Harvard students, union members, and Starbucks employees from around the country are planning to protest a lecture by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz at Harvard Business School on Friday.

Schultz will be speaking to several hundred Business School students on his experiences running a successful business while also be promoting his new book, “Onward.”

Liberté Locke, an organizer of the event, said Starbucks employees are angered by what they deem to be hypocrisy in Schultz’s book, in which he expresses his commitment to his “partners”—as the company calls its workers. Employees of the company, especially union members, feel that Starbucks is one of the least labor friendly companies in America, Locke said. Starbucks has been found guilty by the National Labor Relations Board of violating labor rights, including charges of union busting and wrongful termination.

“For Howie [Schultz] to sit around and claim how much he loves us, it’s just disgusting,” said Locke, a Starbucks barista and Starbucks Workers Union organizer from New York. “Starbucks is one of the biggest union busting corporations in the United States.”

Harvard union representatives said they planned to support Starbucks workers in the protest.

Geoffrey “Geoff” Carens, an assistant librarian and member of the Harvard Union of Technical and Clerical Workers, emphasized what he called the “phoniness” of Schultz’s message.

“Howard Schultz likes to present Starbucks as a socially responsible corporation,” Carens said. “In reality, conditions are really bad and getting worse.”

While Starbucks has garnered criticism for the way it has treated union leaders and organizers, it has presented itself as a progressive member of the Fortune 500, providing health care benefits and stock options to some employees.

Students who plan to attend the event said that they feel it is important to show solidarity with wronged workers in standing up for their rights.

“Everyone deserves a voice on the job,” said Student Labor Action Movement member William P. Whitham ’14. Organizers of the event said that they are eager to send a message both to Schultz and to the Business School students.

“We want him to know that no matter where he goes, he will be held accountable,” said Locke. As for the Business School students, Locke wanted them to know “that union busting is absolutely unacceptable and unethical.”

Locke emphasized that the point of the protest is not to scare students away, but rather to educate them. “We want to prevent [future] employers from becoming like Starbucks,” she said.

Former LSU cornerback Patrick Peterson released a statement through LSU today saying he has never had a relationship with Willie Lyles, the scout that allegedly asked for pay-for-play scandal from Texas A&M.

“I have never had any type of relationship with Willie Lyles and he had no influence on my decision to attend LSU, or any other school for that matter,” Peterson said. “He had no involvement with my recruiting process and I resent the fact that my name has come up in these allegations. I chose LSU because it’s a great school with a great football program. I never received nor was I offered anything to go to LSU and anyone saying otherwise is being dishonest.”

Lyles reportedly told Texas A&M that the school would have to pay upward of $80,000 to sign Peterson in 2007, when he was one of the top prospects in the country.

Peterson is expected to be a top 5 pick in the NFL Draft on April 28.

Former LSU assistant coach Earl Lane, who recruited Peterson to Baton Rouge, told ESPN’s Joe Schad he didn’t have a relationship with Lyles during the recruitment process.

“There’s a lot of rumor and innuendo,” Lane told Schad. “But I believe in doing things the right way and on the up and up.”

Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 5 Thursday evening in the Statehouse State Room, limiting the collective bargaining rights of about 360,000 public employees.

In an e-mail sent to constituents Thursday afternoon, Kasich said the passing of SB 5 through the general assembly is a victory for Ohio.

“At the end of the day, this change is going to give us control at the local level,” Kasich said as he sat down to sign the bill into law at 7:19 p.m. SB 5 is an overhaul of a collective bargaining law which gave public employees, such as firefighters, teachers and steelworkers, the right to bargain for their wages, hours, working conditions and benefits.

In a press release Wednesday, Kasich said SB 5 gives local governments and schools powerful tools to reduce costs.

“With some of the highest taxes in the country, Ohio is struggling to create a climate that is attractive to the businesses that create jobs,” Kasich said in the press release. “Helping local governments reduce their costs so they can begin lightening Ohio’s tax burden helps us compete better against states that are far friendlier to job-creators.”

Over the last month, protestors have frequented the lawn of the Statehouse in fierce opposition of SB 5, claiming it revokes the rights they have been working toward for more than 20 years.

Sen. Charleta Tavares, a democratic member of the 15th district in the Ohio Senate, spoke in opposition of the bill during the vote Wednesday night.

“Local government didn’t ask for it, and we’re eliminating the middle class,” Tavares said.

Democrats have promised to collect the required number of signatures to send the bill to the November ballot. If the signatures are collected, the bill will not be law until it passes the November vote.

My name is Dineen Boyle and I have been Facebook-free for 37 days.

Last month, I wrote about my plan to deactivate my Facebook profile.

Since then, I have realized many things about my relationship with the site, the most surprising of which is that I don’t miss it.

Admittedly, the first two weeks were somewhat difficult. I experienced some withdrawal-like symptoms and found myself curious about what I was missing in the social networking universe. The days I spent housebound, recovering from wisdom tooth surgery over Spring Break proved to be the ultimate test. With laptop and smartphone within constant reach, the temptation to log on was intense. It was like dangling bait in front of a shark, or placing drugs in front of an addict, or putting cookies in front of someone who really likes cookies.

During my absence from the site, I have noticed a marked increase in activities such as doing productive things. Initially, I turned to other ways to waste an average of about 15-20 minutes a day online. My efforts focused mainly on online shopping. These ventures proved mostly unsuccessful. However, I did manage to discover a 50 percent off Groupon for a Segway Tour of Boston (Laminated Certified Segway Driver’s License included).

Although my procrastination has decreased, I occasionally relapse. I find myself watching YouTube videos of “A monkey and a puppy playing” or “Drunk guy attempting to put on flip flops.” But I catch myself and I say, “No, Dineen. No.” I recognize that the existence of such things in my computer history undermines the academic and social credibility for which I strive.

Overall, I have received mixed reaction from others in regards to my Facebook deactivation. Some have told me that they “admire” my self-discipline and say that they would never be able to kick the habit. Others have mentioned that they are inspired and hope to take a break from the site. Still, there are those who respond, “You don’t have a Facebook?” a glaze of disbelief coating their eyes, behind which their mind calculates a 3 percent possibility that a college student without a Facebook profile could still be a functioning member of society. I see the fear begin to register on their faces after concluding that I must undoubtedly be a freak social deviant.

And upon informing my mother of my intentions to defect from the site, she posed the profound question, “But how are you going to know things?”

Although I make attempts at humor, I have learned a great deal in my efforts to limit my wasteful online activity. What began as a social experiment has proven to be thoroughly liberating. I recognize that 15 minutes spent here and there procrastinating on Facebook accumulates quickly and is time that could be devoted toward accomplishing productive and meaningful things such as volunteering or better educating myself about world affairs.

Yet, as I mentioned in my previous column on this topic, I do not intend to vilify Facebook. It allows us an efficient centralized means of communication and becomes detrimental to our time management only when we allow it.

Through my time away from the site, I have been allowed an extrospective view of the extent to which Facebook is ingrained within the lives of our generation. My conclusion: we are incredibly dependent on it.

Consequently, there are some drawbacks that accompany deactivation. It is remarkable how Facebook has come to monopolize the planning of our social lives and I find myself reliant on friends for information about events. It also takes a little bit more effort to stay in touch with those who live far away.

Yet despite these minor setbacks, the positives that have accompanied my experience far outweigh the negatives. I care much less about trivial things with which I once found myself concerned. I have also spent more time engaging in actual telephone, and in person conversations with my friends. Instead of viewing snapshots of parties or travels, I get to hear their actual voices update me on their lives.

The good news is that if you are considering leaving Facebook, rest assured knowing that it will not equate to the demise of your social life.

The bad news is that if you look super awesome in any pictures, you’re going to have to rely on your friends to email them to you.

As for my experience, I feel oddly empowered …  And wicked pumped about my Segway tour.

Neurosurgeon Donald Hilton, an associate professor at the University of Texas, told a packed audience last night that pornography consumption has negative effects on masculinity, social interaction and demographics at a talk organized by True Love Revolution, a student advocacy group that promotes premarital abstinence.

“It’s impossible to talk about masculinity today without talking about the impact of pornography,” Hilton said.

He said that the “traditional male is an endangered species” and that this shift from traditional gender roles impacts demographics and lower fertility rates in the developed world.

“Sexuality, in my opinion has been underrated as a demographic factor,” Hilton said. “I think Tom Wolfe was onto something when he said that ‘the bigger pornography gets, the lower the birthrate becomes.’”

Pornography is also detrimental to women’s perceptions of their bodies, Hilton said. He said that some women undergo cosmetic gynecology out of a desire to mimic porn actresses’ genitalia.

Hilton also said that pornography that features violence against women can have negative sociological effects, encouraging misogyny for men who use internet pornography as a sexual instruction.

Hilton said that he believes that the biological cause of pornography addiction function similar to pheromones—chemicals that trigger social responses.

“Pornography is, I believe, a visual pheromone—a powerful brain drug—that is changing sexuality more rapidly through the cyber acceleration of the Internet and it is inhibiting orientation,“ he said.

Hilton also said that this trend detrimentally affects masculinity by desensitizing males to “appreciate female beauty” and perpetuating pornography addiction, which he defined as compulsive pornography use and compared to physical substance abuses.

Hilton argued that excessively viewing pornography results in neuromodulation of human brains, a process that influences the organ’s structure, making it are similar to “gambling, drugs, Sadomasochism and pedophilia,” which he claimed were also addictions. Through the brain’s pleasure center, pornography consumption is rewarded by the provision of dopamine, similar to physical sexual contact, and therefore can be addicting, he said.

The lecture elicited mixed audience reaction.

Taras B. Dreszer ’14 said that he found the talk to be overly moralistic.

“I came to the talk because I was interested in a neuroscience perspective, and I was disappointed by the fact that his points were only loosely backed by science,” Dreszer said.

On Sunday, I watched the CNN documentary “Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door” in a state of bewilderment, anger, and above all, disgust. The hourlong film explored the town of Murfreesboro, Tenn., which contains a large population of Islamophobes.

Phobias by nature are irrational; Islamophobia is defined as the irrational fear of Muslims.

Members of this town described Murfreesboro as warm, welcoming, and accepting of all others — a great place to raise a family. That is, unless you’re an American citizen and practicing Muslim expecting to be able to exercise your basic First Amendment right guaranteed to all U.S. citizens — in that case, you’re out of luck.

The members of this small town (who all live under the same rock, apparently) are under the impression that being a Muslim is the same as being a terrorist. It is because of this ignorant and erroneous belief that the majority of their citizens oppose the building of a Muslim-based community center on the outskirts of town.

What’s wrong with that? Essentially, it’s just another mega-church, just not one that is Christian-based. To the average and seemingly uneducated Murfeesboroan, the community center is going to be a terrorist breeding ground, hell bent on destroying the “great state” of Tennessee.

All joking aside, this is the latest symptom in a growing disease that is infecting the uneducated electorate in our country. To be clear: The idea that 1.6 billion people — one-fifth of our global population — are actively trying to kill all Americans is absolutely absurd. The main issue here is ignorance, and it embarrasses me to no end that our country has an appetite for such nonsense.

Last time I checked, religious fanatics come in all shapes and sizes. Moreover, they make up an unbelievably small fraction of a large group of good-hearted individuals.

Ironically enough, the Christian and/or anti-Islam members of the community actively and openly supported a terrorism of their own and tore down signs and vandalized trucks and other building equipment in order to prevent an otherwise peaceful process from occurring.

I can now understand why Americans are viewed unfavorably; this country was founded with religious freedom as a priority and is, again, denying it to those we don’t understand. History shows similar situations, such as anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic feelings of years past, tend to be something that we look back on and scoff at our own ignorance. While I believe that this is the same situation — that we are merely being overly dramatic and ignorant of something that many don’t understand and fear because of it — it saddens me that tomorrow will not be the day that we wake up and realize our foolishness.

A device that connects the world could in fact be damaging to our health.

A recent study from the National Institutes of Health reported that low levels of radiation emitted from cellphones are shown to affect the brain.

The research, published in The Journal of American Medical Association, demonstrated that weak radio-frequency signals from cellphones can alter brain activity. It shows a 7 percent increase of brain activity, nearest to where the phone antenna is located.

However, researchers still are uncertain if the effects are harmful.

Professor Emeritus of neuroscience Christiana Leonard said it’s difficult to imagine what the short- and long-term effects are.

“The report is cause for concern, given the industry’s repeated assurances that there are no effects,” Leonard said.

She suggests animal studies should be used to investigate whether permanent tissue characteristics can be seen after long-term use and whether the two are proportional.

The American education system has been marred in recent years by a troubling trend. Test scores indicate that students are falling behind in science and math, weakening our country’s ability to maintain a competitive intellectual edge. It is no secret that the American education system is in desperate need of reform.

But our test scores are not the only thing in need of improvement – student attitudes can also use a tune up.

In a commentary piece written for The Chronicle of Higher Education, New England college professor Elayne Clift calls for an attitude adjustment among students. Clift has taught at Ivy League institutions and community colleges. She remembers her “semester from hell,” when a group of graduate students lamented the syllabus on the first night of class, complaining that it called for too much work. The professor said she felt disrespected for their passive-aggressive behavior and shocked that at the graduate level, they could not write in coherent sentences. She was “accosted” with “hostile emails” after critiquing papers – even when she discovered evidence of plagiarism. Her observations led her to the following conclusion: students have a sense of entitlement, evidenced by rude behavior and a lack of academic motivation.

Clift makes an important point. All too often, students show up to class having not bothered to even do the reading, write papers riddled with questionable sources like Wikipedia. Many students are only willing to do enough work to pass classes and move on. If we earn a poor grade on an essay or fail an exam, it’s not our fault; rather, the professor is to blame. Not only is there a lack of accountability concerning our academic performances, but also for our education at large.

As Clift insinuates in her piece, the first step in education reform begins with us. We as students voluntarily attend college because we want to challenge ourselves and to achieve the highest standard of education that we can. In accepting that, we also need to accept that professors do not owe us anything beyond quality instruction. From the assignments listed on the syllabus to the grades that we earn, we are not entitled to pass classes for less than mediocre work, or entitled to dictate the way a class should be taught, even if we disagree. A degree isn’t just a diploma that’s given to you when you cross the stage at graduation—it should be something that is earned.

The international community must earnestly thank Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi for his ability to be the perfect scapegoat. In a region filled with corrupt, American-sponsored brutes and dictators, Qaddafi represents a tyrant who has never been influenced by the West and is willing to fight to the death to maintain his vice grip over his country.

As a result, NATO and the United Nations have jumped all over the opportunity to participate in the Libyan civil war by launching a no-fly zone, ignoring the severe repercussions of the protests still ongoing in Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and most importantly Yemen.

Yemen’s chaos is especially important when one considers the over $190 million dollars in aid the nation was receiving from the U.S., which considers Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh a pivotal ally in the ongoing albatross that is the war on terrorism.

This is the same Ali Abdullah Saleh who just last week declared a 30-day state of emergency, which suspends the constitution, bars protests and allows security forces to gain even further powers of arrest.

The reason for the state of emergency is the surge in protests that have gripped Yemen since February. People have been protesting Saleh’s 23-year reign, which has been notorious for corruption, torture and the false promise of democracy.

While Saleh’s regime has cracked down on protests, particularly in the capital of Sanaa, he has been unable to quell the outrage. Even claims that he would not run for the presidency in 2013 fell upon deaf ears, as many were reminded of a similar claim he made last election. Now promising to step down at the end of the year, his pledges are being contradicted by authoritarian actions like declaring this state of emergency.

And while Saleh makes inflammatory statements about how he will only relinquish power if the nation he has abused is in “safe hands” following his resignation, the international community has ignored his actions and words, choosing instead to focus entirely on Libya.

By ignoring Yemen, we are ignoring a nation where Al Qaeda has gained significant foothold despite the hundreds of millions of dollars America has poured in wantonly, as evinced by the recent capture and subsequent blast of a munitions factory that left over 100 people dead.

We are ignoring a nation that has been in the throes of a civil war for years now and whose army seems determined to subvert the protests that have been generated by the people.

As important as the ramifications of Libya’s civil war is for the international community, the unrest that was initially sparked by Tunisia has engulfed the entire region. And although it may be against American interests to create an arbitrary sense of order by focusing only on one nation’s struggle for freedom, there is no point in hiding the truth and sacrificing some people to help others.

Matt Painter will not be the next head coach of the Missouri men’s basketball team. After meeting with Missouri officials in Orlando on Tuesday, the 40-year-old three-time Big Ten Coach of the Year award winner opted to sign an 8-year extension with Purdue.

“At the end of the day, my heart is at Purdue, and this is a place where I want to win a national championship,” Painter said in a statement Wednesday.

Painter’s new contract extension will keep him with his alma mater through the 2018-2019 season.

Other terms of the contract were not disclosed.

“We are thrilled to announce that Matt will continue his leadership of our men’s basketball program at his alma mater,” Purdue athletics director Morgan Burke said in a press release on the school’s athletic website. “He has been at the helm of the winningest four-year period in the storied history of Boilermaker basketball, and we pledge to work with him to win championships.”

MU Athletics Director Mike Alden and the other members of the coaching search committee met with Painter in Orlando Tuesday afternoon, and reports on Wednesday made it appear he was going to accept Missouri’s offer. In the end, however, Painter elected to finish what he started at Purdue.

“I am extremely excited about continuing my career at Purdue,” Painter said. “I believe we have built something very special. At the same time, I feel we have much more ahead of us to accomplish.”

In his statement, Painter also made note of some of the facility upgrades already underway at Purdue. These upgrades include a $99.5 million renovation of Mackey Arena that will include a new training facility for the basketball team.

“There’s a lot to be excited about right now with Purdue basketball. We are moving into our new offices and locker room complex over the next couple of weeks,” Painter said. “Our program is built on hard work, and we are ready to get back to improving as a team and a staff.”

Painter’s former coach Gene Keady told The Indianapolis Star that he believed Painter made the right decision.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” Keady said. “It’s a better job. Now it’s up to Purdue to give him the leadership and foundation he needs to be a national champion. It’s up to Purdue now.”

For Alden and the rest of the coaching committee, it is back to the drawing board. Tuesday, Athletics Department spokesman Chad Moller called the search “ongoing,” but outside of Painter, it does not appear that Missouri has approached any other potential candidates.

East Saint Louis-native Cuonzo Martin, who appeared to be a strong candidate for the job, was eliminated when he left Missouri State to take over at Tennessee over the weekend.

Shortly after news about Painter staying at Purdue became official, Buzz Williams effectively took his name out of the running by re-signing with Marquette.

During a news conference last week, Alden stressed the importance of the committee taking its time to find the best candidate for the job.

“We don’t want to sacrifice the quality for speed. I think with us certainly identifying who we are, what the characteristics are that we’re looking for, scanning out there — who’s going to be a good fit for our brand at the University of Missouri?” Alden said. “We have to identify the person that fits our brand the best.”