On Sept. 17, at 9:35 a.m., a pipe-bomb style device exploded in a garbage can at a Marine Corps charity race in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Then at 8:30 p.m., a bomb exploded in a neighborhood in New York City, causing 29 injured victims. Domestic terrorism affected one of America’s largest cities, and people were rightfully terrified.

Three days later, on Sept. 20, more news came out that shook the world to its core. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, married since 2014, had called it quits after 12 years together. “Brangelina” had come to a bitter end, amid rumors of Pitt’s infidelity.

The two stories have directly competed for press coverage over the last few days. Many people associate strongly with Jolie and Pitt, as they are one of the most prominent of Hollywood’s powerful couples and both have been among the most popular actors for the last two decades. On the other hand, the bombing in New York City obviously frightened not only New Yorkers, but the American people as a whole.

Social media picked up on the “Brangelina” divorce and held on tightly, creating memes featuring Brad Pitt’s ex-wife Jennifer Aniston, expressing disbelief in the news that the couple had broken up after such a long time and joking about the nature of the split. The New York Post even dedicated the entire front page to the divorce, displaying a laughing Aniston seemingly mocking Pitt and Jolie. Social media also ran with the bombings, as people throughout the world took to the internet in search of information and to express grief and solidarity with those involved in the attacks. The bombings had a short shelf-life on social media and the internet, as most people had moved on from the event within a day. On the other hand, the “Brangelina” divorce spent days as a huge topic on Twitter and Facebook alike. Given the short attention span and Hollywood obsession of the majority of the population and social media in particular, it’s not surprising that social media favored one of these stories over the other.

However, it actually is more surprising that news organizations seemingly followed suit. Throughout the days following the attack, more information continued to come to light about the perpetrators of the bombings and the events as a whole. Despite this, many news sites featured huge stories about the Pitt-Jolie divorce, forcing new information about the bombings to the background and out of easy access.

As a newspaper or news source, clicks are important in terms of making money. The more traffic a website can generate, the more likely advertisers are to be interested in their business, and the more money they can potentially make. It’s crucially important, but not so at the expense of journalistic integrity.

News sites have the responsibility to prioritize the more important content to present to their readers, and it’s clear that information about a series of attacks that injured dozens of people should have been prioritized over two millionaires divorcing. Social media will likely continue to have skewed perceptions of the importance of news, but journalistic integrity must overcome the desire to attract pure views when running a publication online or in print.

It’s hot out. What seems like a never ending heat wave has been holding Philadelphia hostage for a few weeks now; the good news is it looks like it’s set to end soon.

As the weather cools off, many of us will surely breach the confines of our student quarters and resume spending time outdoors. The question is, what’s the best way to make use of the warm summer days you have left? We’ve got one suggestion for you: get involved with your community.

No, we don’t mean your community in terms of Drexel University, rather the West Philadelphia community as a whole. Our University City campus connects with two neighborhoods that make up what President Obama identified in January 2014 as a Promise Zone — Mantua and Powelton Village. Promise Zones are areas that have been highlighted as extremely impoverished  where the federal government partners with local leaders to do things like increase economic activity, improve educational opportunities, reduce crime and enhance public health.

Drexel University in one such local leader that has committed itself to forming and encouraging programs that get students involved with the surrounding West Philadelphia community. With a little help to obtain the proper resources, the goal is that residents will be able to lift themselves out of poverty. The University has made it not only possible but easy for students to get involved in this movement.

You can start by joining clubs that work with community members every week. Take Drexel Urban Growers (DUG), for instance. Their club consists of a network of both students and community residents, all of which learn the basics of gardening as it pertains to growing fresh produce with optimal nutrition. They run Community Harvest Days, volunteer activities at urban farms around Philly and host community picnics where students get to know members of the community.

As Philadelphia kids go back to school, the Lindy Scholars program will need tutors again. Their organization pairs Drexel students up with local kids up to three times a week to work on subjects like math, writing and reading. It’s an easy way to serve as a mentor and make a difference in your surrounding community.

You can also get involved at places like the Dornsife Center, which partners with Drexel students and faculty to create learning programs and provide a gathering space where local residents can get to know members of Drexel’s community firsthand. Or UConnect, which helps community members find the resources they need when they don’t know where else to turn to, no matter the problem.

The point is, there are many ways that you as a Drexel student can make a difference in Philadelphia. Just keep in mind that your community extends further than this campus.

Ask any Drexel student what the quarter system lacks and they’ll tell you time.

It’s hard to come by here. We get ten weeks to learn everything that our friends on the semester system learn in 15. Doing the math, one can pretty easily calculate that they get a little more than a whole month more than us (35 days or 840 hours) to get their studies down pat.

Until you’ve taught or studied on the quarter system, it’s hard to understand what it’s like to lose that extra month, or imagine the amount of stress a ten-week term adds to a student’s schedule.

Most members of the administration here at Drexel are highly qualified individuals, wielding various degrees from semester schools. A few months ago, back in June, they announced that the amount of time students would get to add or drop classes at the beginning of a term would change from two weeks to just one.

We can see how this decision makes sense on paper. They saw that students who were adding new classes Week 2 were falling wildly behind and thought ‘Well, that’s because they’re missing a whopping 20 percent of their term! If students are adding classes too late and falling behind, then why don’t we just decrease the add/drop time to one week? That’s 10 percent of the term. It’s not that different from the 13 percent of the term that students on the semester system are given to decide with a two week drop period. There. Problem solved. Easy peasy.’

However, to most students, including ourselves, the problem did not appear to be solved. For those of us that routinely take higher course loads with 18, 19 or 20 credits, we depended on those two weeks to gauge the amount of work our classes would expect and our compatibility with our professors to determine if we could swing that schedule for the entire term. To boil all of that decision making down to just one week is unfair — especially given what the first week of classes at Drexel usually entails.

Not familiar? Allow us to enlighten you. Week 1 at Drexel, lovingly referred to as syllabus week, is notoriously simple and overwhelming at the same time. The first day of classes is usually devoted entirely to syllabi. The professor goes over it with everyone. They try and make jokes, while you try and figure out if you can tell by their smile or the way they move their hands when they speak if they grade fairly. Some classes only meet once per week, and if that’s the case, good luck figuring out whether you’d like to drop it or not because you certainly won’t have much data to come to that conclusion with. If you meet a second time Week 1, you’ll probably skim the surface of your course material in lecture. You might get an assignment, but you have no idea if you’ve completed the assignment up-to-par until you get it back Week 2.

Given the content of the classes in Week 1, any Drexel student would be hesitant to tell you that what they learn over the course of those five days provides any indication of what their classes will be like in the following nine.

Many of us needed that second week to come to a firm conclusion about the weight of our course loads, and whether we could handle all that we signed up for.

While the math Drexel administrators used to make this decision adds up and the data on students falling behind is undoubtedly true, we feel as if they forgot to include a pretty important factor in this decision — student input.

We all have opinions about things like Drexel’s add/drop time frame because it affects us every term. We know what works with the quarter system and what doesn’t because we (no trademark violation intended) live it.

Before making decisions like these, administrators should be meeting with students to get their take on the situation because it is the student and not the administrator that this policy will affect.

Melania Trump gave an impassioned, beautiful speech in front of the entirety of the Republican National Convention about hard work and trustworthiness July 18. It was uplifting. It was powerful.

It was also stolen.

Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, Michelle Obama delivered a nearly identical speech in the context of her husband’s presidential bid.

Although Donald Trump and his campaign team initially denied any guilt (even trying at one point to blame Hillary Clinton), just two days later the campaign released a statement on the matter. It was from an in-house staff writer named Meredith McIver who claimed responsibility, saying she took notes on the Obama speech and allowed the notes to influence her writing.

That’s a fine explanation. It worked for McIver and the campaign. She offered her resignation to Trump and he denied it, so she remains employed as a staffer, but it remains an indictment of the Trump campaign that this plagiarized speech made it to the teleprompter at all.

But it’s not all their fault. It’s ours. Yes, all of ours. A culture that pervades higher education and warps young, educated adults to have a lax mindset on plagiarism, is to blame.

Think of any upper-level course you’ve taken at this university. We’re all under high pressure to do well, under the gun of a tough schedule and rigorous coursework. Our more difficult homework can take hours, and even the most devoted of us can find ourselves stretched thin for time as our work piles up throughout the week.

Given that context, it’s often easy for us to convince ourselves that finding even a little bit of outside help is reasonable and, honestly, to be expected. Be it using a solutions manual for tough math questions, borrowing answers off of friends or looking at online articles about your research paper topic, you tend to refer to external sources before you dive in to work on assignments yourself.

But this system isn’t a great time saver. It’s problematic — especially in the long term. It teaches students that problems have work arounds and that, when the going gets rough, what seem to be major problems can often be solved with a well-executed Google search or a quick text to a peer.

The thing is, professional work assignments often don’t have work arounds. You have to learn to work through the assignments your career throws at you on your own, especially if you work in a highly visible field, like our friend McIver.

The official statement released by the Trump campaign claims that Melania Trump’s speech was accidentally plagiarized — but the idea that a young professional would resort to “borrowing” from an outside source under immense pressure doesn’t seem very far-fetched at all.

The highly stressful environment of  educational institutes perpetuate plagiarism as a given for students. The idea of saving time, and yes, energy, overshadows the fact that finding instant ramifications to our problems today may stunt our ability to handle more daunting future problems when we enter the workforce. Life stresses don’t always have quick fixes, and being able to work through immense pressure during formative college years is ultimately for the best, because it hones the ability of students to survive what life throws at them.

Even something as daunting as representing the Trumps.

A routine traffic stop — your tail light is out. The officer walks to your car door. You inform the officer that you have a legal concealed firearm on your person. He tells you not to move, and you instinctively put your hands up. The officer then shoots you five times and you die, on film, in front of your girlfriend.

That doesn’t sound correct, does it? Something is wrong here, and hint, hint: it’s not Philando Castile failing to obey police orders.

Our justice system will ensure Castile’s death won’t go unnoticed, of course. This officer will surely experience the maximum penalty — several months paid leave, and a refusal to indict by a grand jury. We’ve heard the story a dozen times now, and it has played out hundreds of times outside the media spotlight.

One voice, however, in this case, ought to be speaking out, and speaking out loudly. We don’t usually think of them as an ally of progressive causes, hashtag Black Lives Matter or otherwise. They frequently draw the ire of progressives for their hard-line attitudes and refusal to compromise on the smallest of legislation. They’re the National Rifle Association, and in the day after this shooting, at press time, they have remained conspicuously silent.

A man was extra-judicially executed by an agent of the state for the crime of “possessing a legal concealed firearm while black.” Surely, if the organization is dedicated to protecting the second amendment rights of American citizens, ought they to be speaking out against this egregious violation?

Let’s travel back to 1967, before the assault weapons ban, before any tight gun control legislation. The Black Panthers decided to exercise their right to open carry in Oakland, California, because they felt threatened by the police. (Sound familiar?) Residents took offense, and a Republican state legislator introduced a bill to ban open carry. The Panthers marched on the state capitol, armed, to exercise their second amendment rights. The open carry ban was promptly signed into law by none other than Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, and a spate of other gun control legislation was signed into law across the country — mostly by Republican legislators, the same ones now beholden to the NRA.

What does this serve to show? It’s not about the gun; it’s about who’s carrying it. Rural conservative whites can own firearms, while urban blacks cannot, according to our political system.

An innocent man was turned into a hashtag because he exercised his second amendment right to carry a firearm. Is this not the dystopian nightmare future the NRA has warned us about? Their silence is louder than any lukewarm statement. If the NRA truly wishes to be an organization which represents all gun owners, and not just white ones, they should be the first to speak up and condemn this crime in the strongest terms.

The post NRA’s silence speaks volumes appeared first on The Triangle.

As of June 16, Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to pass a soda tax. Beginning Jan. 1, 2017 everyone who purchases soda within the municipality of Philadelphia is subject to a 1.5 cent per ounce surcharge. The annual $91 million in funds this tax is expected to raise will go to pre-kindergarten programs, the city’s community schools, parks, recreations and libraries, which all sounds pretty reasonable, right? We mean, other than the fact that the city’s stripping away your freedom to slowly rot your own insides to do it.

And although we love to sip the nectar, let’s all admit that the human relationship with soda is a tumultuous one. Sure, it tastes great, but the evidence that soda consumption is a significant contributor to obesity is irrefutable. Soft drinks can contain up to 400 fiber-less calories. That means, regardless of how much you drink, your chances of feeling full significantly afterward are close to nil. Research has shown that regardless of how many calories of soda people consume, they are unlikely to limit their caloric intake at their next meal — meaning all that soda is actually doing is adding extra weight to your waistline and extra sugar to your bloodstream.

Those who oppose this tax believe the increased price of soda in low-income Philly neighborhoods will deliver a crushing blow to what are already economically depressed areas. But didn’t that blow hit long ago, with the rise of soda’s popularity?

Although the price tag may not be explicit, soda has already cost low-income Philly neighborhoods plenty. Big Soda has been riding off of the backs of these communities for decades. As the soda price stands now, Philadelphians can buy a two-liter bottle of soda for less than a dollar — an unreasonably low price for a beverage that’s shown to increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis and kidney issues.

In order to predict possible health outcomes, a professor at Harvard University and Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner co-led a Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study. Analyses of this study claimed that over the next 10 years, Philly’s soda tax may lead to 18,000 fewer cases of obesity, 350-440 fewer deaths, a $98 million decrease in medical costs and 1,000 fewer new cases of Type II diabetes a year.

Perhaps this is why those in favor of the tax choose to look at it as a potential long-term benefit, rather than an immediate inconvenience. Using the tax revenue to improve early childhood education will help to bring some relief to low-income neighborhoods by improving their quality of life and breaking the cycle of poverty and, what’s more, poor health standards generally associated with low-income neighborhoods are likely to see a decrease in case numbers.

The post Sweet, sweet money appeared first on The Triangle.

Flickr: e-Magine Art

Drexel students have always had a love-hate relationship with the administration. The term “The Drexel Shaft” dates to well before anyone at the University today can remember, and its legacy seems content to live on for student bodies to come. However, we’re finally beginning to move past the top-down style of administration which has been the hallmark of the University for so long.

A new student organization called 4th Dimension organized a discussion panel with the administration to discuss the drug policy at Drexel University April 26. What was once as a zero tolerance policy which suspended students for two terms on first strike has been transformed into a system which reviews policy violations on a case-to-case basis. Moreover, there was a promise from the administration to review the controversial “Responsible Dragon Protocol” – which protects students who call for assistance for themselves or others while using drugs or alcohol. This discussion goes beyond making a simple change in the policy’s language to better encourage safe conduct among students. It shows that students are passionate about their community and the health of their fellow students.

What we have here is an instance in which a group of students came together to discuss a very specific issue with the folks upstairs in a public forum which will hopefully precipitate into an evolving relationship that will create a more positive and nurturing university. The unpopular, unprogressive drug policy has been made a thing of the past with the help of student involvement, and we hope that in the future we can see more positive change through student activism.

USGA has organized town hall meetings in the past, but this roundtable was one of the first we’ve seen where palpable change was produced, or at least set the slow wheels of policy change moving. Productive discussion is difficult in a town hall with hundreds of attendees, so we’d like to see more roundtable discussions like this in the future – with set agendas and narrow focuses. Not only that, we would have a more appropriate angle to encourage students to attend if they have a concern they don’t feel strongly enough to bring up in a general forum.

The Triangle encourages organizations, especially student government, to make their voices heard through topical meetings like these which allow for in-depth participation by students, faculty and administration. To student organizations as well, it turns out that if there’s a chronic issue that your organization would like to address, you can sometimes actually invite the university to talk with you in an environment of mutual respect. The physical Drexel Shaft may not be with us any longer – and it appears the administration is attempting to dissolve its concept as well.

The post Around and around we go appeared first on The Triangle.

Drexel.edu

Study space at the the Hagerty Library is hard to come by. After the third floor was absorbed by the law school in 2008, us common-folk students were left with two floors and a basement. During midterms and finals weeks, there’s hardly a minute when every available seat isn’t full. It’s not uncommon to see students studying between bookshelves or hunkered down with their laptops hunched against the wall.

When the W.W. Hagerty Library opened in 1983, it fit Drexel’s needs as an academic institution. The entire library was available to the university’s 15,000 students and it provided a place where they could cram for exams with a respectable amount of elbow room. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. We need more room. We’ve outgrown the Hagerty. Our total student enrollment (including graduate students) is now around 26,000. Granted, Drexel’s Queen Lane and Hahnemann campuses have their own libraries, and Drexel has expanded its study space on main campus to include the Library Learning Terrace over at Race– but this doesn’t cushion the fact that the Hagerty is still burdened with more students than our library was ever meant to accommodate.

The vast majority of students enrolled today will not see a new library during their time at Drexel. We think it is within the means of the university to provide us with more space to study while the Hagerty remains our primary library. Drexel has seen a substantial increase in population, but academic resources have failed to grow proportionally. While we believe there’s a new library in the works, we students haven’t been told anything about when the library will be rebuilt to meet our student body’s needs.

The post Put this on the books appeared first on The Triangle.

We have enough problems trying to get young folks to vote in general elections–why even bother trying to get them to the polls in primaries? In our first-past-the-post election, you’re constricted to whatever schlubs the two parties put up in the general, which most of us only vote in every four years because apparently the Presidency is the only elected position which matters.

We suspect, of course, given huge youth support for a certain independent senator from Vermont, this may not be the case this year, but the fact remains: you should be aware that the polls are open in Pennsylvania April 26, and if you are registered to a political party, you should vote in their primary. (Voters registered as “independant” cannot vote in primaries in PA, even if they have a consistent democratic/republican “independent” voting streak.)

It’s not just the presidency that is at stake: Pat Toomey(R-PA) has reached the end of his Senatorial term, and at least three folks are running for his seat in the Democratic primary, and himself and a competitor in the Republican primary. Depending on your district, folks may be running in your representative’s primary election. (Or, just as frequently, it may be uncontested.) Three people are attempting to primary incumbent Chaka Fattah, PA 2nd District representative (your representative if you reside West of Broad Street) and one person will appear on the Republican ballot for the same position. (Good luck James A Jones!)

If you’re still lacking for information, we recommend going to Vote411.org, which will give you a preview of your ballot before you vote, and give you information on the candidates and the positions they are running for. (Finally you can get a handle on who your state representative in Harrisburg is and what exactly they do!)

Back in 2012, only 38 percent of people between the ages of 18-24 voted in the general election, and even fewer in the primary. Today, with online voter registration and incredible ease of finding information about candidates and polling places, there is absolutely no excuse for that number not to grow. If you live in the freshman dorms, your polling place will most likely be the Drexel Armory–you can stop by between classes! (If you live in affiliated or off campus housing you will have to do your own research; check www.pavoterservices.state.pa.us to find your polling place.)

No matter whether you’re voting for Bernie and the glorious socialist utopia, or Donald Trump and 1000 years of darkness, or Ted Cruz and the Christian theocracy as our founders intended, or Hillary Clinton and business as usual, or John Kasich and the brokered GOP convention that burns down Cleveland, get out to the polls April 26. Seriously, get out and vote! It’s your duty as an American citizen, and you get a cool sticker, too!

Flickr: whiteafrican

The post Do your duty. VOTE! appeared first on The Triangle.

In most universities, our equivalent of the Student Activity Fee Allocation Committee is controlled by an elected student government. All folks in student organizations have a vested interest in student government, and therefore have an interest to vote: millions of dollars of student activity fees (or other universities’ equivalent) are at stake.

At Drexel University, USGA has very few enumerated powers. USGA is in charge of no significant amount of money: SAFAC is. With the new Dragon ‘24 council, there is also now an alternative advisory board to the administration. Because they don’t really do anything visible on campus, most students don’t know what the USGA does.

To paraphrase ex-presidential candidate Marco Rubio, it is time to dispel with this notion that students don’t know what USGA is doing. They know exactly what USGA is doing: nothing. And that’s why today most students don’t feel that it’s important to get out the vote.

To form an effective student government, the student government must have more power than merely advising the administration. Advice is just advice, and its greatest quality is that it is ignorable. An effective student government must have actual power, and to do such a thing, it must have real influence over the student body. The best way to do that is through cold, hard cash — but of course most cash is distributed through SAFAC, a body to which students must apply, and be approved by previous SAFAC members.

Because they are appointed, rather than voted on by the student body, SAFAC is not accountable to the student body as a whole but rather a small and select group of students.

Imagine that all your government funds were allocated by some investment banker at Wells Fargo. Even if he’s your friend, he isn’t beholden to your opinions or ideas unless you’re someone persuasive or important. SAFAC purports to “[apply] consistent unbiased funding decisions to represent the interests of Drexel undergraduate students” on its website, but has no real oversight by Drexel students. It’s a system supported only by folks who are already in the system with students distributing millions of dollars of funding with no oversight from the student body, save those brave enough to apply early on in their college careers and and presumably become part of the system.

The Triangle Editorial Board proposes that at the very least SAFAC become accountable to the student body whose fees it distributes, but ideally that USGA have a greater say in the distribution of Student Activity Fee funding. We all paid for it, and most of us (who are not working for an independent student newspaper) are also receiving it–shouldn’t we have a say over how it is distributed?

The post Your SAFAC dollars at work? appeared first on The Triangle.