February was supposed to be a month to pay tribute to generations of African Americans who struggled to achieve full citizenship in the United States. For many at Drexel University, Black History Month passed by unappreciated until the very dying days. The airwaves were disturbed Feb. 20 via email, not by the pomp and fanfare of celebration, but by the now-often expected regret of tragedy. Once again, in failing to proclaim what the school stands for and celebrates, the Drexel University leadership has been caught pants down.

It is this reticence that the hundred or so students who participated in the silent sit-in last Friday lamented. For far too long the school leadership has failed to clearly and unequivocally take a stance, for fear of retaliation. Instead, the university spells out cliched statements of “zero tolerance” and directs students to obscure offices in the basement of MacAlister Hall, all the while decrying the lack of school spirit. Months like February, which are imbued with meaning, give the school leadership a chance to rally the students behind a voice that spells out our ideals. But the silence from the school leadership was loud this month. A silence that, in failing to acknowledge the merit of an oppressed people, perhaps gave credence to the oppressor.

The college campus is a community that largely mirrors the ideals of a diverse society, and that is rightfully lauded. And just like the larger society, a campus community is bound to be unpredictable, with some students who hold views that differ starkly with established ideals such as the equality of African Americans. But what elevates a college campus is the environment it provides for students to practice what ought to be and not merely what is. That is the promise that thousands of eager students ascribe to as they matriculate. Imagine their surprise when they are the victims of such cowardly acts of anonymous racism. We do not wish to insinuate that silence from the university leadership led directly to that damned racial slur. That would be reductionist. But it left a vacuum that allowed a fringe idea to permeate.

Last week’s discriminatory incident is on our tongues just because we heard about it. But it certainly is not the only discriminatory incident against a black student on this campus. And it will probably not be the last of its kind if the status quo prevails. It is now a question of yet more importance whether the school will maintain its reactive leadership-by-email stance, or practically show us what it stands for through proactive action.

In our fast-paced 10-week terms at Drexel University, it’s easy to get lost in the daily struggle for survival. When rushing from class to class or commuting back-and-forth from co-op, do we ever really think about what happens with our trash? Many times, it can be easy to just throw all garbage into the nearest waste bin, but shouldn’t we take the extra few seconds to decide what we can recycle?

As students at a university, we go through countless sheets of paper. Despite utilizing technology for note-taking, assignments and tests, there is still an abundance of paper being used which makes the importance of recycling even more crucial. If these materials aren’t recycled, they will likely end up adding to the monstrous amounts of waste already piling up at the local junkyard.

Thankfully with Drexel’s participation in the RecycleMania initiative, the campus’ single-stream recycling program and recycling bins alongside many of the trash cans across campus it isn’t too hard for Drexel students to live a green lifestyle. The Drexel Green initiative by Campus Services is also a great reference for basics to follow. They outline the best practices in order to follow as students on an urban campus.

The benefits of recycling are numerous and in an environment such as Drexel’s campus, there’s really no excuse to be wasteful. That’s not to say that the programs always come with a few exceptions. Recycling old batteries, computer ink, cell phones and other electronics can turn into a hassle, but when that’s the only aspect to worry about you’ve got nothing to fear. Just a quick email to Drexel’s recycling program can reward you with the next viable date to drop those electronics off to somewhere nearby. There are also often bins specifically for battery disposal within many of Drexel’s buildings throughout the year.

By recycling, we are creating less water and air pollution since the materials that you recycle go into new products, thus saving space in landfills as well. Although recycling is possibly the largest form of giving back to the environment, there are many other areas in which an individual can make a difference such as reducing your energy consumption and using reusable grocery bags to minimize plastic and paper bag consumption. Our planet won’t last forever, so finding ways to reduce our impact on the environment is the crucial mark. With all of these methods combined, there’s a good chance that Earth has a fighting chance of survival.

It’s great to see that we attend a university whose focus on sustainability, and recycling is truly apparent compared to many other institutions of education. They could easily sweep this sort of practice under the rug, but they don’t. Instead, they strive to be an innovative and environmentally-friendly school that knows the quality of the school’s area depends on these programs.

Drexel University famously prides itself on its commitment to civic engagement. Right from our onset as freshmen, we are continuously indoctrinated with this testament as we wade our way through the trusty Civic 101 course. We are taught that Drexel’s neighbors are its most glorious asset, and while the university does indeed remain effectively engaged with many of its neighbors, we’ve come to neglect some of our neighbors who are just a little further into the city: Kensington.

We’re only selectively helping populations surrounding us when we should be extending our utmost attention to our neighbors who are struggling with opioid addictions in parts of the city like Kensington.

Being in our safe Drexel bubble, it can be hard to think about the parts of the city that aren’t doing so well but the numbers are staggering. Philadelphia had the second-highest rate of drug overdose deaths in 2016 among the nation’s 44 counties with over 1 million residents: 46 per 100,000 residents, with most attributed to the misuse of opioids. In 2017 alone, 1,217 people died from an overdose and an estimated 1,100 people were lost last year. Why aren’t we hearing more about these neighbors?

Drexel hasn’t been totally void of contributing in the battle against opioids, however. In December, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded Drexel University College of Medicine a $1.5 million three-year grant to create a Center for Excellence for Urban Integrated Opioid Use Disorder Healthcare.

The center, which will expand and integrate addiction treatment services for high-risk Drexel Medicine patients, will surely have an impact, but is this really enough in the fight against these numbers?

Drexel alumnus Jeffrey Stockbridge recently brought the veracities of the opioid crisis to campus with his photography exhibit “Kensington Blues” in the Paul Peck Alumni Center. His photos, which are further adorned with additional audio and video footage, bring the brutalities of the crisis right to our doorstep. So now what?

Stockbridge is hoping this artistic undertaking will help to encourage the public to get involved and to support community harm reduction practices.

Philadelphia officials have been working to open a safe injection site called Safehouse. Similar facilities have existed for decades in Canada and throughout Europe, but federal drug laws — not to mention an undying stigma against drug use — have thwarted these efforts.

A place like this wouldn’t solve the opioid crisis, but it’s a start in the fight to save our neighbors. What this facility needs is money and power behind it — two things that synonymize the institution of Drexel.

To truly and fairly fulfill our civic potentials, Drexel needs to get more involved in efforts to halt the opioid crisis.

We need to back these efforts as individuals as well. These forgotten neighbors need our help. Everyone needs to take charge by offering their endless, judgment-free support to these people who are usually shunned from society for their addiction. We should view addiction as a disease, and not a moral failure. These people are our neighbors in need and we must treat them with the same dedicated compassion as we do our other neighbors closer to campus.

If all of us neighbors joined forces, we could promote a safer and healthier Philadelphia. Now that’s what we call Brotherly Love.

You may have noticed The Triangle was not in the stands last week. And you probably already know it was because of our financial problems. But because of a generous offer from the Office of Institutional Advancement this week to purchase the ad space needed to print, we’re back on the stands.

Since we announced our financial struggles in our Jan. 25 issue, we received an outpouring of support from the Drexel community and have raised over $12,000 so far. We also received a fair bit of criticism. We realize that The Triangle is not perfect but we’re committed to taking on the challenge of drastically changing our publication for the better.

With the help of The Triangle’s own alumni base, we’re rethinking every aspect of our publication. There’s not a single section or department in our organization that will go untouched in our reimagining process.

Many of you have told us we should publish our stories online. Well, we do, and we have been for the past 20 years — the link is even in our masthead. But it’s clear we’re not communicating this to students effectively, and so we’re going to be ramping up our marketing and outreach efforts starting immediately. If you want news and updates directly on your social media feed, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at @drexeltriangle.

Our IT team is hard at work continuing to improve website functionality, especially on mobile devices. We’re making changes to ensure our content is easily accessible in the ways the Drexel community wants to see it.

We understand we don’t always publish hard-hitting news, and so we’re in the process of assigning some of our staff as beat reporters, solely focused on the topics of crime, university policy, campus events and more. We’ll also be focusing more on getting breaking news out to students as soon as possible, even if that means reworking our entire editorial process.

One of the most glaring criticisms we’ve seen is that our opinion section is too one-sided, and we wholeheartedly agree. Up until now, we’ve never actively recruited opinion writers based on their stances, but we heard your feedback and we’ll be reaching out to Drexel organizations all over the political spectrum to get every viewpoint on national topics. As we always have, we’ll continue to accept submissions from the Drexel community with opinions on campus politics, as well as your letters to the editor. If there’s ever an opinion piece you want to respond to or a rebuttal you want to make, send us an email at opinion@thetriangle.org.

We know you can just go to drexeldragons.com for all your sports scores, so we’re going to start putting out sports content that’s more than just recaps of games. These new columns will highlight student athletes and their achievements, commentate on the future of Drexel sports and immerse readers into new aspects of athletics not covered anywhere else.

Who wants to read a review of a concert that already happened? Not our readers, evidently! Our entertainment editors are hard at work to get a hold of pre-releases of albums, movies, TV shows and anything else for us to review so you can hear about them before anyone else.

Over the next two terms, you’ll see us experimenting with all sorts of new formats, covers, graphics, fonts and more. And not only that, but we’ll be reaching out to you, our readers, around campus to see what you think. For the first time in our recent history, we’re committed to using our readers wishes as our primary driver for moving forward.

The one thing we will not be doing, however, is keeping the status quo and waiting to run out of money again. We asked for your donations to keep us going in the short term while we figure out how to keep ourselves sustainable. We do not intend on operating solely on the goodwill of others for any extended period of time, and we hope you’ll bear with us as we grow into a better, self-sustaining publication.

There are things we’ve all come to know and expect at Drexel University like the trusty co-op process, endless construction, jokes about the “Drexel shaft” and seeing The Triangle on the stands every Friday morning.

These are the traditions that make Drexel, well, Drexel.

For over 90 years, The Triangle has dropped a new issue in stands across campus every Friday morning. But starting next week, that may not happen anymore. We are about to lose this time-honored pillar of the university.

The truth is, as an independent newspaper — one that does not accept financial assistance from the university — it just hasn’t been easy to make the ad sales that we need to keep the newspaper running. While articles will continue to be posted online, for now, we can no longer live up to our saying that “we put out on Fridays.”

You might ask yourselves why we have continued printing a paper despite the high cost of printing. Well, for one, we won’t be able to see your beautiful faces every morning by the Dragon statue if we retreated to our online enclaves. That is not the ideal we seek. The Triangle is a student organization, and as such a lot of emphasis is placed on community. The physical copy is more than just words on paper. A diverse staff serving in different capacities dedicate their time at Drexel for this publication — a tangible newspaper is perhaps the manifestation of their toil.

Will Drexel survive without a physical paper for students to hold in their hand? Probably. But it will be a significant blow to the historical aspect of our community.

Since 1926, The Triangle has helped to set the agenda of the university, calling out wrongdoings and injustices, celebrating the university’s many accomplishments, showcasing campus events, honoring our diversity, and giving students, faculty and administration a platform to communicate and inform. We even allegedly coined the term “dragons.”

Each of our printed issues have been safely tucked away by Drexel Archives to preserve our first-hand accounts of events at Drexel. Nearly all of them can be read online on the Archives’ website.

But now, all of this is at risk.

It’s not news that print papers have been struggling. Newspapers everywhere are experiencing cuts that are impacting the delivery of news and other timely updates and dismantling journalistic discourse entirely.

Since The Triangle is completely independent from the university financially, that means that we have maintained editorial independence as well, so we can continue to push (and occasionally overstep) the boundaries for the advocation of raw truth and critical perspective.

We’re not perfect. We’ve misquoted, we’ve gotten a few facts wrong and yeah we’ve misspelled “Philadelphia” on the front page before. But we’ve all had a great time working for this organization.

It’s our job to report the news and we think this should make the headlines this week. There’s no more time left to sugarcoat things. This is happening. And this affects us all.

Now, be assured, we won’t be giving up.

The Triangle has been Drexel’s independent student newspaper since 1926 – that’s over 90 years of printing a paper every Friday. We’re now wrapping up our winter recruitment cycle, but you still have time to join! Applications will be open until the end of the day Jan.19. You might be thinking to yourself, “I have no interest in writing, I don’t want to get involved.” Well, that’s a common misconception. While writing is a large part of what we do here at The Triangle, it’s far from the only thing.

As the independent student newspaper, it’s entirely up to us to fund our operations. You might be surprised to find out we don’t take SAFAC money or any other funding from Drexel. Everything we do is supported by our sales team who work with both local and national businesses to create advertising campaigns for our paper, our finance team who keeps track of all our money, and our marketing team who ensures we’re getting the right content into the hands of our readers — you!

We’re nearly two decades into the 21st century, and that means that publishing online is a big part of our operation; we’re not just a print newspaper anymore. To make our digital strategy possible, we have an IT team that writes all the software you use when you visit www.thetriangle.org, manages the servers to deliver all those web pages and maintains the infrastructure to keep all our internal tools and processes running. Our IT team is always expanding in scope and takes on new, cutting-edge projects every day.

Our newest section, the comic section, is just a few weeks old but has made a huge splash on campus. Who doesn’t love AJ the Dragon? If you think you might have the talent to draw or you can make decent jokes, come join our comics team and share your talents with the student body.

We can’t just pull random photos and put them in the paper, which is why we have a team of photographers ready to snap events around campus. If you enjoy event photography, sports photography, concert photography or anything like those, you’ll feel right at home on our photo team.

The copy editing team is the group that ensures we’re putting out only the highest quality of work. They check all spelling and grammar, verify the facts presented in articles and review each page of the paper for mistakes before they’re sent to the printer. If you want to learn how to improve your writing skills, working with the copy editors is a great place to start.

Reading the paper, it might look like it’s an effortless job but it takes the work of over 90 student staff members to put it together every week. The greatest thing about The Triangle, and what separates it from other student organizations on campus, is that it’s not just a group of people all doing similar jobs. Work at The Triangle can vary wildly, but it’s the only place on campus where you can collaborate with people across a wide variety of majors to produce a single, professional product every week. If you join The Triangle, we can guarantee you’ll learn valuable and marketable skills that you won’t get from the classroom.

Think you might be interested in joining our team? Visit www.thetriangle.org/join for more information.

Philadelphia: a true underdog city with a bold and brash attitude. The home of so many wonderful things, including this fine campus The Triangle calls home. And now, GQ Magazine’s “City of the Year” for 2018.

It was a big year for our city. One that kicked off with the big Super Bowl win for the Philadelphia Eagles. It was the Birds’ first big championship win, and one that was properly celebrated. The celebratory Eagles Parade was a headline all by itself, with massive crowds lining Broad Street and Eakins Oval to bask in the glory of the win.

Not only did the Birds win big, but they also took big actions. Just before Thanksgiving, Eagles players gave $25,000, which was then matched with an additional $25,000 from the Eagles Social Justice Fund to post bail for nine Philadelphians so they could be home with family for the holiday. The players have spoken out about criminal justice reform, and specifically the harmful cash bail system in the city.

The momentum of the Eagles is being picked up by our new District Attorney Larry Krasner. Krasner has gotten lots of press and is being lauded as the “most progressive DA in the entire country.” Since being elected, he has removed several offenses from cash bail eligibility, ended marijuana possession prosecutions and generally backed away from overcharging criminals.

Criminal justice also attracted a lot of attention for the city with the imprisonment of Meek Mill. The Philadelphia rapper started the year in jail for violating his 5-year probation, but was released in April after the widespread #FreeMeek movement received support from the likes of Jay Z, Colin Kaepernick, Robert Kraft and Larry Krasner. The Eagles had also shown their support, with Meek’s track “Dreams and Nightmares” becoming the team’s walkout song.

Other highlights for the city this year included Villanova taking home the NCAA Basketball Championship again, three restaurants making bon appetit’s short list for top ten new restaurants of the year and the fresh prince Will Smith joining Instagram.

Did you think we’d leave out Gritty?! The Flyers’ new mascot debuted, turning heads and stealing hearts with his first eye bobble. He has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, sunk a half court shot, experienced his first snow and generally dominated social media since his arrival.

It’s been a great year to be a part of the Philadelphia community. We hope 2019 will be just as great, but we are always proud of this city and its inhabitants. Even the drunk guy who ate horse poop.

GoPuff has become a lifesaver for students. You can get that late night snack to get you through studying for that week 10 midterm. The long and harsh walk to CVS to get cold and flu medicine has been made a thing of the past by the click of a button and when the party runs dry, drinks can get delivered right at the front step to keep the night alive. GoPuff is an app that has thrived on its convenience and has positively disrupted our lives.

The news that goPuff is expanding its footprint in the Philadelphia area is encouraging for us students here at Drexel University. Expansion means that the wonderful on-demand service that has become a part of our lives will continue and likely improve. With 10 new warehouses and the six established warehouses growing, the service will be able to have a larger inventory on hand. This will probably mean more products being offered and a lower chance of anything running out. It also means new jobs in the area; jobs that could go to future Drexel graduates and students.

It is extremely encouraging to see a local digital startup succeeding, especially one that was started by Drexel alumni. It is perhaps better than the lost opportunity of being the home to an Amazon headquarters.

While many try to spin Amazon choosing Queens and Arlington over Philadelphia as a loss, there are drawbacks to having a major corporation move into the area to consider. A goliath like Amazon requires immediate exponential growth in a community to keep up its current operations. This growth can cause a strain on the city that ends up being harmful. In Seattle, the Amazon headquarters exacerbated issues in traffic, housing, displacement and income inequality. Imagine for a moment the already congested commute on I-76 with Amazon level traffic. GoPuff is more courteous; it is the concern for traffic and safety that spurred the search for a new location for their headquarters within the city.

A new company like goPuff grows at a more sustainable pace for a city. The company, the city and the state are able to work together to foster safe economic growth that benefits everyone. Governor Tom Wolf and Mayor Jim Kenney have both shown their support for goPuff, and goPuff has shown their commitment to the city of brotherly love. Investing in goPuff is supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. We are looking to the little guys to bring us the future. In true Philly fashion, we are rooting for the homegrown underdog.

The first snowfall of the season marks the climactic change and poetic finale to the year. The skies turn gray. Heads are bowed in silence as people trudge across the snow to their respective destinations. The city almost grinds to a halt. The year is on its dying embers and the added effect of snow is perhaps a reminder of the need to pause and reflect.

The world often offers a lot of eccentricities that throw us off balance and leave us out in the cold. But, every year, at a time such as this, we ought to take a step back and ponder over all the good that make life’s labors a little more bearable.

We at The Triangle have a whole host of people and things to be thankful for. We are grateful for the platform we have to report on society’s goings-on and to voice our opinions. We are grateful for the readers who pick up the paper, visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter. Just like in a performance, the writers are only half of the equation in the art. We are grateful for the other half that appraise our work every week.

The Triangle is a metropolis with many parts that work seamlessly and tirelessly together. We are grateful for the staff members who voluntarily toil day-by-day to sustain our organization in different capacities. The community that this student organization has created is a pillar for many of the staff and is a source of some simple joys in life. We are especially grateful for the new students who have acclimated very quickly to our culture and have taken up responsibilities. They are beginning a fulfilling time working at the newspaper with the rest of the staff.

A key component of our paper is the Engel Publishing Co., which never fails to deliver every Friday morning all the way from Lancaster. We are grateful for the patience with which they approach our craft, especially during the late night frantic calls to extend upload deadlines.

As much as we are a students’ organization based at Drexel, we recognize that we are not in a bubble here, in Philadelphia or even in the United States. Our collective existence is embellished by innumerable individuals. We are grateful for the powers that be who complement our existence. It is easy to go on a tangent and thank our Gator that works tirelessly to aid our paper delivery, the people who pave the sidewalk that we walk on and the electric company that makes it possible for us to print proofs but that can be summed up in one collective “Thank you.”

For most of us, this Thanksgiving season will be a jovial one. However, there are many who will not share this luxury. As we wine and dine, it is imperative that we keep them in our thoughts and, above all, help if we can. Let us all admire and be grateful for those who are laboring to palliate such fears. And let us all think of the lengths we can go to in order to comfort the afflicted and, above all, withhold harm from each other. Perhaps then, the first snowfall will be a joyful one for us all.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

There’s a standard disposition for undergraduate students at Drexel University. Ask any upperclassman undergrad how they’re treated as a student and you’ll get similar responses ranging from “bogus” to “bullshit.” Many of the articles in this very publication whisper undertones of seething apprehension regarding administration and student life. Why do students here feel so neglected and unheard?

We are the Drexel family, but not in a good way. At the top of the corporate throne of administration is President John A. Fry, representing the face, the mouth and the teeth of Drexel leadership. He is, for all intents and purposes, the father figure to the student body. Of course though, it would be unbecoming to criticise the parenting of others. Although, when you’re the child in the situation, speculating the quality of your parents is normal and healthy.

That’s actually what the student body is, children beneath the guidance of our father Fry, hallowed be his name. Why is there so much angst in the student body toward our leadership? We’re the middle children. Freshmen and prospective students are his youngest, graduate students are his eldest and we’re the middle children. Undergraduate students make up a homogenous mix of middle children that never matter. They’re forgotten, unsupported and mistreated.

Our father gives undying attention and support to his youngest. He makes sure they’re safe and warm in dormitories. The middle children are required to take residence in costly affiliated housing, unable to find any space on campus. He makes sure the youngest are well-fed on a meal plan that evidently is designed with only them in mind. The middle children lose their roll-over dining dollars and starve looking for dining options at the start of summer.

Our father loves giving responsibilities to and guiding his eldest. He keeps them comfortable in a lounge just for them. The middle children pay for printing in uncomfortable public spaces. He provides unending resources to his eldest, like the Graduate Student Association, financial aid and teaching assistant work. The middle children are lucky to snag a paid co-op job in A-round or find one of the few open work-study positions.

It’s hard to feel unheard in a family. It’s difficult to see your siblings treated better than you. It’s a challenge to feel like you’re not loved. Maybe our father can give us a louder voice by giving the Undergraduate Student Government Association power and direction. Maybe our father can make us all equal by providing decent food and board to upperclassmen. Maybe our father can act like he loves us more as much as he loves his other kids … and squash.