In the past week, a piece of incredibly frightening and sad news reached the Drexel University campus. Jasmine Wright, a former student who earned a graduate degree from the School of Public Health, was murdered in her West Philadelphia apartment. While student deaths are relatively common at a university of our size, they are rarely so violent and so tragic.

It’s hard to imagine being taken so quickly and unexpectedly. Jasmine lived her life with the intention of benefiting others and extending their lives, but it was her own that ended so abruptly. The Triangle cannot even begin to imagine the pain her loved ones may be going through during this time and we fully extend our support and condolences for those living with memory of her in their hearts.

The Daily News reported that Wright traveled to several countries in Africa as part of her public health work, and while an undergraduate at The Pennsylvania State University, she raised $2,361 for the charity group Global Brigades. Four years earlier, Wright had created a mobile clinic for members of a village in West Africa, providing medical and dental care to populations most likely in dire need of easier healthcare access. These feats alone could permanently changed the lives of the members of those the her acts touched, and her legacy will no doubt continue to inspire the friends and family she left behind.

While this is unquestionably a time of of loss and pain, it is important to remember that it is also a time of reflection. We, as members of the Drexel community, should take pride in the life that Wright led, in addition to lamenting her loss. Wright was one of us; she took her Drexel experience and took used it to help others across the world. It is in awe that we think about what she would have accomplished if her life had not been cut short. Her life should remind us that we play a part in improving the world, and that we each are capable of improving the lives of those we meet with our actions.

More than that, this editorial is about condolences and extending kindness that simulates what Wright shared with others. She will be missed. Her love will hang in the hearts of those she cared for the most. Her life has affected so many others in such a positive way, that we hope to embody at least a little bit more of her memory in this piece, where it can be archived and looked back upon for years to come.

The post Here’s to you, Jasmine Wright appeared first on The Triangle.

Back in ‘61, South Carolina legislators put a Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state capitol, as a big “up yours” to the federal government. It wasn’t considered a huge deal at the time, or even for quite a while afterwards. Several Southern states still have remnants of the stars and bars in their flags. Georgia’s state flag contained it verbatim until 2001, and Mississippi’s flag features it to this very day. Proponents call it “heritage, not hate.”

On the other hand, Washington and Lee University took the battle flag down from Lee Chapel, noted final resting place of Confederate general (and post-war W&L president) Robert E. Lee, in 2014. You will find not find it officially displayed in the town of Lexington, birthplace of Stonewall Jackson and location of Lee Chapel, since the city banned it in 2011. You will also not find it at Arlington Cemetery, formerly Lee’s own plantation. Why is this?

The Confederate battle flag is the sign of a state which was an enemy to the Union. After Reconstruction, they all but disappeared, and only really began to reappear after the assault on Jim Crow laws beginning in the 1930s, and continuing into the 1960s, when the South Carolina state legislature put it up. The flag is a symbol of all-white juries bald-facedly acquitting cold-blooded murderers of black children in the face of insurmountable evidence. Of multiple bombings of Dr. Martin Luther King’s private residence. Of states so terrified of integration that they re-wrote their own constitutions to shut down their own school systems rather than let black children go to school with white children.

Regardless of what claim it may have to being a symbol of heritage in addition to its undoubted hateful legacy, it’s hard to argue that the flag is appropriate for a capitol. Shouldn’t state symbols unify rather than divide? If the city of Lexington, Virginia, grave site of Stonewall Jackson as well as Lee, can ban display of the battle flag on city property, then why must South Carolina still fly it in an official capacity?

What’s more, the flag used now is not even historical — the Confederacy started out with “stars and bars” quite similar to the flag of the Union. Later designs replaced the circle of stars in the top left with the well-known cross motif, but the Duke brothers never used the official Confederate flag.

If a majority of South Carolinians really want to assert that “the South will rise again,” which itself seems questionable, they should advocate for a new and more accurate flag to be put up. But protesters in Charleston and elsewhere may rightfully assert the rebel cross stands for racism and Ku Klux Klan terrorism as much as anything else. Either way, the battle flag must come down.

The post South Carolina, tear down that flag appeared first on The Triangle.

Life sucks, and then you die. But hell, at least you can get stuff done every once in a while. Or at least, that’s what we think it must feel like after finishing four or five years studying at Drexel University. But let’s be real, the graduates this year should be looking onward with some hope for the future. At least graduates from Drexel University.

Graduating college seniors across the country are facing an uncertain job market, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and unpaid internships that specify the applicant must have three years experience. Universities have been slashing academic budgets in favor of new student amenities — bigger recreation centers with integrated saunas and waterpark facilities, dormitories that look like hotels from the future, complete with linen service, stadiums with capacities of 60,000 or more, etc.

Meanwhile, research dollars have become ever more important as well, and increasing research specialization and complexity has come at the expense of professors’ teaching time. Who has time to teach students how to write a resume when the real money is in 3D-printed nanobioinfomatics research?

Across the country, then, seniors are graduating less prepared and more indebted than ever before. It would be foolish to say this trend does not extend to Drexel University; after all, our main engineering labs were demolished for “luxury” apartments. But Drexel at least has one difference — we have a co-op program. Our seniors are graduating with six months to a year and a half of real experience in their field, and that may just be enough to push them over the hiring wall.

So sure, you’re graduating with multiple thousands of dollars of debt. Guess what? You also know how to write a resume and how to handle yourself in a job interview. Sallie Mae might garnish your wages for the next 20 years, but at least you’ll have a job so you can get started on paying off your student debts. So while your friends are desperately trying to file for Chapter seven or Chapter 13 bankruptcy only to find that it doesn’t apply to student loans, you’ll be sitting pretty with your job and 15 percent wage garnishment.
Let’s face it, as much as we like to complain about rising tuition, crippling student loan debt and de-emphasization of academics, Drexel University really is your best bet in the American higher education system.

The post A little less depressing news for grads appeared first on The Triangle.

Americans are notable for our love of football. It’s the most American sport, isn’t it? To quote George Will, “Football combines the two worst things about America: It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.” How could any red-blooded American resist something like that?

Europeans (and the rest of the world) of course are also obsessed with their own bizarre game, also called “football” for some reason, enough that their “football” World Cup draws people from all over the world, and furthermore, apparently draws bribes to the pockets of officials of Federation Internationale de Football Association, which most of us know as FIFA. (We of course refer to the sport by its proper name, “soccer,” to avoid confusion.)

It’s been common knowledge that FIFA is a ludicrously corrupt organization, even more so than the International Olympic Committee, whose demands at Olympic venues now regularly include dedicated traffic lanes in Olympic cities for officials and open bars for IOC members at nearly every event. FIFA officials straight-up accepted bribes for World Cup votes, for instance.
Well, the U.S. Department of Justice has decided that enough is enough, and has arrested and charged at least 14 officials under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. This is, of course the law that took down the mob, and the DOJ has a 93 percent success rate in convictions under RICO. Though it is early to speculate, there’s a decent chance that the DOJ could burn FIFA to the ground over this — the 164-page indictment (which is careful never to say “football” where they mean “soccer”) was the result of 24 years of investigation, and this is likely only the first in a long line of arrests. (Already, Switzerland, where the arrests occurred, has barred FIFA President Seth Blatter from leaving the country, along with other high-ranking-but-not-yet-indicted FIFA officials.)

One might think that this unilateral action would draw international ire, but according to BBC News, “God Bless America!” has been the reaction across the British Isles and the Continent. No government was willing to root FIFA out, since the possibility of being barred from the league is political suicide. America, of course, doesn’t care about soccer, so the political fallout is minimal, and our DOJ can, with confidence, eviscerate FIFA and leave its corpse for the vultures. Hooray!

We like to think of ourselves as a sort of “world police force,” and while this is usually applied to our unilateral military actions overseas, it’s nice for once to see one of our foreign adventures leave a positive impression.

Unfortunately, we’re still many indictments away from getting the Europeans to call it “soccer.” But with luck, we’ll get there.

The post USA fed up with FIFA appeared first on The Triangle.

With the exception of Drexel University, campuses everywhere are filled with graduates, in caps and gowns and smiling faces. Commencement at Columbia University was so prestigious that the iconic Empire State Building lit up its peak with the Columbia colors of blue and white.

The moment most graduates look forward to is certainly an impressionable one — the handshake with the president of their university. This was a privilege that student activist and sexual assault survivor Emma Sulkowicz was denied: Columbia’s President Lee Bollinger looked away as his student carried the same mattress that she was raped on across the podium, a walking reminder of the administration’s failure to protect and carry out justice for its students. According to The New York Times, a spokeswoman later said that the mattress had been between the two and prevented a handshake — which was apparently not worth the extra effort for an exemplary student. You aren’t slick, Mr. Bollinger, and your failure to stand in solidarity with Sulkowicz is duly noted.

It’s been a month since 20-year-old feminist and LGBTQ activist Grace Mann of the University of Mary Washington was murdered by her 30-year-old male roommate. This came after over 700 messages on mobile app Yik Yak promoting violence and rape against Mann and fellow members of the Feminists United group on campus, who had successfully campaigned to disband the men’s rugby team because the athletes had led a sexist and rape-referencing chant. And now, people who claim to be “men’s rights activists” have been celebrating her murder as a lesson against misandry (discrimination against men), asserting a threatening idea for other feminists and the like.

Violence against women is unfortunately not a new occurrence, and definitely more than just a cheap plot device on “Game of Thrones.” Catherine Montoya, a beloved LGBTQ activist, was killed in her Atlanta home April 14 by a man who had stabbed his wife earlier that day. Pakistani women’s rights activist Sabeen Mahmud was shot to death after hosting an event on “disappeared people.”

Feminism is not a trigger word. Discussion of it is not something to be afraid of. Feminism is not an extreme. Feminism is the bare minimum of how society should function and the equality people should believe. And people are dying for it. Mr. Bollinger, you cannot simply excuse away why you did not choose to shake Sulkowicz’s hand. You should’ve stood up. You should’ve shook her hand. You should’ve clapped. In fact, you should’ve bowed, because she showed more bravery than most people will ever be able to in their lifetime. But since you didn’t, we proud feminists here at The Triangle surely will.

The post You’re not slick, Mr. Bollinger appeared first on The Triangle.

To feel the breeze in your hair, to watch the trees pass by with the brilliance of spring colors, to look at oncoming traffic in order to avoid certain death — these are the wonderful things to look forward to this Bike to Work Week, and we at The Triangle endorse all of them.

As of August 2014, there were over 600 cities that had access to bike share programs. With the introduction of Indego, Philadelphia has joined that list, and together with the growing number of bike lanes it has become even easier to get from point A to point B by grabbing a bike from the nearest terminal. Biking has a certain appeal; it lacks the slowness of walking, but also the isolation of a car. Biking is a swift, elegant way to take in the spring day with an adventurous sense of imminent doom at at literally every corner.

While you’re deciding whether or not it’s worth it to wear your helmet so you don’t mess up your hair, take the time to appreciate how convenient it is that you live in such a bike-friendly city. There are few cities with such great service to bike lanes. They’re practically a norm in the city’s new designs, at least in most major areas, and it’s created one of the largest bike commuter communities in the country.

However, there are still some things that Indego needs to iron out. Bikeshare.com states in its list that Philadelphia’s program is still in “pre-release,” and considering the poor availability of bicycles in the terminals, it certainly seems that way. Additionally, other cities are adding bike lanes more rapidly and what’s more, those bike lanes often feature a barrier that protects drivers and cyclists from each other. The new mayor will have to keep Philadelphia competitive in bicycle safety.

But until then, wear your helmets, folks.

The post More cities become biker friendly appeared first on The Triangle.

The National Security Agency was finally challenged in a civilian court and the results are in: Unwarranted surveillance and mass storage of telephone metadata, is, incredibly, in violation of our Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

Well, no, that’s not entirely true. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t even bother with the Constitutional argument, ruling in 97 pages that the NSA was in violation of even the section of the PATRIOT Act it claimed authorization under — a provision which is set to expire in June barring an extension from Congress, which is increasingly unlikely in today’s political climate.

Does this represent a great victory for privacy? Probably not. The NSA was collecting information about nearly every single phone call in the United States, and a large portion of phone calls abroad, without warrants, and without really any kind of reason except, “Well, they might be phoning terrorists or something.”

This is like a federal court finally finding murder to be in violation of laws against homicide, or that a traitor acted in an unconstitutional manner. It’s not a huge stretch to come to these conclusions, and was obvious to everyone except presidents Bush and Obama.

The government pulls stuff like this all the time, of course. Procedure tells us that Congress must declare war before the President mobilizes the U.S. military to topple foreign governments, which has not happened since WWII. Procedure tells us that foreign action should at least be approved by the President, though the CIA can apparently send exploding cigars to Castro on a regular basis (in history’s most hilarious and least successful assassination attempt). Procedure also tells us that the Senatorial filibuster is a legitimate way to govern; so what good is it? No one follows procedure if there are no consequences.

We have a strong tradition of civilian control of the military in the United States. The President authorizes deployments of military forces, and the military acts within the boundaries set up or else people get court-martialed, or at least fired. (Most famously, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur after his botched and unauthorized invasion of China in the Korean War, who was relieved of his post despite massive public support.)

Our intelligence agencies have no such tradition, and are acting almost autonomously, and in violation of basic Constitutional rights. As a world power, it is understandable that the government wishes to keep certain things secret from the general public. It is, however, completely unreasonable for intelligence agencies, with farcical Congressional authority, to overstep their boundaries and violate basic Constitutional rights.

A civilian court has declared the NSA’s activities to be totally illegal, but who will go to prison? At best the NSA will have to destroy its ill-gotten records, but the American people will not be compensated for this injustice.

The post NSA unlikely to face justice appeared first on The Triangle.

The following is the opinion of the Emerald editorial board and not the organization as a whole. The editorial board is: Bayley Sandy, opinion editor; Sami Edge, editor in chief; Eder Campuzano, director of audience engagement; Kenneth Osborn, art director; Nik Streng and Kira Hoffelmeyer, managing editors. Hoffelmeyer is also a member of Kappa Alpha Theta.

The University of Oregon community has had a rough year.

Last May, the Eugene Police Department released a report detailing allegations that three UO men’s basketball players had raped a female student.

Sexual assault on college campuses has been a national issue for some time, but this is the event that forced the UO to make it a priority.

Protesters stormed Johnson Hall to demand a change. We did the same within the pages of the newspaper. And administrators and the student government appointed groups to tackle the issue.

Things are getting better.

The UO is hiring a new vice president to better coordinate sexual assault prevention and response efforts on an administrative level. The university also gathered notable students to produce a video that affirms the notion that it’s on all of us to help end sexual violence.

Groups like the Organization Against Sexual Assault are aiding the efforts of existing institutions like the Sexual Wellness Advocacy Team and the Women’s Center in educating the community and spearheading assault prevention in a grassroots manner.

Just last week, the School of Journalism and Communication and SWAT co-hosted a screening of The Hunting Ground, an HBO documentary that explores the issue of sexual assault.

The film played to a packed house. It was encouraging to see that there’s a continued interest in learning about sexual assault and discussing how to address it as a community. Plenty of folks participated in the conversation following the screening as well. That was fantastic.

Unfortunately, that earnest dialogue turned negative after the film when a man in the audience asked UO psychology professor and sexual assault researcher Jennifer Freyd about her definition of consent. Some attendees told him to shut up and leave.

When advocates respond this way, people reject the positive message. History has proven that the most outspoken members of any group are the ones who are remembered, not often for the better.

We recognize that vocal extremists don’t represent advocates as a whole. In fact, the leaders of the advocacy groups were very tolerant, understanding and collaborative.

Freyd, rather than attacking him, invited him to discuss his confusion one-on-one.

Creating a hostile culture — whether it’s freely telling rape jokes or shouting at people who are confused — is the opposite of progress. Freyd’s approach highlighted how progress will occur — with patience, persistence and education.

There have been multiple instances when opportunities for education and action turned ugly.

One of the UO Senate’s Task Force on Sexual Assault’s recommendations to the administration was to limit the expansion of Fraternity and Sorority Life after it was found that members of those student groups report sexual assault in higher numbers than their peers.

That spurred the ASUO Senate to consider a similar recommendation. What followed was a meeting filled with hostile conversations that utilized stereotypes to condemn FSL. Fortunately, the student senate pulled the resolution from consideration.

But the fervor exhibited at that meeting is emblematic of the problems we see in too many approaches. Rather than throwing the book at FSL, we must aim to help the organization solve those problems.

Hostility doesn’t solve anything — cooperation does. We implore anyone who’s raised torches and pitchforks in the movement to end sexual assault to extend an olive branch instead.

Let FSL benefit from your knowledge and cooperation. Give sorority and fraternity presidents the tools they need to educate their fellow members.

Adversarial behavior alienates. It drives us apart. We should aim to empathize and educate if we want to move forward.

Sexual assault prevention is not as easy as hunting down a problem student and expelling him or her. Or shutting down one particular group or club that’s been proven to perpetually commit sexual violence. There are no obvious villains or dark figures stalking our campus seeking to do harm.

Solving this problem requires a shift in attitudes.

It’s been a long year, but we’ve seen progress. Things are getting better. But we need to realize that we all want the same things.

We all want to feel safe on campus. We want to look at sex in a positive light, not deal with it in a criminal capacity. And we want to trust that our fellow students, campus leaders and administrators are working to make those a reality.

We can get there. We just need to do a better job of working together to get it done.

It was less than a year ago that protests spread across the nation with the slogan, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Only some months before that there were live video feeds of the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, at night, with residents shouting at police armed with assault rifles. In light of the protests today, it seems the media forgot the lesson that they learned back then: Stop reporting sensationalist aspects of civil rights protests — especially the ones that result from an action of violence.

In stories from Ferguson, we saw reporters focusing on the looters and arsonists that were automatically associated with the protests. Suddenly, the protests as a whole were labeled violent. What reporters failed to discuss were the Ferguson residents who cleaned up the broken windows of shops, and even gang members who protected businesses from looters because they were afraid of media coverage taking away from the more important issue: police brutality and the institutional racism that allowed it.

Earlier this week, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed activist Deeray McKesson. Blitzer kept asking McKesson about the violence in Baltimore, the police cars being burned and injuries sustained by both civilians and police. Blitzer asked him, “There’s no excuse for this violence, right?” McKesson, frustrated, responded, “And there’s no excuse for the seven people that the Baltimore police department has killed in the past year either, right?”

Reporting with such a clear agenda as Blitzer’s doesn’t just fail to do justice to the nature of the protesters, but also the nature of the whole city. Just as often as CNN and Fox News show us images of burning police vehicles and broken windows, there are unseen scenes of Baltimore residents cleaning up after the nights of the protests, taking brooms — not Molotov cocktails — to the the streets of the city. Videos of protesters standing with their arms outstretched in front of the crowd, trying to calm the tension by saying, “Don’t give them a reason,” seem to fail to reach media coverage. Instead, we watch on as a mother beats her son who was participating in the riots — a disturbingly subtle nod of approval from the media to treat protesters this way.

Peaceful protesters are still putting their hands up. They’re still linking arms. They’re still painting signs, singing songs, chanting chants, hoping for a better future. They’re still marching. We’re just not watching.

The post Not all protests are riots appeared first on The Triangle.

While students often complain that Drexel University accepts more students than its facilities (or endowment) can support, this time it was unintentional: Drexel erroneously sent out acceptance letters to 495 applicants who had earlier been denied or had incomplete applications.

This is not a problem unique to Drexel, but it is not unique at Drexel either; who can forget that in February 2014, the Steinbright Career Development Center revealed 5,379 student ID numbers, or that others’ birthdates and GPAs were sent to engineering freshmen the year before.

It suggests an institutional failure to properly safeguard students’ private information. Each time the University pledges reform, but each time another major incident occurs. Besides affecting students and applicants, it puts the University’s reputation at risk. Better privacy protection, then, should not just be preached but must be practiced.

The bulk of privacy risks come from student data that is not optional to maintain. Often disclosure is presented as an accident, but that may be too charitable. After all, the importance of being careful with sensitive records is obvious, so that is inexcusable that administrators would not think twice before sending out e-mails and letters involving them. These large-scale errors would usually be prevented by a simple second, third and even fourth look over.

Drexel has chosen to primarily implement a technological solution, in which the e-mail system detects the format of Social Security Numbers and the like and ensures the sender really meant to include them. It also attempts (unfruitfully) to rectify disclosures by removing e-mails from the Drexel servers. Neither approach does anything about the human error that starts it all, though, and cannot stop someone steadfastly determined to be lazy.

We rarely hear about the University employees who make these mistakes; the situation is preferably dealt with quietly. While employees have their privacy too, someone at the University must take responsibility for data usage errors and make a public apology — which will probably be much more effective in teaching a lesson in carefulness than shifting the burden to a computer.

The post Accidental acceptance letters appeared first on The Triangle.