Nationwide, young people struggle with affording their education. For many low-income students, obtaining college degrees comes with financial hardships that some might not be aware of.

Priya chettri / Equinox Staff

Food insecurity and homelessness among college students is on the rise, and many believe that financial aid institutions are not prepared to handle these issues.

At 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of Higher Education Policy at Temple University presented about the cost of higher education in the Mabel Brown Room.

Goldrick-Rab is is also a leader in research of the intersection among economic insecurity, college affordability and a failing financial aid system.

Keene State College students filled the Mabel Brown Room in equal numbers as faculty and community members.

Dr. Goldrick-Rab didn’t just come to KSC to speak, she said in the presentation.

She was there to “recruit for a movement” about making college more affordable. While speaking, she reflected on policymakers and the importance of painting a true picture of college students nationwide. Dr. Goldrick-Rab critiqued the lawmakers who don’t spend time on college campuses, and how they depict college students as selfish and entitled.

She told the true story of a young woman named Chloe who was trying to afford an associate’s degree at a community college in Wisconsin.

Her expected family contribution from the FAFSA was 10 percent of her mother’s meager income, and Chloe didn’t want to take out a high loan to go to school. Chloe tried to work to make ends meet while attending the college, but eventually dropped out after being put on financial probation.

After Dr. Goldrick-Rab told the story, the room was quiet and solemn. “If this story took place in New Hampshire,” she said, “the situation would’ve been even worse.”

Dr. Goldrick-Rab projected charts about the increase in college costs and the stagnation of financial aid money nationwide, which contributed to Chloe’s story. Following that, she focused on the school at which she was speaking.

She showed calculations of the cost of attendance at KSC, and how little this school’s financial aid office provides to their students.

The chart she made showed that it takes 56 hours a week of minimum wage work ($7.25 per hour) to cover the cost of attendance at KSC. This is after the average financial aid package KSC offers.

“It’s very easy to be pessimistic… but these are easy problems to fix,” Dr. Goldrick-Rab told the audience. She continued to play her slideshow, emphasizing the importance of campus resources to help students in financial trouble.

Dr. Goldrick-Rab also told the audience that the students at colleges and universities are the ones who are the most aware of issues among their peers, and that their student fees shouldn’t rise to try to solve these problems.

Senior Aaron Bartlett attended this program for his Health Promotion Practice class. He’s an in-state student. In his opinion, college affordability isn’t as bad in New Hampshire as it is in other states.

Bartlett said that private colleges and out-of-state choices elsewhere in New England are much more difficult to afford. He said that while KSC isn’t “astronomically high” like other schools, people still have a hard time paying for it.

Allison Gioielli, a senior at KSC, came with her peers because she was interested in the subject of affordability. She is from Massachusetts, and she said that out-of-state tuition at KSC is very expensive.

She agreed with Bartlett, though, that higher education in general is expensive. Gioielli said she knows students first-hand who struggle to afford school and living expenses. She said she is friends with someone who has “gone from seven [in the morning] until nine [at night], working just to be able to afford rent.”

Gioielli’s friend’s struggles are not unique, and that night’s presentation reflected the issues that arise from financial insecurity among college students.

The presentation was sponsored by the Open Education Collaborative through the University System of New Hampshire.

Abby Shepherd can be contacted at ashepherd@kscequinox.com

On Nov. 14, Keene State College Student Assembly came together to approve the various elements of the 2019 Fiscal Year (FY19) budget.

They approved the budget increases for Educational Technology, the Student Center and the Parking and Campus Safety Shuttle Services.

All three applied for the maximum increase of 2.5 percent from their allotted budget for FY19.

KSC Chief Information Officer of the Information Technology Group Laura Seraichick asked for a budget increase for Educational Technology.

She requested the increase for new equipment such as wireless projectors for classrooms.

Seraichick said it would be fiscally responsible to update this technology.

The next to present was Director of Student Involvement Jennifer Ferrell, who said the Student Center is asking for an increase in their budget to prevent cutting student work hours for their employees.

Ferrell said in Fiscal Year 2015, the programmatic dollars were $376,000, while in Fiscal Year 2018 that number decreased to $178,000.

To make up for the gap, Ferrell said they pulled from their reserves, but they will not be able to do that for FY19.

Lastly, Director of Campus Safety and Compliance Jeffrey Maher requested a budget increase for only the Parking Services and Campus Safety Shuttle portion of their department.

The current budget for the shuttle doesn’t completely cover the contract with the shuttle company. Maher and Student Assembly discussed how to reevaluate the effectiveness of the campus shuttle program, considering the amount of riders decreased by 40 percent in 2017.

Student Assembly will not meet next week, but will gather again on Nov. 28.

Abby Shepherd can be contacted at ashepherd@kscequinox.com

On Nov. 7, about 16 percent of Keene headed to the polls to vote in the municipal election, a high number for an off-year election. For some, it was as easy as leaving one’s house and walking across the street to cast their ballot. However, between getting a ride from a local, registering, voting and returning back to campus, the entire voting excursion lasted Keene State College sophomore Erin Lynch about 40 minutes.

“That took longer than I thought,” she said as we pulled back into the Zorn Dining Commons (DC) parking lot. Lynch said she wishes more people would turn out to vote, but understands that it’s tough. “I think that making the polls more accessible to the students would help [voter turnout],” she said, as her friends were still registering to vote.

Laura Romaniello / Art Director

Voter turnout is low across the wards in Keene during municipal elections, regardless if the voters are students or long-time residents. The official results for turnout by ward from last Tuesday have not been released yet online, but according to the City of Keene website, only two percent of registered voters in Ward 1, where on-campus students vote, headed to the polls for the municipal primary back in October. That is slightly lower than the rest of the city, where the voter turnout ranged between five and seven percent that day.

Lynch said she hopes that there is a closer polling location to campus in the future, as the police station is well over a mile from KSC. It would not be a fun walk, especially on that windy and cold November Tuesday. The polling locations for off-campus students is even further away. Residents of the Arcadia Apartments, The Mills of Keene and the Davis Street apartments, where many upperclassmen students live, vote in Ward 5. The Ward 5 polling location is behind Target, about 2.8 miles away from campus.

Keene City Councilor-at-Large Randy Filiault, who has served in city council for 20 years and was re-elected for another term, believes voting should be made easier for everyone. However, he told me that college students don’t have that many barriers to vote and need to make more of an effort to get to the polls. “If there was a particular bar having a college night that far away, they would find a way to get there,” he said. Filiault said he thinks young people should run for city council, but that he hasn’t seen it over the course of his multiple terms.

Young people are beginning to run in city races, and one of them won on Tuesday. Twenty-three-year-old Maggie Rice, who graduated from KSC in 2015, just won her ward’s city council race. She will represent Ward 3 for the next few years.

Rice is no stranger to municipal proceedings. She served on the city-college commission as a student liaison during her time at KSC. Rice said that being a Keene resident and a student left her feeling caught in the middle, but she said she enjoyed serving on the commission because she got to see people who cared about mending the relationship between Keene State College and the city, especially after the Pumpkin Festival in 2014.

Rice said she thinks having the polling location for Ward 1 by the police station is an added barrier for students who already do not feel like they have a stake in their community. Rice commuted from home during college, which she said made it easier for her to vote, but she still thinks that it is too difficult for students.

“The general consensus here is that Keene State students don’t vote,” Rice said. “If we can agree that this is a bad thing, why are we not encouraging and making it easier for [KSC students] to vote?”

Abby Shepherd can be contacted at ashepherd@kscequinox.com

What do Alec Baldwin, Snooki and Snoop Dogg all have in common? They each host an ongoing podcast.

Despite being multi-millionaire celebrities with household names, none of their shows this week are in the top 100 downloaded podcasts on iTunes. Instead, it’s weekly episodes from The New York Times, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the BBC and National Public Radio (NPR) featuring up-and-coming creators and former radio stars who hold the majority of these coveted spots.

Graphic by Meridith King / Arts & Entertainment Editor

Since these media giants like PBS and The New York Times were popularized by our parents and are holding onto the podcast market, then it would make sense that podcasts are mostly listened to by our parents’ generation, right? Well, not exactly.

According to the Edison Research Institute, nearly 70 percent of podcasts were listened to on a smartphone, and a quarter of those listeners were under the age of 24.

On a panel released via podcast by Law Technology Today, panelist Natalie Kelly says young people “are looking for more convenient mobile options for getting at information, and podcasts fall nicely into the fray.”

She’s right, as many of the most popular podcasts on iTunes fall under the “News and Politics” category.

When teenagers and young adults in this country are constantly bombarded by tweets and memes to tell them what’s going on around them, it must be comforting for a calm, human voice to let them know the news of the day.

It is true that many podcasts are about daily news, and that most daily news is about politics. That being said, podcasts also feature an inside, often intimate look, at the lives of young people.

The millennial media company BuzzFeed has their own playlists, featuring young people talking about issues affecting them, such as “See Something, Say Something,” which is narrated by young Muslim-Americans.

Also, even though this new media format is popular among young people, it is also heavily dominated by college-educated white men. According to “Wired,” two-thirds of podcasts on iTunes have a white, male host.

“Wired” writer Charley Locke said himself that the biggest problems among podcasting isn’t discovery, it’s diversity. This problem has gotten to a point that one of NPR’s newest podcasts is simply titled: “Soooo Many White Guys.”

However, many of the most popular podcasts run by young people for young people feature diverse hosts, including “2 Dope Queens,” which debuted at number one on iTunes and remained there for a week. It is led by two Black women: Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson. The series is currently streamed by NPR.

With many college-aged students tuning in to podcasts, many are wondering why.

Some say it’s because of their portability. If your podcast is downloaded onto your iPhone, it’s easy to plug in and get cutting-edge news and knowledge on the go, without having to read or watch anything.

But there are others who feel that today’s media climate is driving young people to this new way of consuming media and information. No matter why, how or whose podcasts college-aged students are listening to, they are beginning to get a lot of attention…and they’re also free.

Abby Shepherd can be contacted at ashepherd@kscequinox.com

The Emmy’s last Sunday night were a stunning reminder of how television reflects real life, or maybe the real life that society wishes it could have.

The Hollywood elite watched host Stephen Colbert comfortably deliver the opening monologue with the politically charged wit and charm he’s been portraying so far on “The Late Show.”

The monologue featured a song-and-dance number, but with a surprise guest tacked on at the finale: former Press Secretary Sean Spicer. The audience tried to fight their shock with amusement, but it was a challenge for some on-screen stars.

Keeping up with the evening’s theme of political satire, Saturday Night Live (SNL) won the most Emmy’s this year, taking home nine. Kate McKinnon and Alec Baldwin, who played Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump last season, both won Emmy’s for their portrayal of the candidates.

Baldwin, who skewered Trump all season, drew the highest ratings for SNL since the mid-1990s, said, “I suppose I should say: at long last, Mr. President, here is your Emmy.”

However, the evening wasn’t just about poking fun at President Trump. It was also about celebrating the people who are disenfranchised by this administration.

There were many “firsts” in the list of winners, as well as topically relevant speeches that spoke to social issues, especially about race and gender.

“The things that make us different-those are our superpowers,” Lena Waithe said, as she accepted her award for Outstanding Comedy Writing (Netflix’s “Master of None”), the first Black woman to do so. Donald Glover was the first Black man to win an Emmy for comedy directing (FX’s “Atlanta”). As far as the television dramas, Hulu’s “Handmaid’s Tale” took home eight awards, including Outstanding Drama Directing, awarded to Reed Morano. Morano is the first woman to win that award since 1995.

The acting awards showed diversity as well. Sterling K. Brown won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (NBC’s “This Is Us”), the first Black man to win the award in twenty years.

Actor and activist Riz Ahmed was the first South Asian man to win Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited TV Series (HBO’s “The Night Of”).

“This show has shone a light on some of the prejudice in our societies, Islamophobia, some of the injustice in our justice system, then maybe that is something,” he told the crowd when receiving the award.

Although television viewership was the second-lowest in history (narrowly defeating 2016’s numbers), the Emmy’s were not ignored.

Many of the award show’s moments were trending on Twitter and Facebook that same night. For example, Waithe’s speech, shared on Refinery29’s Facebook, has 2.2 million views in just a few days. For the third year in a row, the Emmy’s are more diverse than the last. Now, television viewers at home are now able to see the diversity of off-screen America being shown and awarded on-screen.

Abby Shepherd can be contacted at ashepherd@kscequinox.com

Last week in South Carolina, a school principal told a group of 10th grade girls that, unless they are a size zero or two, they can’t wear leggings. Why? Because they “look fat.”

There are two main ideas to aunpack when it comes to a principal telling girls that they look fat. Firstly, what’s wrong with looking fat? I’m plus size and I’m wearing leggings today. I’m pretty sure I’ll look a little fat.

While I’m okay with looking fat, I’m also six years past 10th grade. These girls have rapidly changing bodies, and hearing those bodies being described as “fat” could (and very well might) stick with them as they become adults.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY Brendan Jones / Equinox Staff

We are currently raising our girls (and boys) in a culture where fat is one of the worst things someone can be. I understand that completely.

I was a 10th grader who wore leggings, and I was also a 10th grader who had an eating disorder. I lived in fear of looking fat, even though I was much thinner than was healthy.

Looking back on pictures from 10th grade, I see someone who looked frail and unsure. Hearing someone in charge, especially a trusted female figure, saying that I looked fat would have destroyed my self image even more.

The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) says that twenty million women and girls will suffer from diagnosed eating disorders in their lifetime. That attitude starts as young as first grade, according to NEDA. Disordered eating and low self-worth can’t just be blamed on the media or thin models. Teachers, coaches, school principals and parents can all participate in giving young girls a negative body image.

Secondly, a sexist dress code clearly contributes to a negative body image. I personally rallied against the wording of my school’s dress code.

It previously said that a dress code was in place to prevent “distraction in a learning environment.” There was a long list of guidelines, mostly focused on clothing girls would wear.

Personally, I find a principal talking about her students looking fat a lot more distracting than leggings.

When leggings, bra straps or an exposed mid-thigh are ruled to be more distracting than body-shaming, we have an issue.

When the size of a 10th grade girl’s legs are legislated, it shows that preventing the possibility that she might “look fat” or “be distracting” is more important than her education, we have an even bigger issue. I saw it in my own school system.

My little sister’s friend, at the age of 14, had to sit in the in-school suspension classroom for an entire day because her shorts were too short. Think of it this way: the length of her shorts are more important than her right to be in class and learn. That’s body shaming.

Thankfully, our principal never told her, or any of us, that we “looked fat.” Sometimes, the implicit shaming of female bodies is just as damaging as something announced at an assembly.

As we move forward in a nation where our president can say on national television that a Miss Universe contestant has gained weight and still get elected, we have to remember this: people in power have a responsibility to empower, not shame. Whether you are a world leader or a school principal, there has never been a more pertinent time to work toward body acceptance in schools and in our culture.

Abby Shepherd can be contacted at ashepherd@kscequinox.com