Opinion

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UW needs to expand weak certificate offerings

When I was navigating the majors fair this past Wednesday I was very impressed by the sheer breadth of majors that our university offers across many fields and disciplines.  It truly is encouraging to know that I have the option to make many different areas my main focus during my time here.  What was discouraging however was the “no” I received when I would walk up to many tables and ask if they offered a certificate in their department. 

Cardinal View: Do not stop at police body cameras

In the new millennium, we can watch a police officer kill a citizen as easily as we can start a Netflix trial. These past few years of headlines, from Florida to Ferguson and beyond, have served as an archival of wrongdoing: a grandparent being beaten into the soil, black children being shot down in their neighborhoods, peaceful protestors swallowing tear gas in the night. America has swallowed its tax dollars into a whirlpool of distrust, time and again, leaving citizens clamoring for relief from the ailment of a system they can no longer trust.

Unions left high and dry in November election talk

On the issues section of her website, Mary Burke uses the phrase collective bargaining, or some version of it, twice, and both of those fall inside the same paragraph.  Does this seem weird to anybody?  Shouldn’t the Democratic candidate who is running against, arguably, one of the country’s least union-friendly governors be making this a bigger deal.  Since her victory in the primary, I’ve been waiting for Burke to become more salient on this topic, but so far that hasn’t happened.  It’s like I’m pretty sure that I’m at my surprise birthday party, but I’ve been here for 45 minutes and no one has said surprise yet, or even happy birthday.  So, either this is an incredibly long pause for effect, or all of my friends forgot about my birthday.  In other words, I think Mary Burke forgot about my birthday.

Mandatory paid vacation lacking in U.S.

The term “work-life balance” has become popular worldwide in recent years. The idea of work-leisure balance was invented in the mid-1800s, and the term work-life balance was firstly used in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s.

Foreign surrogacy births problems, not solutions

It is quite evident that we now live in a world of advanced technologies. One of the technological glooms of today is the use of surrogacy which is the practice of using another woman to carry the baby instead of the actual parents through implantation of their embryo into her. Many of us are already aware of this technology as Hollywood celebrity Sarah Jessica Parker was widely known for using a surrogate mother for the birth of her twin daughters back in 2009. But surrogacy is increasingly becoming more controversial in developing nations as it is commercialized without proper law enforcement to prevent abuses like here.

Ebola spread prevention needs to be an apolitical issue

Writer's block requires creative adaption

College Republicans are wrong on women for Walker

Last week, the College Republicans wrote an article in The Badger Herald urging the females of this campus to vote for incumbent Gov. Scott Walker, and gave several reasons therein.  While I found the piece to be wildly entertaining, there were a couple aspects that particularly caught my eye.  The two claims that I found to be especially questionable posited that Walker was both fighting to make abortion safer for women and working to help them become financially independent.  If both of those seem ridiculous at first glance, then you have a fairly astute first glance, because that’s exactly what they are.

Streaming buffers into the future of TV

Given the staggering level of popularity achieved by online streaming sites in recent years and the incredible amount of wide spread praise for these sites’ original content, I think it’s safe to say the era of streaming is upon us. At this point it would feel trite to expound the acclaim afforded to original shows like “Orange Is the New Black” or “Transparent” as evidence of the dominance of streaming, so here I would like to consider streaming in the context of the larger television landscape. The meteoric rise of streaming has ramifications for a medium it doesn’t even technically inhabit-— and the ripples across the greater television ocean set off by the success of streaming will undoubtedly be felt for years to come. Through its time-shifted model and original programming unencumbered by the barriers faced by network television, streaming sites are in the process of redefining television norms and conventions while putting pressure on traditional networks to do the same. In short, streaming is reshaping television for the better.

Relying on warfare to fix Middle Eastern Turmoil remains foolhardy

Gender wage gap continues to persist as a national issue

Polarization hurts political races

Social stereotypes need to be broken in order to progress

Walker continues to hold back women voters

Pseudo activism plagues millennial generation

I have recently noticed a trend concerning the content of my Facebook Newsfeed. It seems that one of the most recent videos to go viral is, ironically, a video concerning our generation’s overuse of our cellphones and social media as a whole, titled “Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?”.  

Cardinal View: UWPD misses the mark on crime

Last week, a list of safety tips originally entitled “Shedding the Victim Persona: Staying Safe on Campus” was published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department. The list swiftly attracted national attention after a front-page post on Jezebel, a blog-style website aimed at women’s interests, slammed UWPD for using victim-blaming language. Among pointers like “don’t travel alone,” “travel on well-lit paths,” “pre-plan” and “drink responsibly”—suggestions commonly featured in similar lists about campus safety—were more aggressively worded tips such as “If you present yourself as easy prey, then expect to attract some wolves;” “Be a hard target—a victim looks like a victim!” and “The right attitude is ‘I won’t let it happen to me!’” 

Civic activism is the Wisconsin way

Not long ago, I was sitting with three of my roommates, as roommates do, watching football.  At one point there was a stoppage of play and the game went to commercial.   During the break one of my roommates said something to the effect of, “Who is that woman?  I see her on TV all the time.”  The other two then chimed in with similar statements.  The woman on the screen was Mary Burke, who, for those of you like my roommates, is Wisconsin’s Democratic candidate for governor.  Through a series of borderline Sherlockian deductions it became clear to me that none of them knew who was running against the incumbent Scott Walker.

U.S. inconsistent in promoting democracy and justice

On the surface, the recent efforts by the United States to quash the advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) ostensibly demonstrates the degree to which the U.S. is committed to promoting democracy around the world and preventing forced rule by violent demagogues. Undoubtedly, ISIL is a horrendous organization whose designs for establishing a 21st century caliphate have resulted in death and destruction for those deemed unworthy of inclusion in the new Islamic state. The United States is right to denounce ISIL regardless of whether or not the current military engagement with the group proves to be effective in the long run. However, the fight against ISIL serves to remind us of a major discrepancy in American foreign policy. Even though it posits itself as a champion of democracy and justice around the world, the United States has shown time and again that it’s more than willing to support thoroughly undemocratic countries when doing so satisfies its strategic interests.

Supreme Court gay marriage non-ruling brings Wisconsin forward

With the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear the seven same-sex marriage cases on their docket, the stays in each of the seven states were lifted, effectively legalizing gay marriage in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin. Ever since a Wisconsin constitutional amendment which stated, “Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid ... as  a marriage in this,” was approved by voters in 2006, gay marriage has been illegal in Wisconsin. This stood until 2014, when the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Gov. Scott Walker challenging the amendment. It was ruled that the ban was unconstitutional. The state appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, where Oct. 6 they denied review of the case. The right to marry is a fundamental right that has been denied to same-sex couples. Public opinion has shifted in Wisconsin, with 55 percent in favor of same-sex marriage, so the opinion that approved the amendment is not even relevant anymore. With the Supreme Court’s statement, Gov. Walker and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen are required to accept the circuit court’s decision. As progressivism has been an integral part of this state’s history, the decision only substantiates Wisconsin’s motto: forward. 

Looking at celebrities’ nudes is callous

Today, Vanity Fair released an interview with Jennifer Lawrence where she spoke about the celebrity nude photo leak. This is the first time she has responded publicly to the situation involving an Internet hack that published revealing photos of her and hundreds of other female celebrities Aug. 31 of this year. The victims of the hack were all female with the exception of one male’s photos who were revealed just days ago in the fourth round of hacks. Lawrence spoke with Vanity Fair’s Sam Kashner where she said, “Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this.” She went on to say, “It does not mean that it comes with the territory. It’s my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting. I can’t believe that we even live in that kind of world. ”