A brave soul stands in front of the class, waiting for his time to shine. Once the murmuring dies down, he jumps into an energetic, well-rehearsed pitch for his volunteer group, spewing examples of adventures to be had and sights to be seen. He passes out a collection of colored sheets that reiterate his point, leaves and finally lecture can begin.
A few months ago friends and family would ask me what I was going to do this year. I would answer, “Just City Year, an Americorps program.”
Monday night, Democrats across Wisconsin cheered as Gov. Scott Walker officially announced he was ending his 2016 presidential campaign. The decision came after recent polls showed Walker with less than 1 percent of the vote. However, if you are a Democrat, now is not the time to be celebrating. In fact, you should be bracing yourself for the worst. It all comes down to one man: Marco Rubio.
I was recently sitting in a class centered on the issues that men and women face, including social injustice, inequality and gender forces among other things. In the midst of discussion, I heard a comment that made my head turn: “There has been progress, so why can’t we be happy about the progress that’s been made?” The simple answer: because it is not enough.
When I was in the second grade, I came home from school with an assignment to research a significant historical figure. Naturally, I contemplated researching heroes such as George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. But, when I shared this plan with my mother, she told me to research a significant woman in history.
A lot of UW-Madison students and a significant portion of the American public are considering supporting Bernie Sanders in his bid to be the next president, and it’s not surprising that he’s gaining so much support. After all, who wouldn’t want free healthcare, free college, a guaranteed living wage, guaranteed paid vacation and renovated national infrastructure? No one, right?
Pope Francis has been a highly popular and controversial papal head, as evidenced by his seemingly “radical” stances on issues such as the environment, the migrant crisis and trickle-down economics, instead stressing forgiveness for lifestyle choices and topics that the Catholic Church has traditionally looked down upon, such as homosexuality or abortion. As such, his tour to the United States is considered a big turning point for international affairs and his relationship with American Catholics.
In the past week, there has been an influx of headlines shaming and indicting various corporations, business owners and other major or minor players in the world of commerce. To rattle off a couple, a bar was forced to compensate a woman for needing surgery after ingesting a liquid nitrogen shot, and a deposed peanut company owner is being sentenced to 28 years for conspiracy involved in the death of nine people from products tainted with salmonella. It seems like businesses everywhere can’t catch a break for their malfeasances.
As a battered Ukraine approaches an immensely favorable debt restructuring and a peace deal with Russia involving new, civil elections in rebel-held areas along its eastern region, its citizens should have no expectation of stability to follow. Since Russia began backing rebel separatists in localities of eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government, under President Petro Poroshenko, missed one important historical lesson from the Truman administration. No, I’m not suggesting that Ukraine have dropped “the bomb” over Moscow. Rather, Poroshenko forgot Truman’s massive success with the famous “Berlin Airlift.”
If a successful business gets flooded, and becomes completely submerged in water, does it make a profit?
Hank Green, a famous blogger and vlogger on Youtube, once stated regarding incarceration, “We send people to prison to be punished, and to prevent them from doing bad things again, and to deter others from breaking the law. Punishment, corrections and deterrence.” Each aspect of this three-fold system must be effective and all aspects must work in unison to create an efficient institution against crime. This does not necessarily mean that each aspect must be equal in how it is emphasized, leading to the question of which should be emphasized and how we go about doing so to provide the maximum level of utility to society.
In a recent, much noted article, more than 100 prominent oncologists complained that the high cost of new cancer drugs — in excess of $100,000 per treatment — makes them unaffordable for patients. They suggest the imposition of “fair” prices.
To label Wisconsin as anything other than a party school is considered a slight to most Badgers. A year after taking my nervous first steps onto this campus, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how, in all my hours of research and determination on what university would be my home for the next four years, I skipped over this glaring detail. I got caught up in the trees of fantastic programs such as student research, Badger athletic programs, and the Wisconsin Idea, that I failed to notice the actual forest of student life on campus. Within this year, I continue to struggle reconciling my perceived image of Wisconsin and what it actually wound up being like, as well as reconciling scholastics and the heavy social aspect on here on campus.
The crisis of Syrian migrants is one of the hottest potatoes in the media bucket today throughout the world. We wonder and worry about this particular phenomenon–what could be the outcome of this exodus? What forced these civilians to roam so far? Is there anything we can do for them? How should we handle the situation?
The so-called “War on Drugs” has been a failure ever since it was implemented. Criminalizing the possession and distribution of drugs is contrary to fundamental individual rights, like the right to exercise control over one’s own body and the right to voluntarily trade with others.
I may be not much of a spiritual person, but one of the most profound experiences of my life was behind the wheel of a 1999 Toyota Highlander on the road from Madison to Florida for spring break. In a 24-hour period, I spent half that time behind the wheel, and the rest talking to my fellow passengers, bickering with other members of our collegiate caravan or attempting to get some uncomfortable sleep. We made the return trip about five days later, with similar distributions of fitful rest and bloodshot-eyed driving.
As you may have heard, a fifteen year old in Iowa is running for president under the pseudonym “Deez Nuts”. While he is not able to legally become president of the United States, the candidate is doing better than most independent candidates in recent memory and is showing an eight percent favorability rating in his home state of Iowa. While many find Deez Nuts to be a mockery of the electoral process, I personally believe that Deez Nuts is good for America. I believe this because I have a sense of humor, and because Deez Nuts exemplifies the dilapidated and pitiable state of America’s primary election system.
All I wanted was a bunch of cheap tacos. That’s why I went to Chaser’s that night. Not to get drunk, not even to have fun, just for mildly good, cheap food. And up until right before I walked out I was successful in that endeavor. But then he did it. Some guy who I will never know, never be able to confront, never be able to pick out of a crowd, grabbed my girlfriend’s butt. I became immediately anxious, confused and enraged, unsure of where my emotions were or where they were taking me. I looked to her and yelled, “Who did this?” The bar, however, was too crowded for even her to identify the man who had violated her. Probably prompted by the look of shock on my face, she leaned in and said, over the noise, “this kind of stuff happens all the time.”
As long as fashion trends have existed, there have been movements that took hold of the general public that are looked back upon with embarrassed laughter. Those who never partook in things like bell-bottoms and Ed Hardy smugly affirmed their biases against them when they fell from grace, and everyone moved on with their lives. Today, that stupid fashion trend is Birkenstock sandals, and I will be the one calling them for what they are—ugly, childish and highly overrated, to say the least. Let me take you on a journey where I describe what’s wrong with these overhyped crimes against humanity.
Ever since the majority of us were little, our parents and elementary school teachers would fill our minds with the phrase “everybody is important As we grew into functioning teenagers and acquired aspirations of our own, these three words were lost as reality became more prevalent in our lives. Students of all ages can attest that there are definitive cliques that are often determined by natural talent. These athletic, academic and artistic groups often compete for a sense of fulfillment and purpose in society.
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Solutions by The State News
