Sometimes life just smacks you across the face, and everything lately seems to be going awry. You could be faced with a mountainous workload, personal life issues, or a challenge you just can’t overcome. A bunch of things keep going wrong, and suddenly your life is like a game of Jenga, and one more wrong move might make you want to fall to pieces.
With Valentine’s Day being an unofficial American holiday, I understand that there’s this societal pressure to engage in romantic love and be part of a relationship that transcends the individual. For me, this day is an opportunity to reflect on myself and on the importance of learning to love myself first.
If you’ve been on the internet in the past few years, you’ve no doubt read about, witnessed or even participated in cancel culture. Vice defines cancel culture as “a makeshift digital contract wherein people loosely agree not to support a person (especially economically) in order to somehow deprive them of their livelihood.” Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of Michigan, described it as “a cultural boycott,” to The New York Times.
Within 72 hours, Maroon 5’s halftime show performance has accumulated over 700,000 dislikes on YouTube. The video has yet to reach 100,000 likes, thus positioning Super Bowl LIII’s halftime fumble into an infamous category of YouTube’s bin of trolled, despised content.
Regarding the recent article entitled, “SHU removes anti-gay organization from website” which was published on Jan. 31, I would like to clarify certain points about “Courage International” and the Catholic identity of our University that have been smeared because of the emotional frustration of a few. “Courage International” is a Catholic organization that exists to help those who suffer from unwanted same sex attraction in order to live a Christian lifestyle. In no way is this organization “homophobic.” Courage International’s first goal is to help people “to live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality (chastity).”
This week it was brought to our attention that a reporter for The Setonian fabricated the quotes and majors in an article that ran in last week’s paper.
When I was born in 1999 in a small town just across the river from Philadelphia, it must’ve seemed to my family that I had a bright future ahead of me. I was being brought into a new millennium propelled by unprecedented economic growth, ever-advancing technology, and a new era of peace ushered in by the end of the Cold War. Americans, by and large, were closing out an era of rapid positive change, eager to see what the year 2000 and beyond would bring.
We’re past the midterms, we’re past the shutdown (for now), and as of Jan. 20, we’re officially halfway done with Donald Trump’s presidency. We all know what this means: campaign announcement season!
Students and college athletes are being offered more resources for mental health than they ever have before. The stigma around mental health is being broken down, slowly, every day. A question that still arises, however, is why it’s so hard for student-athletes to get the help they need.
As I’m sure you’re all aware, we are now in Day 34 of the government shutdown. This is the longest shutdown in United States history, surpassing the previous record of 21 days during the Clinton administration over education, the environment and Medicare, among other issues.
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Stop blaming guns for the actions of criminals. All American can agree on at least one thing: A world with less violence is a good thing. Notice I did not say gun violence, domestic violence, or hate-crime based violence. All violence is an issue, and those who commit those acts should be punished. The nature of criminals is that they do not follow laws. Writing more restrictions into law will not deter criminals from committing crimes. They do not follow the laws, to begin with, and why would they start now? The article [We need stricter gun laws to stop gun violence, Oct. 31, 2018] says, ‘Gun control may not prevent all shootings, but something has to be done because society is becoming more accustomed and desensitized to these shootings, which isn’t good.’ Writing laws that will have no effect on the actions of those who already will not follow the law to make people feel good about making progress is unproductive and pushes us back from having the real conversation. I will concede that background checks are a common-sense measure to fight against gun violence. Although, there are significant issues with the system. Namely keeping criminal infractions off of juvenile records and allowing minors to not face the consequences of their actions. Instead of forgiving and forgetting the crimes of youth, such as drug offenses and run-ins with the police, we need to rehabilitate and remember, so when that child that got caught selling coke tries to buy a handgun legally, they cannot because of their record. I retain the objections to assuming that a background check will stop gun violence. If a criminal wants to buy a gun, they will get one. It is not a matter of whether a background check will prevent criminals from getting guns, because it will not. Thinking that because now weapons are banned, criminals will not use that weapon is a naïve belief that criminals will follow the law. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”- Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of NRA. Maxwell James, freshman accounting major
The Setonian’s Editorial Board is pleased to announce that Samantha Todd has been named its next Editor-in-Chief.
Solutions by The State News