Senate decision sets poor example for rest of world
Chinese criticism brings up flaws in US politics
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Chinese criticism brings up flaws in US politics
Effects of sequestration harm future innovation
While we were relaxing on spring break last week, citizens around the nation were in an uproar over the latest controversial event: the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School’s decision to perform a biblical play revised to contain gay characters. More specifically, the play portrays the first two couples to be “Adam and Steve” and “Jane and Maybel.” In the midst of the political anxiety and tension over the upcoming supreme court cases of Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), this piece of news was slightly more comical.
Tea-partying, Civil Rights Act-opposing Sen. Rand Paul hasn’t been the most highly respected political figure in recent years. However, his decision on Wednesday to return $600,000 to the U.S. Treasury has garnered him heavy positive attention during the past two days. Claiming to return the unused government-distributed funds from his office back to the government to prove how easy it would be for the U.S. to cut down on its spending, Paul has once again attempted to call into question the less-than-frugal practices of our nation.
The recent news of Richard Fee has thrown us back into debate surrounding misuse of drugs. A successful college student who committed suicide after abusing and becoming addicted to attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder medication has brought the role of doctors into light, too.
The National Rifle Association is at it again. With President Barack Obama’s new gun control measures being implemented around the nation, the NRA, as a last, desperate attempt to reach the masses, has created a new advertisement not only slamming Obama, but this time bringing his children into it as well.
Dear Gamecocks,
After decades of oppression and conflict, the Palestinians were finally granted the recognition they’ve been long struggling for. Last Thursday, nearly 140 member countries of the United Nations voted in support of recognizing Palestinian territories as a non-member observer state in the U.N. Of the 193, 41 member countries abstained from voting, and only nine countries voted against the recognition of Palestine. The U.S., not surprisingly, was one of them. For the Palestinians and anyone who has any concept of equal rights among human beings, the move was a huge benchmark of success.
Forget the fiscal cliff for a moment, because it’s time to focus on another cliff that’s even more dangerous and less easily fixed: the climate change cliff.
American citizens have found a new scandal to get worked up over, this time in the uppity ranks of U.S. security forces. Ex-CIA agent and previous four-star general David Petraeus resigned last Friday after the unveiling of his extramarital affair with media reporter Paula Broadwell, an affair that Americans have become engrossed in over the course of the past few days. From mapping out timelines of the affair to digging into Broadwell’s personal background, the scandal seems to have diverted citizens’ attention away from most other national news.
For 23-year-old Mikel Bethea, a cup of coffee is more than just a beverage.
Curriculum and textbook bias is a problem that exists in virtually every country, including our own. A story published in The Economist Saturday highlights these biases and the controversy it provokes, something that every student should think about.We’ve all heard instances of textbook bias occurring in the far East, such as China. Chinese textbooks are infamous for excluding political and cultural events, such as the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, and praising the benefits of the authoritarian regimes and the one-child policy. Or take Palestine, where math textbooks were seen to incorporate example problems that reeked of anti-Semitism, or textbooks in Saudi Arabia, where Jews and Christians are portrayed as “enemies of the believers.”Of course, textbook biases that occur in the United States are, as we’d like to think, much less extreme, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. U.S. nationalism and warped perspectives litter our educational environments, yet it’s a problem that many people remain unaware of. We spend so much time focusing on biases of other countries without realizing that there are a multitude of other more subtle factors that contribute to the way we choose to look at people and events. What’s most frightening is that one of these factors, arguably the largest factor, that shapes our perspectives is what we’ve been subjected to in our classrooms, from primary education to now.In fact, just in 2010, the Texas board of education managed to remove Thomas Jefferson from the list of important revolutionary figures in the curriculum because he advocated the separation of church and state, two things that Texas thought should stay together. This sort of bias unfortunately continues into college, where it can become magnified with biases of the professor on top of textbook biases. Case in point: my international business class. In discussions of the downsides to free trade, my professor discussed how free trade could hurt local businesses in America, but the lecture didn’t even touch on the implications of free trade for developing countries or the toll it can take on their natural resources and people’s standard of living, a perspective that is critical to thorough understanding of the topic. It’s ironic, as an international business course is supposed to gear us to become “citizens of the world.”As course curricula become more globalized, it’s easy to think that we are fortunate enough to be able to sit on a pedestal of neutrality and learn in a country where knowledge is uninhibited by restrictions and bias, but it’s not that way at all. It’s important that we always remain vigilant of our knowledge, to remain skeptical, to learn to not just be satisfied with the material that we are fed in our classrooms, but to actively seek it out in different mediums and sources, lest we unintentionally subject ourselves to unwanted prejudices.
South Carolina hasn’t had a great track record for being the bearer of good news. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. For years, our state has been the butt of our nation’s jokes regarding a wide variety of things: a poor education system, relentless conservatism, the “backward” culture and, lately, corrupt politicians and their inappropriate behaviors.
Last week in my international business class, we were supposed to talk about the United Nations and the problems and achievements associated with it. Instead, my professor decided to switch the lecture that day to the topic of "how to network." Instead of talking about important issues relevant to the world, we spent an hour talking about ourselves.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed nine new labels to be placed on packs of cigarettes alongside the standard warning about lung cancer and how smoking can kill. Starting September this year, the FDA will require at least 50 percent of the box to be covered in these new labels accompanied with graphics.
Social media have played a huge role in the recent events around the world, from perpetuating awareness of the Arab Spring to fueling the recent Occupy movement. However, while those in Egypt and New York have been protesting on steps and toppling statues, many of the rest of us have been sitting in front of our computers and watching the action as spectators on the sideline.
Perhaps there is no need to explain just how angry I was to find out, the day before I moved into my obscenely expensive Horseshoe apartment in Pinckney/Legare Colleges, that this prime and highly demanded housing spot was completely uninhabitable. The walls and furniture were covered in mold, and the toilet had not been flushed since the previous inhabitants had moved out. I was lucky enough to be able to quickly find alternative arrangements, though not ideal ones.
In college these days, everyone always seems to be working towards some sort of end goal, be it medical school or law school with a solid career post-graduation. We are always on a constant search for internships, to lead clubs and build resumes that will enable us to get to where we think we need to be. But it is important for us to remember that in the midst of all our scrambles for success lies one overarching goal, and that is simply to learn.
Responses ranged from borderline racist (Rick Santorum's response, "The folks who would be most likely to be committing these crimes ... obviously Muslims ..." to the question of who should be profiled to protect national security) to outright belligerent (Herman Cain's statement, "The terrorists have one objective that some people don't seem to get: They want to kill all of us. So we should use every means possible to kill them first.") From the wide variety of these responses from the GOP candidates, one fact was clear: They all seemed eager to embrace the idea of the United States remaining in a national state of war.
It’s that time of year again when holidays are sneaking up, leaving us wondering where on Earth the semester went, and the surging wave of exams and papers is even larger than the turkey we’ll be eating in a few days.