short of Osama bin Laden, elicit this kind of celebration? And why should we in America care?
Let’s look at some of her highlights:

Thatcher’s career in politics started off on a high note when she tried to do away with free milk for poor students in English schools, on the grounds that it cost money to give free milk. The Tories took an immediate liking to her.

Thatcher organized the downfall of industry in the U.K. One of her first major moves was to privatize the English coal industry, which was, unfortunately, inherently unprofitable and depended on a government subsidy. So when they were privatized, they almost all closed in her first term, putting tens of thousands out of work. Similar privatizations occurred in the British auto industry and aircraft industry, neither of which exist in any meaningful form today (even Minis are made in Germany now). British industry went extinct in the name of profits. She also tried to privatize the National Health Service, Britain’s socialized health care system, but was shot down when her term as prime minister ended.

She, along with her contemporary Ronald Reagan, changed the dialogue about socialism and the welfare state. “Socialism” became a dirty word. “Welfare” was no longer to help less fortunate people live a decent life; it was “government waste” given only to the lazy and other “undesirables.” Since the Thatcher-Reagan era, no politician could ever get elected in the U.S. or the U.K. calling oneself a socialist. She ushered in a new neoliberal era, where equality and decent living standards for all were secondary to corporate profits and individual rights.

Where she really shined, though, was her foreign policy. She refused to impose sanctions on South Africa to end apartheid, and she called Nelson Mandela “a terrorist.” She supported Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet even after the news broke that he had thousands of his political enemies killed. She even tried to shelter Pinochet from international prosecution after he was indicted for his human rights violations.
Thatcher escalated the Falklands War from a diplomatic scuffle to an all-out naval and ground assault. Thatcher’s government supported Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Iraq in the 1980s. Thatcher called mass-murdering Indonesian dictator Suharto “one of our very best and most valuable friends.”

Thatcher’s record on human rights isn’t something to praise, either. She supported legislation like Section 28, which provided provisions that “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Most local authorities closed down lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer support groups as a direct result of this legislation.
Her record on feminism wasn’t great, either. She stated repeatedly during her term that “the battle for women’s rights has largely been won” and frequently denied any connection with the feminist movement.

Finally, Thatcher inspired “The Final Cut,” which was undoubtedly Pink Floyd’s worst album.

So one can see, then, how Thatcher’s death might come as pleasant news to the people of Britain. Her policies were unpopular and destroyed the country to line the pockets of a wealthy few. In a word, Thatcher (and Reagan) broke the socialist system and then pointed to it and said “Look how broken it is!” We took that as proof that socialism could never work, that the poor will always be miserably poor, and that government is wholly incompetent. Thatcher set back the global political dialogue by 50 years, and even now we haven’t even started to recover.

Justin Roczniak is the Op-Ed editor of the Triangle. He can be contacted at Justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

The post Margaret Thatcher: a retrospect appeared first on The Triangle.

However, there was no defeat in sight April 6, as the Drexel women’s basketball team defeated the Utah Utes 46-43 at the Women’s National Invitation Tournament final. The Lady Dragons went down in history as the first Philadelphia Division I women’s basketball team to win a postseason championship, and the Editorial Board would like to speak on behalf of the entire student body in congratulating the women’s basketball team.

The Dragons didn’t win the CAA this year, but they got a second chance when they were chosen for the WNIT tournament, which is one step below the coveted NCAA March Madness games. At a school without an overwhelming amount of school spirit and minimal media attention, it’s refreshing to see our school in the spotlight. We don’t have a football team, and our basketball teams don’t typically make it into the NCAA tournament. But by the time the girls played the WNIT championship game, they were the only Philadelphia collegiate basketball team–men or women’s–still competing, which is something worth praising.

A WNIT win is exciting for any team, but there’s a special sense of pride when the underdog is victorious. A school that doesn’t get to taste championship wins as often as Notre Dame or Duke truly appreciates and savors the moment. The Drexel Dragons would never take a championship win for granted, because the team put their hearts and souls into the tournament, also defeating Iona, Harvard, Bowling Green, Auburn and Florida.

The Lady Dragons aren’t the only ones deserving of this win. A special thanks also goes out to the dedicated fans who stuck with the Dragons the entire season. Devotion and encouragement are all factors in a championship win, two things that the sea of blue and yellow in the bleachers provided to the Dragons the entire season, cheering until the end, even when a loss was inevitable.

It was a picture perfect moment as the fans rushed the court to congratulate the new champions. Fans will always remember how surreal it was to be standing in the DAC watching history be made as their Lady Dragons were presented with the WNIT championship trophy. The Lady Dragons showed their appreciation of the fans’ countless cheers by giving them the trophy to hoist victoriously into the air.

As exciting as this win is for the Lady Dragons and the Drexel community, we can only hope this draws more fans to attend the women’s regular season games next year. This year fans were adamant about the men’s team going all the way after last year’s NCAA snub, and it showed at each home game. But the women didn’t garner the same crowd until they made it into the postseason.

Even though the season’s over, the net’s cut down and the trophy will soon be displayed in a glass case somewhere, let’s all remember this when next season rolls around. The women’s basketball team is the ones who went all the way this year, so let’s use this championship momentum to support them from the start next year. Congratulations, Dragons!

The post A well-deserved congratulations appeared first on The Triangle.

Since 1926, it’s been the newspaper of record at Drexel University, and generations of students have tasked themselves with documenting the school’s history through articles, pictures and commentary. We proudly serve as one such generation, united with the common mission of reporting the news and providing opinions representative of our student body.

This editorial inspired us to look decades back at old issues of The Triangle to see what editors of yore had to report on. In October 1973, Drexel student Jerry Berlin was gunned down outside a fraternity house in Powelton Village and thankfully survived. In October 1996, a female student was walking home from the Main Building after a study session when she was abducted and raped. The writer of that story interviewed the victim and got a firsthand report of the attack. Eighty-seven years is a long time, and there are surely several more stories like this.

In our few years as editors, we’ve reported on the bust of an LSD ring involving two students, allegations of health code violations at our campus dining facilities, and outcries of student anger over the University’s handling of housing crises, just to name a few controversial stories.

More recently, The Triangle published an article about Tau Kappa Epsilon’s interim suspension for violating fraternity standards. Our reporting of this incident, which was both factual and unbiased (including a statement from a TKE member), was seen by some as an intentionally negative jab at the fraternity.

We took no pleasure in covering any of these stories but did so in order to inform the student body of University news in a way that only a news organization not affiliated with Drexel’s communication department can. After all, we are “The Independent Student Newspaper at Drexel University.” This means that what we publish isn’t influenced by the University and also that we don’t accept any funding from SAFAC. We are students writing for students, and we hold that in high regard.

The Triangle’s editors and writers consistently table personal biases to report on stories fairly and accurately. It’s a big responsibility, and we don’t take it lightly. If something is happening at or regarding Drexel, rest assured we’ll be there to get the opinions of all sides of the argument. We don’t make the news, but we do report it truthfully. The Triangle has always been there to report news at Drexel, and the editorial board can assure the student body that we will always be there to report the unbiased truth.

The post Reporting all the facts, even if they might offend appeared first on The Triangle.

A residence hall: For many students at Drexel it’s a home away from home, as well as their first time living on their own. Many freshmen walk into their hall on the first day with high expectations but are quickly disappointed. Missing doors, broken windows and cockroaches have been reported in many halls. As time goes on, these dreadful conditions only get worse. While these qualities sound more like the description of an abandoned building, many students like myself are unfortunately forced to live in these conditions. What makes this situation even worse is that most residents are paying an average of over $1,000 per month to live in these conditions. Drexel residence halls are in deplorable condition, but who is to blame? Many students are eager to point the finger at maintenance or housekeeping staff, but in reality these conditions are the fault of no one other than ourselves. So what can we do to improve our quality of living?

One major thing we can do to improve our quality of living is to treat the halls more like our home. The residence halls are home to over 92 percent of freshmen at Drexel, and yet students continue to destroy their living area. So what can we do to treat the halls with more respect? One thing we can do is pick up after ourselves. Whether it’s hair in the sink or trash in the hallway, if we all do our part to clean up after ourselves, we will find the conditions of the halls greatly improved.

Besides simply picking up after ourselves, another major thing that can be done to improve our quality of living is to treat one another with respect. It can be a simple “hi” when passing someone in the hallway or just waving to a maintenance employee. These simple acts of kindness matter because people are much more likely to have a sense of accountability when they know their neighbors. For example, instead of leaving a gum wrapper on the floor, someone will think twice and pick it up. Even the smallest acts of kindness help to build a community and improve the sense of responsibility.

The general rule to treat others the way you want to be treated can be applied to taking care of the residence halls. We should treat our things and public shared places, like the lounges and bathrooms, the way we would want to see other people treating it. This causes a cycle. One person will see someone picking up after him or herself and will feel compelled to do the same thing.

Most of the maintenance issues at Drexel are not the fault of the staff, but of the residents. If everyone cleaned up after him or herself and treated property with respect, we would see a great improvement in the quality of the residence halls at Drexel. Until students are willing to be responsible for themselves, conditions of the halls will remain the same.

Christina Wilkins
Drexel University

The post Letter to the Editor – Dorm conditions appeared first on The Triangle.

Today, humans are plagued by a variety of pathogens ranging from bacteria to parasites and viruses, some originating from our own bodies. In fact, recent trends indicate a steady rise in the amount of autoimmune disorders, cancers and mental disorders. These alarming statistics seem to be lost under the microscope of developing cures rather than addressing the cause. With psychiatrists and doctors prescribing a pill for this ailment and another for that, medicinal reaction and side effects can be compounded upon each other and eventually lead to very negative results.

The development of a pill-popping society in America is bound to destroy any hope of a true cure to the nation’s most pressing health issues. Individual body chemistry does not respond in an identical fashion within each person, especially in terms of psychiatric medicine. With side-effect lists stretching on for what seem like eons after the standard sleep medicine commercial, it’s no wonder that many Americans struggle with the same issues that the medicine is supposed to alleviate, even after taking the pill! The reported side effects of the anti-depression drug Zoloft include fever, sweating, confusion, fainting, hallucinations, tremors, vomiting, loss of coordination, headache, weakness, seizures, stoppage of breathing, dizziness, constipation, dry mouth and insomnia, just to name a few. And yet we willingly continue to dump dose after dose into our bloodstream, hoping that one day we can finally be considered “normal.”

Not only have we become complacent with medicine, but we have also allowed pharmaceutical companies to dictate what medical conditions deserve enough attention for drug research. Many pharmaceutical companies choose to ignore conditions that they consider cosmetic in favor of manufacturing medicine that will return more profit. Sadly, many autoimmune disorders and ailments that affect the elderly are not considered profitable enough to produce medicine for. Companies will target teen acne, which is a big market because many teenagers are already concerned about their appearance, and chemotherapy drugs, which often start at an expensive price. However, these medicines will be far too general to cover any real issue relative to the problem.

For example, hypothyroidism, a condition where the thyroid does not produce enough thyroid hormone, is typically treated with a daily pill of replacement steroids and hormones that varies in intensity. Patients must have blood drawn monthly to check hormone levels and then report back to their doctor to have their medicine levels adjusted. This random guessing game of medicinal intensity leads to unintended side effects such as extreme changes in weight, hot flashes and a general feeling of malaise. In many patients, the ups and downs of thyroid treatment prohibit them from enjoying the things that they normally would enjoy, and for what? The companies that market these medicines couldn’t care less about health as long as they sell product.

Furthermore, the reliance of Western medicine on antibiotics has created a perfect-storm scenario for antibiotic-resistant bacteria to rise again and re-infect entire populations. Already we have encountered antibiotic-resistant infections that should raise concern. Normally treatable sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise with new resistant strains. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus cases have risen because the bacterium has become resistant to typical antibiotics that would normally cure staph infections. The truth is that unchecked usage of antibiotics in the past has set us up for failure in the future.

While the HIV cure case was certainly a medical miracle, Western medicine has serious problems when it comes to addressing a majority of other issues. With a culture so obsessed with alleviating the symptom and not the cause, drugs that could very well be detrimental to our bodies have been produced in mass quantities, leading to the question: What pill should I take next? This self-inspired hypochondriac state of mind has only fueled the very thing that might be making us worse.

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman computer science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Western medicine: testing negative appeared first on The Triangle.

We can’t speak for everyone, but among the Editorial Board, it seems that our attention spans have dwindled. It can be hard to focus for long periods of time, especially when much of our schoolwork is done on the computer. Students are constantly reeled in by social media. Netflix is a student’s best friend and worst enemy. Temptation comes at us from every angle, and students, especially around week 10, are quick to submit. Looking around in lectures, it’s pretty obvious that Drexel students aren’t good at staying focused for an entire class — students are always texting, checking Facebook, tweeting, and pretty much anything that doesn’t include paying attention. Knowing that we spend a lot of time in class not devoting our full attention to the professor won’t help us calm down when finals are getting too close for comfort.
Although picking up a bottle of Adderall from the pharmacy or borrowing a pill from a friend seems tempting, we plead that you drop the pill and rely on your own willpower to get your work done. Not only is taking a pill that is not prescribed to you by a doctor extremely dangerous, but it is also completely unnecessary. Unless you have a medical need to take this drug, there are other focus methods that won’t require you to lean on a little white crutch.

One way to push online distractions away is to deactivate your social networking accounts for a while. If you remove the temptation from your workspace, you will have nothing to distract you. Another focus method that every college student loves is food. There are tons of healthy eats that will help your brain focus. According to eatingwell.com, these “brain foods” include leafy greens, whole grains, coffee, and surprisingly, gum. When chewing gum, you are giving your brain something to focus on, making you more alert and less prone to other more destructive distractions.

Another great way to thwart distractions is by exercising. If you’re feeling restless and cramped up at your desk, throw on some running shorts and run on the treadmill for 30 minutes. It is scientifically proven that working out helps increase focus. On the other end of the spectrum is napping. Nothing feels better and helps you zone in on your work than a power nap because nobody can ever get any work done when they’re ready to snooze.

As you can see, there are many healthy and beneficial alternatives to depending on Adderall to focus on studying and assignments. While Adderall may seem like an immediate remedy to your attention problems, there are other places to turn that will help improve your health instead of slowly detracting from it.

We would like to wish everybody good luck with finals week.

The post Healthy alternatives to Adderall appeared first on The Triangle.

As explained in the initial article announcing this new establishment in The Triangle a couple weeks ago, there is already a Shake Shack about one mile away. If people want to gorge themselves on the decadent delicacies contained therein, they should have no issue going there. Its addition into what I supposed to have been intended as an academic building will only serve to cheapen the entire structure, making it look like a food court at a shopping mall rather than a university building. By providing something for instant and convenient consumption, it eliminated the need for deliberation and willpower, like someone who has all their daily necessities within arm’s reach of the couch.

While student organizations like the Sierra Club and the newly created Animal Welfare Society strive to bring awareness to students about topics that can be destructive to our society and ourselves, the University, with the coldness of a machine, simply seems to push all of that aside to make way for its popular yet unjustified initiatives.

What is the real motive behind this? Is it to keep students happily ignorant or simply to compete with the University of Penn, which has Bobby’s Burger Palace and other similar food chains nearby? One major difference between this shopping center and the one at Penn is that ours is located at the central hub of campus, neighboring the Creese Student Center, within a building that will also house classrooms and offices. Meanwhile, Penn’s shopping center borders its campus but could never be confused as being owned and operated by the University of Pennsylvania, whose academic buildings are all easily identified as such.

I have always thought of a college campus as a place that should breed learning, not a place where all of one’s urges, however degrading, can be satiated. I’m sure this eatery will be embraced and enjoyed when it is complete, but that will not lessen the truth of its disgrace.

Maybe the psychology behind my disgust is not understood by my readers, but as someone who makes very deliberate lifestyle choices, I do not make rash statements unjustifiably. If there are any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention. However, if you do not have anything new to add, please refrain from contacting me. I have left space in my argument for debate and will gladly consider any rational points, and perhaps even change my mind, but I’d rather not have to deal with unfounded or uncreative criticism.

Nick Sukiennik is a sophomore chemical engineering major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post So much for health-conciousness appeared first on The Triangle.

It always pains us to write these obituaries. Each writer spends a lot of time to get the stories exactly right, talking to friends and loved ones of the deceased so much so that we feel like we knew him or her. We want our pieces to allow the Drexel community to get to know the person as well.

Sadly, The Triangle staff felt the recent tragedies more personally than usual. Nguyen was one of our copy editors this past fall term, and Susul was a good friend of one of our own. We’re lucky here because we’ve built our own micro Drexel community, and we’ve learned to lean on each other during difficult times. We think of our microcommunity as just a model of the larger Drexel community. When one of our own is suffering, the Drexel community comes together, and we help each other get through.

At the end of every one of our memoriam pieces, we share the contact information of the Drexel Counseling Center for students affected by the tragedy. We cannot urge enough how important we think it is for those in need to seek help. The Center is available for anyone at any time for any reason, as President John A. Fry says in his emails to the Drexel community whenever a student dies. You can reach a counseling professional by calling 215-895-1415 during business hours or 215-416-3337 any other time.

We’d like to take this opportunity to urge students to be extra kind to each other as we approach the end of the term and finals week. It’s been a rough time not only for those personally affected by the recent tragedies but for the entire community. We’d like for everyone to take this time to let the friends you’ve met at Drexel know how much you care about them. It is important to show that we are a strong Drexel community and that we’re all here for each other. We are the Drexel Dragons, after all, and what is more powerful than a Dragon?

The post Supporting each other before and after tragedy appeared first on The Triangle.

To start, why should we care? To those familiar with the subject, I have probably spoken a cardinal sin, but I believe that for the vast majority of uninformed Americans, it is an important question that needs to be explained. We should care about illegal construction of settlements within the West Bank and East Jerusalem because it represents a violation of human rights and even amounts to genuine war crimes as reaffirmed last month by the U.N. Human Rights Council. Forcing families off their land and constructing on said land does not make the land yours, a simple explanation with which I assume most can agree. So why has this issue become controversial? After all, we are talking about basic human rights — basic human rights as described by the Geneva Convention, which were developed in the aftermath of World War II.

So why should any of us be optimistic about progress now? Certainly there are plenty of problems remaining to be pessimistic about with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, yet on settlements, a consensus is emerging. After a surprise turnout in the Israeli elections, the left and center-left showed strong support, forcing the Israeli Right to rethink its policies after losing 11 seats in the Knesset. As The Economist noted this past week, “Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister and opposition leader who puts peace with the Palestinians at the top of her agenda, agreed to join a coalition led by the prime minister, [Benjamin] Netanyahu. … Ms. Livni will be justice minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians.” Furthermore, according to the prime minister, peace negotiations can only rekindle once settlement construction freezes, an extremely fair demand considering that the land they are negotiating about is actively being taken away and built on. Finally, there is Obama. With his upcoming trip to Israel, the first of his entire presidency, including stops in Ramallah and Amman, Jordan, it is clear he has a message for the region. Secretary of State John Kerry has clearly stated that he wishes to restart peace negotiations and has already called both Israeli and Palestinian leaders within the capacities of his new office. And with no re-election to worry about, there appears to be no better time for Obama to stand his ground once again. This could include, perhaps, putting more strings on the estimated $3 billion in military aid we provide the state each year (the stick) or exchanging increased assistance on matters ranging from Iranian nuclear ambitions to Syrian border security for concrete actions on the settlement freeze and peace negotiations (the carrot).

If Obama can at least get Israel to agree to a settlement freeze and thus get the two sides at the negotiation table once more, it will certainly represent a massive success in light of the black stain of his first term. But it cannot end there. A freeze to settlements is where we start, an obvious universal cause for the sake of moral decency and the rule of law, but it cannot and will not end until a full two-state solution has been produced (a proposition that both sides have agreed to numerous times, including Netanyahu). A freeze to settlements ensures that the situation on the ground does not become worse, yet in order for things to get better, it will require even greater courage and commitment. Second terms do not occur often, nor do second chances. Use it, freeze the settlements, and help to create a more peaceful and just Middle East.

Clifford Drake is a junior majoring in international economics and political science at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org

The post Second term, second chance appeared first on The Triangle.

Apple products have become commonplace wherever you go, and it is all due to the widespread obsession with buying the most updated technology just for the sake of having it. Early on, Apple began with the original iPod and then gradually added more generations of iPods such as the Nano. Eventually the consumer culture accepted the presence of these iPods and found them useful for listening to music. As different iPod generations emerged, it became evident that the products were made with planned obsolescence in mind. Planned obsolescence is when a company designs its product in such a way that puts an “expiration date” on its functionality so that when that product begins to malfunction, the consumer will be inclined to buy the newer version in hopes of improved performance. This trick caused many reported software problems, especially in the Nano. But of course, that did not stop sales for the later generations. Apple realized this continued heightened interest in its products and decided to profit from the trend. Ever since that day, Apple has forced its controlling reign on the technology market.

Next came the releases of the advanced Mac laptop and desktop computers. The terrific features of the Mac, such as user-friendliness, fast processing and immunity to PC viruses, were heavily advertised. Although I cannot deny the validity of most of these features, setting the 13-inch MacBook Pro at a price of $1,300 was a pure business profiting strategy. The high cost certainly did not reflect the actual value of the laptop. A larger screen or a more advanced Microsoft Office-equivalent software would have brought up the value a bit, but at such a price, purchasing this laptop is a loss.
Then, the release of the iPhone started a long line of products that were built upon this initial innovation. The iPhone included many drastic improvements early on in its look and firmware, but as of late, the same is not true. The iPhone’s fifth generation was simply an elongated and tougher version of the iPhone 4, and yet it caused a frenzy among Apple consumers who reached the point at which they would purchase any new Apple product in order to keep up with the technological trends, no matter the actual worth of the updated version.

A similar pattern exists in the iPad series, which was being updated simultaneously with the iPhone. The iPad is essentially an enlarged version of Apple’s iPod Touch, but the usability of the iPad for reading and using apps on a big screen proved to be worth the update. However, every subsequent version featured sleeker designs and increased user-friendliness until finally, not much was left to change in the iPad. That was when the overly clever people at Apple let out word of the iPad Mini. The iPad Mini was literally a smaller version of the iPad yet a slightly larger version of the iPod Touch. In other words, it was the biggest scam Apple could have presented to its customers. Unfortunately, the sad fact of it all was that sales skyrocketed from this release, considering the Apple obsession was on the verge of reaching a zenith for company revenue.

If this snippet of insight on Apple’s takeover of the technology market doesn’t make you hesitate before purchasing the next big, flashy Apple product, then look into it yourself, and you will only find more of the same information I’ve provided. Sure, Apple products have their pros, but the tactics of the corporation as well as the stronghold held by Apple on the technology market are certainly crucial factors in Apple’s excessive takeover of modern consumer culture. If consumers can grasp this adverse trend, Apple will lose its firm grip on the technology sector.

Krunal Patel is a freshman electrical engineering major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Apple’s ethics are questionable appeared first on The Triangle.

The most commonly used natural gas extraction method is called hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, and is a fairly new technology associated with words like “safe” and “responsible.” It is neither. Hydrofracking is a horizontal drilling process that fractures shale rock using a mixture of sand, large amounts of water, and various chemicals (some of which are not disclosed to the public) to let natural gas permeate to the surface through cement-lined wells.

While natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel than coal or oil, the process of extraction is extremely dirty. Those cement barriers that are supposed to keep the natural gas away from our soil and water have been found to break down over time, causing leaks in the pipes. The highly toxic wastewater created by hydrofracking is disposed of in a ditch, to be trucked off later to waste facilities. The collected natural gas is stored in an evaporator until it can be distributed for consumption. These evaporators emit volatile organic compounds (known carcinogens and smog precursors) 24/7.
The 2005 Bush-Cheney Energy Policy Act, more commonly known as the “Halliburton Loophole,” exempted natural-gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act, an act passed by Congress in 1974 to ensure clean drinking water free of man-made and natural contaminants. Despite repeated violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act, the industry does not take the responsibility and effort to clean up its mess and instead takes legal shortcuts that adversely affect our health and environment.

It’s not the business of universities to convince its students of the “importance of natural gas.” To the contrary, the idea that promoting natural gas is promoting a cleaner environment is dead wrong. As the Divestment Convergence at Swarthmore College rapidly approaches, it is our responsibility as students to encourage and work with our administration to divest from dirty energy, including natural gas, and instead invest in cleaner alternatives like Pennsylvania’s Keystone Solar Project in Lancaster and the Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm in New Jersey.

Nicole Koedyker is the president of the Drexel chapter of the Sierra Club. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Fracking a poor decision for environment appeared first on The Triangle.

I was procrastinating for a reason, though: I think the two-year residency program is stupid. I’m not just ranting; I am demanding this policy be repealed. Requiring students to live in Drexel housing for their first year is one thing, but applying a similar policy for the second year is ridiculous. Not only does this policy financially burden students, but it also contributes to overcrowding in housing, lack of independence, unnecessary construction and gentrification.

I don’t know if President Fry realizes that West Philly isn’t his personal game of “The Sims” — judging by his actions, I gather he does not. While construction that is needed and beneficial to our education is a step forward, bulldozing to accommodate unnecessary and arbitrary wishes is a triple step backward. Chestnut Street has already been torn apart to provide more student housing, and the Frederic O. Hess laboratories are purportedly next in Fry’s “Bob the Builder” escapades.

Drexel housing is beyond capacity, and rather than attempting to remedy this, Fry simply seems to be placing a bandage over a situation equivalent to a large stab wound. Even though lounges have been converted to rooms and double-occupancy spaces have been transformed into triple-occupancy rooms, Fry still appears to think it is wise to require sophomores to live in campus housing. Rather than being able to open up some or all of housing traditionally restricted to upperclassmen, the two-year residency program will require more sophomores to populate these areas and thus contribute to housing overflow.

One of the greatest appeals of attending college is independence and freedom, specifically the kind that comes with living on one’s own. Residence halls provide this freedom partially but not in its entirety. With residence halls, there are still individuals occasionally monitoring students, and independence is limited. Requiring sophomores to live in Drexel housing, Drexel-affiliated housing or Drexel-approved housing doesn’t exactly allow for the independence of choosing a first property. Shouldering the responsibilities that come with leasing a property is an integral part of maturing into adulthood, and students are usually better off experiencing it earlier rather than later.

For Drexel students, selecting an off-campus place to live prior to this year generally occurred during freshman year, at times with parental guidance, allowing for a safe crash course in real estate. This option, while not totally eliminated by the residency program, is virtually eradicated. In order to live in an off-campus apartment, students must either apply for an exemption from the program (which is only rarely granted) or apply for the property to be approved by Drexel. The latter choice presents difficulties for students, as it does not guarantee approval, meaning that students will not know whether to sign on for the lease until Drexel makes a decision, by which time the property may already be off the market. Essentially, the residency program delays the learning and growth experienced when choosing an independent house.

Anyone near Drexel’s campus is immediately aware of the extensive construction taking place, including a new business center and a new Drexel-affiliated housing location. Although the construction of the new business building is somewhat understandable, the new housing location is a product of campus overflow that will be exacerbated by the two-year residency program. Additionally, the Hess labs are likely to be demolished in favor of Drexel housing. The labs, though not enormously important to every student, are a huge part of some students’ academic lives, as a previous Triangle article noted. Senior projects, engineering research and a host of other miscellaneous activities are conducted here, making it a building of vital significance to its users.

DeDe Stockton, a high school senior who currently takes a class at Drexel and is considering attending Drexel full time in the fall, commented, “It really makes me wonder about Drexel’s ethics and intelligence and what they might do next if they’re already uprooting and have uprooted not just their own community but the communities around them, too. … Also, even though I could commute, you have to be in a 10-mile radius to do that. … We’re from 20 minutes away — if [Interstate 76] wasn’t always backed up — a 30-minute local train ride, or 20 miles away. I can get here nearly 30 minutes to an hour quicker than I could to West Chester University, yet [West Chester] would let me commute, but not Drexel. I really like Drexel, but it’s as if they just try to inconvenience you.”

In a previous Triangle article, I discussed the negative impacts of gentrification in West Philly and Drexel’s role in this — a role exacerbated by the two-year residency program. Rather than allow sophomore students to choose their own places off campus without Drexel’s involvement, Drexel seems to be working to make this virtually a non-option. This may not seem that significant for surrounding communities, but allow me to explain. When Drexel lists a property as approved on the housing website, students who wish to live off campus but do not feel like going through the approval process will generally select one of these, thus eliminating them from the overall housing market. As students eventually select most of these properties, more approved properties will need to be added. If sophomores were able to choose where they live, there would be no unofficial “students only” property list restricting other buyers.

As local resident Marcus Thurell commented, “See, I love the students, don’t get me wrong. … But Drexel, they can’t seem to get it that there are actually people who are living here, who been living here and who want to keep living here — maybe have no choice but to keep living here. This is my home. You can make it yours, too, but I want to be able to stay, too, you know? The construction gets to me too. … [If Drexel pushes further into West Philly,] where am I gonna go? … We’re basically being told, ‘Get out or eventually you’ll be forced to leave,’ what with the costs rising ‘cause of all these people fixing up houses. …We’re being forced farther and farther by these schools, these people, this whole University City construct.”
The residency program does provide the option of Drexel-approved housing, in which the student may select either an already approved housing location or elect to have a house approved by submitting necessary paperwork, thereby allowing the student to live off campus. While this is certainly a helpful provision in the policy, there should be no need for such a choice, as the program itself is a disaster. As the requirements stand, this alternative allows at least some hope for students wishing to live off campus.

So, to President Fry and others responsible for this policy: We are big girls and boys; we can choose our own houses, thank you. Isn’t it enough that the tuition is through the roof and you nickel and dime us for every little thing? Now you’re forcing us to choose your housing even though it’s breaking our banks? We are college students, after all, and even those who are supported by their parents will tell you that their parents aren’t exactly thrilled about the costs of being a Drexel student. Ultimately, no one can really afford to pay more tuition because of construction. Trying to offset that by requiring us to live in Drexel housing is not solving the problem either; it is creating more problems. Drexel truly needs to examine the best solutions for students, not just for the appearance of the University or the interests of its leaders.

Erin DiPiano is a freshman communications major at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org

The post New housing policies ineffective appeared first on The Triangle.

Of particular concern to me were comments made by one special-education teacher, Diana Medley. Medley stated that she did not think LGBT students had a purpose in life, adding that she would openly talk to students about their sexuality but that she made it known that she did not agree with their “choice.” This type of conduct from a public schoolteacher, let alone one whom students turn to for guidance, is purely unacceptable. Medley should reconsider her position on the issue as well as her future as an educator after making such virulent comments, knowing full well that she would be placed in the public eye. She should also pay attention to notable contributions that members of the LGBT community have made to the world. Alan Turing, the father of computer science, contributed to the modern computer and study of artificial intelligence, while Anderson Cooper has been engaged in many human rights and humanitarian projects across the globe. Medley, your accusations of “worthlessness” hold no ground. While it is perfectly acceptable for Medley to hold her own opinion, she made the wrong decision to discriminate against students openly by allowing her personal opinions to override the well-being of the students that she encounters each day.

Medley was not the only person to make negative comments toward the LGBT community. However, her comments seemed to be the most hateful, especially coming from a woman in her position. Being raised in a Christian household, I found comments from students at Sullivan County High School to be appalling. How could you hate something that does not, even in a fractional amount, assault your well-being? Students at Sullivan County preached love for the “homosexuals” (as if this was some all-encompassing term for all LGBT youth) yet then went on to express a desire for the segregation of a public event in favor of their own sensibilities. All of this controversy rings eerily of the interracial relationships and racial segregation saga that dominated most of the 20th century. Prom planners then went on to assume that students who attend the alternative “righteous” prom would finally accept the truth that homosexuality and other sexual orientations are choices rooted in sin.

There is a bright side to this ordeal. Some residents of the Sullivan County School District expressed concern over secularizing the high school prom. The principal of Sullivan County High School made public comments reaffirming the position that all students, regardless of sexuality, would be able to attend the prom and that the district itself has made great strides to put distance between the school and the anti-LGBT dissenters. These steps, although small, are monumental. A series of small drops in the lake are enough to break the dam. It is slowly getting better for students in public schools, but there are measures we should take to ensure that tolerance proliferates throughout education:

1. Rewrite sex education curricula to include discussion about LGBT individuals along with heterosexual relationships. Encourage dialogue between students, and reinforce the notion that being different is OK.

2. Break down gender barriers that delimitate certain activities as inherently masculine or feminine.

3. Ensure that children are taught that companionship and compassion do not have to occur between a male and a female but can come in many arrangements and numbers.

When the story of Sullivan County broke, I was honestly shocked at what I had initially considered a major step backward from acceptance in this country. Now I see it as more of a chance for tolerance to bloom. What might seem like negative publicity can always be used to make a counterstatement. Like the mythological Hydra, the faces of hatred have once again reared their heads against the forces of love, tolerance and understanding. The question is: Who will play Hercules this time?

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman computer science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post The many heads of hate appeared first on The Triangle.

It was like deja-vu for us at The Triangle when we received notification of the alleged fire in Race. Just under a year ago we reported about the fixture fire on the ninth floor of Millennium Hall that caused 90 freshmen to be displaced due to water damage caused by a sprinkler. The displaced students we spoke to after that incident were happy the sprinklers did their job to stop the fire, and their biggest complaint was that they didn’t have a say in where they would live for the remainder of the academic year. The students we talked to who were affected by this week’s sprinkler incident do not feel the same way.

In our latest episode of The Burning Question ([shortlink?]), we spoke to students who were unsure of what would happen to them. One girl we spoke to actually said she felt “homeless.” Many of the students also said they didn’t know that they wouldn’t be allowed back into the building that night. According to our news article this week, Chris Heasley, executive director of University Housing, said the Residential Living Office and University Housing coordinated placements of displaced students with vacancies of other halls within an hour and sent notice to residents shortly thereafter. How come students still didn’t know where to go? The students were calling friends in other residence halls to see if they could sleep in their rooms, but because it was around 2 a.m., many of their friends weren’t answering.

One resident said she thought Drexel should have had an emergency plan set up for this type of situation. Given that a very similar event happened last year in another Drexel residence hall, we agree. While we understand that the Millennium fire occurred during the day, giving University Housing more time to figure out where students would spend the next night, we still think Drexel should have had a better plan for the students affected by the Race Hall fire.

Drexel puts a lot of effort into freshman retention. The provost even experimented with a change in when freshmen register for classes to try to keep them coming back. The Editorial Board thinks if our belongings were ruined due to water damage and we were left to find somewhere to sleep during the winter as freshmen, we would not be that happy with Drexel. To make matters worse for many affected residents, they will not be compensated for damaged property unless they purchased renter’s insurance or have coverage under their parent’s homeowner’s insurance policy. Did we mention that it’s week 8? With the stress of all this and finals coming up soon, what freshman would want to come back to study at Drexel after going through this ordeal?

The Editorial Board would like to see a comprehensive plan set up should this situation occur again. We don’t think any freshmen should have to feel homeless for any amount of time when they pay more than $3,000 per term for on-campus housing in a shared room.

The post A temporary housing plan is long overdue appeared first on The Triangle.

A popular concern among Drexel students is that our campus will forever be engulfed in scaffolding, fences and heavy machinery. But students have also been known to complain that Drexel’s campus is not large enough to house the increasingly large freshman classes. As you’re probably aware, housing difficulties began in the fall of 2010, resulting in students being crammed into too little space. There was such immense student overflow that in the fall of 2011, transfer students and straggling sophomores were placed in the newly rented Axis building, located at 36th and Chestnut streets.

Another frequent complaint that students make is that Drexel’s campus is ugly. Admit it, you’ve shared one of the many “ugliest campuses” lists on Facebook and joked about it with your peers. We’d just like to remind everyone that it’s always darkest before the dawn. And, well, the dawn will eventually come.

It’s frustrating that sometimes people know about Drexel’s aesthetic ranking but don’t understand the nature of the co-op program or the scope of other great things that this school offers. But we’re not really helping to improve our reputation. Students are constantly talking about the construction’s disturbance in their lives — the physical appearance of a campus getting a facelift is bad enough, and then we have to account for closed sidewalks rerouting us on the way to class and loud noises disrupting discussions and exams. But if we want our campus to be improved, if we want to climb our way out of the “ugliest campus” rankings — current students are going to have to make some sacrifices. Progress isn’t always pretty, and that’s just something we have to accept. Students need to realize that in order to achieve a beautiful campus with more modern and sustainable building designs, we might have to spend a few terms dealing with a little mud on our shoes.

Chestnut Square is alleviating the suffocating environment that on-campus students have had to live with for years. It’s also continuing the trend of “de-orange-ifying” the campus, as Vice President of University Facilities Bob Francis has put it. With this project, the Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building and the upcoming LeBow building, Drexel will truly have a new entrance, which University officials have worked years to achieve.

But speaking of complaints, one that always seems to come up in conversation is how Chestnut Square and other projects on campus are being paid for by our tuition money. Truthfully, officials enter into these projects with major donors or sponsors, and these buildings wouldn’t be going up if Drexel had to front the entire bill. Developer American Campus Communities put up about $97 million to make Chestnut Square possible. They saw this project as a lucrative partnership that will surely attract thousands from the University City area. So we shouldn’t be so quick to assume that we’ll be the ones writing the check for Chestnut Square.

Simply stated, we must remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the ideal Drexel campus can’t be, either. The campus landscape has changed many times throughout Drexel’s 122-year history. We are by no means the first generation of Drexel students to have to put up with construction. Past generations also dealt with it, and they didn’t even have the Internet to help them write their papers. We’re lucky to live in a time when technology, including the features in our newest buildings, makes all aspects of our lives so convenient and comfortable.

The post Chestnut Square will be worth the suffering appeared first on The Triangle.

Abe became prime minister again in September 2012 with a renewed determination to prop up the economy. It seems that he has learned from his first experience on how to improve the economy. He has leaned on Japan’s central bank to devalue the yen to promote exports and achieve higher economic growth. He has debased the yen against the dollar by about 20 percent in the last four months since late 2012. This depreciation has raised the specter of currency wars among the major world economies. How does this recent yen depreciation fit within the feared currency wars?

They say death is one but has multiple causes. Currency depreciation weakens the currency, but it occurs in multiple ways. Abe has used the economic targeting approach in the hope of turning deflation around and moving economic growth up. The target in this Japanese case is nominal GDP, which includes both inflation and output volume. The prime minister has targeted both inflation and output to kill deflation and economic stagnation. The casualty of this nominal GDP is the yen. By following this indirect intervention, Japan is not being accused of practicing currency manipulation.

On the other hand, the European Union has been alarmed by the recent increases in the value of the euro against the yen. The European Central Bank has talked down the value of the euro by hinting that it may take a future action to discourage speculators from betting on a future rise. This European option, which is known as jawboning, sometimes has a little discernible effect on the currency.

The United States has also pursued economic targeting since 2009 by practicing quantitative easing, and the casualty has been King Dollar, which has depreciated significantly against the world’s major currencies — particularly the euro and yen — in the last four years. The Federal Reserve has targeted the long-run interest rate in order to stimulate business investment and increase economic growth. Brazil has accused the U.S. of currency manipulation, which is not exactly the case. Still, using expansionary monetary policy to achieve macroeconomic objectives and having the dollar as a casualty is viewed as indirect currency manipulation, even if the country publicly claims it is committed to strengthening its own currency. The world also wants higher economic growth to help lift the global economy, and the U.S. can do this job. American exports have been the second engine of economic growth in the U.S., second to consumer demand. This second engine is needed particularly in the absence of the traditional growth in the housing sector, which is usually the first to grow when recession ends.

On the other hand, China has been accused by the U.S. of currency manipulation for keeping its yuan low relative to the dollar. The same charge has been leveled against China by Brazil — another BRICS fellow — and South Korea, which both compete with China in the world economy in terms of exports. The manipulation charge against China has been easier to formulate because the currency manipulation has directly dealt with the foreign exchange market. It is considered a sort of blatant manipulation of its own currency to keep it low. This fell short of the usual blatant intervention in the currency market, which amounts to selling one’s own currency to weaken it and buying foreign currencies to strengthen their values. This manipulation of buying foreign currencies to weaken the domestic currency has recently been practiced by the Swiss and Israeli central banks.
China enacted currency controls such as imposing taxes on foreign capital investments in its bonds and other securities and managing interest rates to reduce the demand for its currency and prevent it from appreciating relative to competing currencies. China used currency controls to keep its renminbi (yuan) undervalued relative to the dollar to maintain its competitive export advantage. Other BRICS countries, which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, imitated China. Strongly growing Brazil pursued currency controls while raising its interest rates to fight inflation. In South Korea, regulators audited lenders working with foreign currency derivatives with the objective of decreasing currency appreciation caused by the capital inflows associated with these transactions. In Peru, a reserve requirement tax, which is a type of control on capital inflows, increased three times. In Thailand, the government initiated a 15 percent withholding tax on capital gains and interest payments on foreign holdings of government bonds. Interestingly, at the last G-20 meeting, Russia came out against stimulating the economy through currency devaluations. Its finance minister said, “We believe countries should not be competing through their currency policies. They should be competing based on their economic activity.” Russia sees that flexible exchange rate as the way to avoid devaluations and has also committed to achieve this target in 2015.

The engagement in monetary nationalism to achieve economic objectives at the expense of home currency may lead to serial devaluations by other countries. This beggar-thy-neighbor policy is a kind of protectionism that leads to currency wars, which may turn into trade wars. Protectionism is a barrier to global trade, which had been a nontraditional source of high economic growth in the world economy. Currency wars can also destroy the forward exchange market, which provides fuel to global trade. The forward contacts are designed by large banks, which should be affected badly in the currency wars. Citizens can also experience a reduction in their standard of living as their devalued currency loses purchasing power when spent on imports or used when traveling abroad.

Will the currency wars involve major currencies like the U.S. dollar, yen and euro? In this case, the dollar will be sought after because it is considered a safe haven during crises. It should appreciate, taking with it all the currencies that are anchored to it. This includes the yuan and the currencies of the major oil-exporting countries in the Gulf. The other commodity-exporting countries may also feel the negative impact of a stronger dollar on the prices of their commodity exports. Oil, in particular, is a commodity currency and is highly sensitive to changes in the value of the dollar. Gold, which is considered a refuge currency, should benefit from currency wars. Central banks and institutional investors buy more of it during wars, whether currency or military. If commercial banks have problems in the forward currency markets, their shares and importers should feel the pressure.

What will happen if many countries in the world devalue their currencies? We will go back to where we started, but only after inflicting severe damage on global trade and the world economy.

In currency wars, there are no winners because the competitive devaluations are a race to the bottom. Therefore, such wars are short, as was the case in 2010.
Shawkat Hammoudeh is a professor of economics at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Japan pushing world to currency wars appeared first on The Triangle.

My awareness of the importance of organ donation began in my teenage years as I watched my best friend, Julie, battle the deleterious effects of cystic fibrosis. Julie spent years on the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list alongside more than 100,000 people awaiting organ transplantation. Death was imminent as her health rapidly deteriorated.

The end of 2012 brought a miracle. Julie received the lifesaving gift of a new set of lungs. Inspired by the generosity of a stranger to save lives in the wake of his passing, I opted to become an organ donor.

As per the United States’ opt-in system of organ procurement, a person must give explicit consent to become an organ donor. Consent can be given by checking a box on a form at the DMV or by signing up online through your state’s donor registry. The process of becoming an organ donor is incredibly easy. However, the minimal effort involved is enough to prevent willing persons from donating organs to the growing number of people in need.

The opt-in system has resulted in a less-than-desirable national rate of 40 percent of the population registered as organ donors. The inadequacy of this turnout is easily evidenced; approximately 7,000 people die each year while awaiting a transplant.

The best alternative to the opt-in system would be one of opting out. This system presumes that all people consent to organ donation unless they explicitly refuse organ donation. Any person opposed can follow the same simple method for opting out that currently exists for opting in.

The policy change would dramatically increase the number of available organ donors, in turn greatly reducing the number of annual deaths and shortening the UNOS waiting list.

For those who remain skeptical, let’s briefly examine a country that adheres to the opt-out system of organ procurement.

In 1982, Austria implemented the opt-out system. Austria maintains the highest rates of consent for organ donation in the world at a staggering 99 percent.

Perhaps this could help explain the distinct difference in health system rankings between Austria and the United States according to the World Health Organization’s World Health Report in 2000. Out of the 191 WHO member states, Austria was ranked ninth while the U.S. finished a dismal 38th.

The disparity in national organ donor consent rates and consequential health system rankings between the U.S. and Austria highlights the inadequacy of the opt-in system.

Until a few days ago, I was a part of the 60 percent not registered as organ donors. I had always been a proponent of transplantation but had never followed through on registering.

The impetus for my registration was something as dramatic my best friend’s double lung transplant. Personal beliefs often do not incite assertive action. Perpetuated by the opt-in system, tens of millions of Americans neglect to act on their intentions of becoming organ donors.
Unlike many of the major social problems facing this country, organ shortages have a viable, inexpensive solution with proven effectiveness.
The U.S. policy on organ procurement needs to be changed. The Julies of our country depend on it.

While we wait for our country’s leaders and policymakers to address one of today’s most pressing issues, let’s do our part to save as many lives as possible within the constraints of the current opt-in system.

Though Valentine’s Day has passed, it is never too late to give the ultimate gift from the heart. Opt to make a difference today by becoming an organ donor.
Erin Power is a student at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Opting to make a difference appeared first on The Triangle.

Domestic drones are not the answer to America’s security problems, and President Obama’s new memo on domestic drone policy astounded me. In a country where the personal and private lives of others are often exploited by the media and punctured by hate groups, this invasive maneuver by the U.S. government should come as a slap to the face of any American citizen. Whether one is personally for or against drones, it cannot be denied that they invade the privacy of the people captured by cameras thousands of feet in the air. Not already convinced? Here are some reasons why you should be:

1. With drone technology costing well over a million dollars, taxpayers cannot afford to send more drones into the air. Estimates put the expansion of drone surveillance at around $12,500,000 per aircraft.
2. Drones take pictures and sometimes video. Yes, this means pictures of you walking down the street, sitting in the park and flirting with that gentleman who is way out of your league (Seriously folks, do you really want that?).

While the protection of American citizens is an important issue in a modern world, what price are we willing to pay for such security? Are we willing to compromise privacy for the sake of others? Certainly not everyone is a pure altruist ready to accept the idea that, “Yes, I should completely remove myself from any emotional attachment to privacy because the needs of the many far outweigh my own personal thoughts and actions.” To me, President Obama’s action seems like a direct step toward an authoritarian government, one where a paranoid government seizes any opportunity to collect information from its people while directly violating their rights.

As voters — and as people — I think we should be more concerned about the use of domestic drones. We are compromising our own lives to supply massive databases of information with pictures and videos that may or may not be of any significance to national security. We are setting ourselves up for a dystopia, a true Orwellian scenario. How long will it be before we start to see the true agenda? We won’t. We never will. With cameras positioned everywhere on city streets and in the sky, we hardly notice them in our lives. They have become so inconspicuous that we barely mind. This is perhaps more frightening than domestic drones themselves — the complacency of society to adapt to the new “norm” even though it may eventually be detrimental to them.

As a member of society who is deeply concerned about the privacy and well-being of others, domestic drones are not what this country needs. While drones are excellent at serving a purpose in surveillance, they overstep the boundary of what is acceptable in America. An authoritarian police-state is not worth the privacy of many for the possible safety of a few. As a society so focused on individual freedom, creativity and expression, I thought maybe we could do better.

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman computer science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post US drone policy concerning appeared first on The Triangle.

Second, costs. The main costs are costs of the transition itself. The curricula of all our programs will have to be rewritten as semester courses. For some programs, these costs may be substantial, but they will occur only once. These costs may be mitigated in some cases. For the undergraduate programs in LeBow College, they will be slight because our undergraduate courses carry four quarter credits. They meet four hours per week for 40 hours per term, and under a semester system they would meet three hours a week for 14 weeks, 42 hours per term. That’s close enough for government work. Some courses currently worth three credits under the quarter system may be offered (at least at first) as two-credit courses on the semester system — meeting two hours per week for 14 weeks, 28 hours total as against 30 on the quarter system. For some programs, however, this will be infeasible (much of the freshman year program, for example), and in other cases it would be likely to be a handicap in recruiting students (probably the master’s in business administration, for example.) However, many of our programs are now being rethought and redesigned every few years anyway, so perhaps the cost of a redesign for semesters or trimesters would not add much to the costs that we will bear anyway in the course of this cycle.

Of course, we also have to consider accommodating the co-op. In order to fit the Six-month co-op cycle, it would be best if there were two summer terms, each a half-semester of seven weeks. Co-op students (either in four- or five-year programs) would take two summer terms to substitute for their eighth semester. A further benefit of this approach is that the burden of summer study would fall equally on both co-op cycles. As it stands, students on fall-winter co-ops are at the disadvantage. While that would be partly eliminated by making the summer quarter equal to the others, that has been on Drexel’s agenda for the 25 years I have been here — and no movement in that direction has taken place. If anything, the contrary. This advantage was the main one I addressed in my 2011 letter.

As I wrote in 2011, it will take more than six months to make the transition, but it is worthwhile to consider what the 2013-2014 academic year would be like on a trimester system. The fall term would begin Tuesday, Sept. 3, the day after Labor Day, and continue through Dec. 16 with exams Dec. 17-20. The spring term would begin Jan. 6 and continue until April 21, with exams April 22-25. Graduation would be May 3. The first summer term would begin May 5 and continue through June 20 with exams June 23-27. The second summer term would begin June 30 and continue through Aug. 15, with exams Aug. 18-22 and July 4 as a holiday. In this I have assumed that classes for fall and spring terms have to end on Monday due to University holidays, thereby requiring final exam week either to end on Saturday, as it currently does in the winter and summer quarters, or to be condensed into four days, as it currently is in the spring quarter. State regulations require 14 classroom hours per semester credit, so this will continue to be a problem under semesters.

Roger McCain is a professor of economics at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Hung, drawn, and quartered appeared first on The Triangle.

This leaves important questions unanswered: Who will the cardinals choose to replace him? Will the new pope be more liberal? What will Joseph Ratzinger do now? Does he get to keep the Popemobile?

The papal conclave has a potpourri of candidates to choose from — any cardinal could be elected. However, some frontrunners stand out, at least according to the press and Internet bookkeepers: Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson (Ghana), Cardinal Marc Ouellet (Canada), and Cardinal Francis Arinze (Nigeria), among others. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who is the dean of the College of Cardinals (Ratzinger’s former position), has also been considered for the position, but his election is unlikely due to his advanced age.

As for the other three, how might their papacies turn out?

Arinze, from Nigeria, is the oldest likely candidate. He is 80 and is thus ineligible to vote for pope. However, he can still be selected by the rest of the cardinals for the papal position.

Arinze is conservative, theologically speaking. He has likened homosexuality to pornography, infanticide and adultery in the past. He also does not support the use of condoms to curb the spread of AIDS in Africa. However, he has an excellent record in the world of interfaith relations: he is president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and has, in the past, used his skills as a mediator to end religious conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. He is a strong pacifist, and interfaith dialogue would likely be a major feature of his papacy.

Ouellet is another likely candidate. He is from Canada — Quebec, to be precise — and yes, he does play hockey. In fact, Ouellet was inspired to join the priesthood while recovering from a hockey injury in high school, and he still plays hockey with his nephews.

Ouellet has also not expressed positive views of the gay community, and he doesn’t support abortion even in the case of rape. Ouellet has also in the past expressed a reluctance to becoming pope, calling the workload a “nightmare.” Whether televised Catholic Masses would be rescheduled so as to not coincide with Montreal Canadiens games is yet to be determined.

Turkson, from Ghana, is the most likely candidate. He’s relatively young (63) and most commentators consider him to be the “moderate” candidate. He has written extensively on the failure of the international financial system and has suggested means for reform in a paper titled “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” which calls for taxation on all financial transactions and is very critical of “neoliberalism.”

Controversially, Turkson has suggested that condoms could be used to curb the spread of AIDS in Africa, at least between faithful couples that include one infected member. He has not, however, compromised on views on homosexuality or abortion.

Turkson also showed support for the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, saying that although the punishments were “exaggerated,” the “intensity of the reaction [to homosexuality] is probably commensurate with tradition.” Turkson is unlikely to make tolerance for the gay community a priority in his papacy, and in fact it is quite likely that anti-gay policies of the Church will increase in scope if he is elected.

It looks like reform to the Church won’t come any time soon, then. The best a liberal secular person could hope for is Turkson perhaps tolerating the use of condoms by Catholics, which is unlikely. However, the election of a black pope would be a milestone for the Church, which has not elected an African pope since Gelasius I in 492 A.D. and has never elected a black pope at all. The likely election of either Turkson or Arinze will also demonstrate how the demographics of the Church are changing and how Africa is becoming more central in Church affairs. Ultimately, however, electing a black pope may be as far as the election gets. When the white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel, we probably won’t see a reformer elected, but another moderate who will keep the same policies on abortion, homosexuality and contraception that the Church has kept for thousands of years.

Justin Roczniak is the Op-Ed editor of the Triangle. He can be contacted at Justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

The post Ex-Benedict appeared first on The Triangle.

The College Scorecard currently provides four statistics for every college: net price, graduation rate, loan default rate and median borrowing. By now, most of us are aware of how Drexel fares in these categories, but we thought it would be interesting to look up Drexel’s scorecard and see how we fared against other schools in the area and other respected co-op schools. We did some research and found out how each statistic is measured.

Net price is calculated by subtracting the average amount of grant and scholarship funding received by students at each school from the school’s average annual tuition, fees and related expenses. The U.S. Department of Education ranked Drexel’s $33,495 net price in the 2009-10 school year the 21st-highest in the country among private nonprofit universities. Drexel’s net cost for the following year, for which rankings were not compiled, was $34,660. Elsewhere on the scorecard, Drexel’s graduation rate was reported as 68.1 percent, its loan default rate was reported as 3.6 percent (compared to a national average of 13.4 percent), and the median amount of federal student loans was reported as $233.15 per month.

Although Drexel has a reputation for being one of the highest net-price schools locally and nationally, it was not ranked as the most expensive school in the Philadelphia area. That designation went to St. Joseph’s University, which had a 2009-10 net price of $34,894. Still, it is regrettable that Drexel’s net price is so much higher than that of other local private schools. In comparison, the University of Pennsylvania’s 2010-11 net cost was reported as $20,592 per year, and La Salle University’s was reported as $23,418 per year.

We weren’t surprised by how Drexel fared when stacked against other Philadelphia schools, but comparing our University with schools nearby is still comparing apples to oranges — something the College Scorecard was created to fix. So we looked at how other co-op institutions were rated in the report.

We chose to compare Drexel to the well-known co-op schools Rochester Institute of Technology and Northeastern University. When looking at the colleges’ six-year graduation rate, Drexel was in the middle, coming in under Northeastern’s 76.8 percent. Interestingly, while Drexel had the highest net price (after grants and scholarships) of the three and highest percentage of tuition increase between 2007 and 2009, Drexel also had the lowest monthly payment and the least amount of federal loan money borrowed per month throughout a student’s undergraduate career. All three schools had similar federal loan default rates, well below the national average.

All this is to say that while our University is still fairly expensive and has work to do in certain categories, namely our six-year graduation rate, our score wasn’t uniformly terrible when pitted against other comparable schools.

And there’s still a major category of the College Scorecard that has yet to be filled out by DOE. There is a section of the scorecard dedicated to analyzing the kinds of jobs alumni are hired into after graduation, but these statistics haven’t been generated yet. Surely it will take some time and some creative loopholes for DOE to acquire this information. After all, the site has been up for under a week. But until then, none of these numbers mean much, especially because such a large portion of Drexel students, and students of co-op schools everywhere, invest the extra time, money and effort into work and school with the hope of being rewarded fruitfully for their more robust body of experiences.

So the answer to the question “Is the Scorecard representing Drexel fairly?” is a wholehearted “no.” These kinds of assessments have always failed to recognize the obvious benefits of attending a co-op school, and the College Scorecard is thus far no different. We won’t hold our breaths to see the alumni employment analysis that the website comes up with, but when it is posted we will surely have something to say about it.

The post Filling in the blanks on Obama’s College Scorecard appeared first on The Triangle.

Unsurprisingly, much of the speech focused on the economy, a topic not far from the minds of most Americans. The recently (and only temporarily) averted fiscal cliff crisis is still being discussed, and the upcoming sequestration cuts that are due to go into effect in the next few weeks have many worried. These cuts will automatically cut much government spending in areas from entitlements to defense, and many economists have said that they have the potential to push the United States back into a recession. Obama said regarding these issues, “Our government shouldn’t make promises we cannot keep — but we must keep the promises we’ve already made.”

Obama discussed how necessary it is to strengthen the economy, not just for the moment but also for the benefit of future generations, by promoting job growth and a stronger middle class. He criticized many Republican ideals and programs while putting forth his own ideas, but he also called for bipartisanship many times throughout the evening, speaking about how crucial it is for the Republican and Democratic parties to work together to find feasible solutions. A traditional, and quite possibly oversimplified, version of the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats always want to raise taxes while Republicans wish to cut important and necessary entitlement programs. As the president pointed out, “We can’t just cut our way to prosperity.” Obama is correct on this front, and many people, both economists and laypeople, agree with him. The way to strengthen our economy is not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or other programs that provide a social safety net. Neither, however, is the solution simply to raise taxes. Rather, we must reform, in an intelligent way, programs and the parts of them that have been shown to have flaws. That way they may be improved upon and continue to provide for future generations. A reform of the tax system is necessary so that those who make millions of dollars don’t have loopholes that allow them to pay a lower effective tax rate than those who make a fraction of that. The president acknowledged that these things won’t be easy and that no sides of the debate will get everything that they want. Compromise is necessary for the future of this country, though, because, as Obama said, the U.S. cannot continue “drifting from one manufactured crisis to another.” We must face our problems, and the difficulties that accompany them, head-on to fix the issues.

The president touted accomplishments and pointed out many things beneficial to the country, such as the fact that manufacturers including Ford and Caterpillar have brought 500,000 jobs back to the U.S. He discussed the creation of a manufacturing innovation institute last year in Ohio and announced the creation of three more of these “manufacturing hubs.” Obama additionally asked Congress to create a network of 15 of these hubs so that the U.S. may once again become a great manufacturing giant. He also talked of the necessity to invest in new ideas, mentioning the benefits that we have reaped from researching the human genome. Obama is absolutely correct about these things. The United States has historically been a nation of technological and scientific advancement and new ideas. It is necessary for our government to continually invest in these things so that we can remain the greatest nation on Earth; we cannot allow the Republicans to cut spending in the areas of research and development, science and innovation.

New solutions must be found for energy consumption, and the president discussed how far we manage to come every year in this area. We produce more oil than we have in the past, we have increased consumption of renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar, and we produce more natural gas than we ever have before. In addition to finding better solutions to our energy use, we must also combat climate change. Obama discussed the need for this, as well as finding bipartisan solutions to climate change, using as an example Republican Sen. John McCain and former Democratic and later independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who worked together on this issue in the past. Working together to find solutions for climate change and energy can also be beneficial for the economy, as allowing private companies to be part of the solution and incentivizing alternative energy solutions will create jobs.

Education is an area in which this country has been lacking, and Obama wants to work to make the educational system better. He touted Race to the Top, “a competition that convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards.” He promoted viable solutions to make schools better by giving them incentives to “better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy.” The president also wants to make higher education better and said that “colleges must do their part to keep costs down.” He wants Congress to change the Higher Education Act “so that affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid.” As a college student, I appreciate these efforts. At Drexel, our tuition is astronomical, and we should all get behind programs that could make it more affordable. Education is a necessary thing, and it should be more easily accessible for those who want it.

The president signaled his willingness for immigration reform. “Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away,” Obama said to Congress. Other topics mentioned by the president included equal pay for equal work, and Obama asked Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act by the end of the year, while he lauded the Senate for passing the Violence Against Women Act earlier that day. He discussed poverty and asked Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour, tying it to the cost of living and thus making it a living wage as opposed to a minimum wage.

Immigration is an issue that is often discussed, but little ever seems to get done. Obama’s willingness to work on this issue should be a sign to both parties that the time for reform in the immigration system is now, and certainly both Republicans and Democrats seem ready for change as well, as evidenced by the bipartisan group of eight senators that have recently been meeting and negotiating potential immigration reforms. Equal pay for equal work seems like a no-brainer in this day and age, and a Paycheck Fairness Act should not even be needed. However, if these steps must be taken to ensure that men and women receive the same pay and benefits for doing the same job, we must pass these measures with haste. Raising the minimum wage is a good idea, but in order not to harm small businesses, we must be careful to raise it gradually rather than suddenly, perhaps by tying wage increases to the rise in inflation.

Obama said that we need stronger families and communities to build a stronger middle class. This very well may be true, and this would have been an excellent opportunity for the president to segue into further supporting marriage equality for all citizens, as he supported in his inauguration address. He did not take this opportunity, however, and I, for one, was disappointed. He did manage to throw some support to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community slightly later in his speech, though, when he said, “We will ensure equal treatment for all service members, and equal benefits for their families — gay and straight.” While a thin reference, it is nevertheless support for the LGBT community, and this is necessary, especially in the military arena. The president also said that by the end of the year, 34,000 more troops will have been withdrawn from Afghanistan, as the military helps to train the Afghan forces to take the lead on their own security. After a decade of war in the Greater Middle East, I applaud this move from the president.

Obama closed his fifth State of the Union with a lengthy section on gun control. This issue is perhaps second only to the economy in the minds of most Americans. In the wake of mass shootings, most recently the terrible tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a majority of Americans support greater restrictions on access to firearms, especially semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles. The president mentioned Sandy Hook, and in an emotional drive to the hearts of all Americans, said that “in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun.” Obama gave other examples: Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teen who performed at the president’s second inauguration and was shot a week later in a park after school (her parents were personal guests of First Lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union); Gabby Giffords, the former congresswoman who was shot in 2011 at a constituent meeting in Arizona, though she fortunately survived; the shooting last year in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; and others. Obama urged Congress to vote on greater gun control measures, stressing that the families of those affected by gun violence “deserve a vote.” The president himself admitted that legislation cannot stop all acts of violence, but that perhaps it can be reduced in any way possible. I acknowledge that the president is correct; we can’t stop all violence through legislation, but it is our duty as citizens and humans to do all we can to lessen it.

At the end of his address, Obama gave examples of Americans whom we should all try to emulate. One in particular stood out to me: a 102-year-old woman named Desiline Victor, who waited for six hours at her polling place in November so that she could cast her vote in the election. This story was inspirational to me, as voting is one of the innate privileges of being an American, and it is something for which I feel a strong sense of pride and emotion. The president laid out his policy agenda for the coming year, and while it was not perfect, he called for bipartisanship and finding common ground so that we may do our best to solve the problems our nation currently faces. By my count, the president was interrupted 62 times by applause, and many of those times I was sitting at home, applauding our president together with the lawmakers of this country, feeling proud to be an American.

Sean Craig is the co-Chief Copy Editor of the Triangle. He can be contacted at
sean.craig@thetriangle.org

The post The State of the Union address appeared first on The Triangle.