Lady Gaga was recently vomited on in the middle of a performance – and it wasn’t an accident. According to MTV’s Christina Garibaldi, it all started with a tweet by Gaga on Thursday March 13, saying she doesn’t like to play by the nun rules – she makes her own.

Gaga’s performance has caused an uproar, to some, in regards to the media and celebrities glamorizing eating disorders and addiction. It has created discussion between what is considered art and what is crossing the line.

Some members of the Keene State College community from the theater major, Active Minds, a club on campus devoted to changing the conversation about mental health on college campuses, the psychology major and the substance abuse major all seemed to feel the same way: Gaga’s performance was out of line.

As stated on MTV’s website, Gaga performed at the South by Southwest Music Festival for the first time on Thursday, March 13. MTV stated Gaga began her set by strapping herself onto a rotisserie. She continued to spin on the rotisserie pole while her dancers basted her with brushes covered with barbecue sauce. Gaga went on to throw sausage links and beer at the crowd. Next, she warned the fans it was going to get messy.

AP Photo:
Lady Gaga performs at Stubb’s in Austin, Texas, during the South by Southwest Music Festival on Thursday, March 13, 2014.

Also according to the site, Gaga introduced her friend, Millie Brown, a “vomit painter” from London. When Brown arrived on the stage, she began chugging a liter of green liquid thought to be soda. Brown then stuck two fingers down her throat and proceeded to vomit on Gaga’s body and even into her mouth.

Brown wasn’t done yet. She and Gaga climbed onto a mechanical pig together for the song, “Swine,” accompanied with a keyboard, MTV said. Gaga continued to sing and Brown continued to throw up black liquid onto Gaga.

Jeff Bradley, a KSC senior and psychology and substance abuse major, shared his opinion about Gaga’s performance. “I would say [the performance was] out of line and everything she does is for the shock factor and it’s gotten to the point where it’s like, why are you bothering to do that? First of all, you’re already famous and it’s just making light of bulimia basically. And anyone who knows anyone who has an eating disorder would be obviously be affected by that. The whole shock value thing is really frustrating,” he said.

On Friday, following her concert, Gaga went on to be the first woman in 15 years to be the keynote speaker at the music festival, according to MTV. But that is not what KSC students were talking about the following day.

“[Gaga’s performance] would make me question whether she truly deserves [to be the keynote speaker] in the first place, if she’s that inconsiderate of other people who struggle with these issues. Why are we celebrating somebody who would be that insensitive?” Damian Vacca, a KSC senior, psychology major and the Active Minds vice president said.

Celebrity Demi Lovato, singer of Heart Attack, was especially outraged and took to Twitter on Friday to show her protest of Gaga’s performance. According to the Huffington Post, TMZ and MTV, Lovato accused Gaga of glamorizing eating disorders. Lovato herself stated she received treatment of eating disorders and other addictions, back in 2010, as stated by New York Daily News’ Zayda Rivera.

Lovato allegedly tweeted several times criticizing Gaga’s performance Friday stating such things like: “Putting the word ART in it isn’t a free card to do whatever you want without consequence.”

Lovato also allegedly posted, “Sad… As if we didn’t have enough people glamorizing eat[ing] disorders already. Bottom line, it’s not ‘cool’ or ‘artsy’ at all,” and, “Activists don’t shut up. If no one raises their voice, how are we supposed to be heard?”

Lovato went on to compare Gaga’s decision to bring Brown on stage to bringing someone with a needle and allowing them to shoot up on stage, or a razor and allowing them to cut themselves on stage. Lovato stated she wasn’t hating on Gaga, but that someone had to come forward, and she was willing to take the heat for it, according to NY Daily News.

Bradley said, “I don’t know if [the media] glamorizes [eating disorders and addiction] but they definitely down-play it…A lot of addiction isn’t focused much in the media and when it is, it’s still such a taboo topic that people don’t like to talk about it.”

Lovato concluded the tweets with a warning about how pop culture can have a negative effect on others. She stated she assured Gaga fans she is still a Gaga fan herself, but that she simply viewed the performance as glamorizing something as serious as eating disorders and addiction.

Gaga defended her performance by stating the performance was about pure artistic expression. She said her new album is all about combining art and music in “creative rebellion,” according to MTV. The performance, she states, was meant for the crowd at the music festival, not for something like the Today Show and this is why some may not be into it.

“I don’t think any celebrity needs to go this far in order to keep their fan base” KSC junior and elementary education and theater major Kristen Licht said. “[Gaga] did it because she could. Whether she had some kind of underlying message for this or not, it was disgusting and completely unnecessary,” she added.

Brown took to TMZ to respond to Lovato in which she said, “There’s a clear difference between using my body to create something beautiful, to express myself and feel powerful, rather than using it to punish myself and conform to society’s standards.”

Gaga herself has now admitted to dealing with eating disorders for over ten years after her performance was questioned, as stated by International Business Times’ Toyin Owoseje.

For Licht, this makes the performance even more surprising and confusing. “Seeing as how she has admitted to have dealt with eating disorders, it really makes me question why on earth she would think doing something like this would be a good idea and would go over well with the public,” Licht said.

Vacca added, “It doesn’t matter who you are if you’re in the limelight, you have a responsibly with the messages that you’re putting out there. You can call it art or what you want but if it’s just downright degrading and disrespectful to certain people, you should stop and think, ‘Is this going to cause harm to someone if I do this?’”

Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com

Losing your cell phone is one thing, but losing an entire plane along with its 239 passengers and crew is a completely different story. Many are asking, “How can we as such a technologically advanced society lose an entire plane for more than three weeks?”

I am starting to think our society is not as technologically advanced as many believe it to be.

Our world seems to have a long way to go if we are able to go over three weeks without a single reliable source of evidence of Flight 370’s location.

This mystery is teaching the public about the limitations of technology. I believe the case of Flight 370 may even result in the reform of flight technology altogether.

Betsy Thompson / Equinox Staff

However, there is always human interaction which has the ability to influence technology and how it is used.

Many plane flyers are under the impression that their plane is being continuously tracked throughout its flight, but this is a common misconception that is coming to light as a result of Flight 370.

Flight 370 took off from Malaysia on its way to Beijing, China on March 8, 2014, when it went missing, according to ABC News. So far, experts have narrowed the search for the plane to a southern stretch of the Indian Ocean the size of Poland, 1,150 miles West of Australia.

According to MSN News, Flight 370 automatically sent a satellite signal every hour. Fortunately, this signal was able to continue even after someone on the plane shut off the transponder, which is a device in the cockpit that sends signals to radar stations below.

These signals include the plane’s flight number, heading, speed and altitude according to AP Airlines Writer Scott Mayerowitz. The transponder also has the ability to send predetermined signals for emergencies.

Flight 370 took off from Malaysia at 12:40 a.m. and the transponder stopped transmitting signals at 1:20 a.m., according to ABC News. Although the transponder was turned off, the plane continued to fly for several hours.

According to the Washington Post, the transponder and other communication systems were either intentionally turned off or somehow disabled.

The problem with technology is it must be supported by a human being, and if that human being decides to turn off the technology that is protecting and monitoring them, there is not much the technology can do.

Radar is another communication system. It involves an antenna on the ground which sends out electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light. Radar, however, can only track planes within 200 to 250 miles but because of its constant speed, the distance of a plane from the antenna can be determined.

Radar for a flight with no transponder signals and infrequent radar signals was detected at 2:14 a.m March 8. This plane, however, was following a path in the complete opposite direction of Flight 370’s original route, reported by ABC News.

A disadvantage of radar is that it does not exist everywhere. When a plane enters an area with low radar, the pilot usually communicates its location in other ways such as high frequency radios and satellite text.

All of these communication devices show how essential human interaction with technology is but when a human is unable to operate the technology or refuses to, the technology is extremely limited.

The passengers of any plane put their complete trust in the pilots, crew and the other passengers and even the technology and the plane itself that their flight will be a safe one. It appears the reform of flight technology will most likely occur in regards to satellite tracking.

However, this reform is only possible at a cost.

A triggered transmission system would be completely separate from the transponder. Its job would be to notify the people on land monitoring the flight when the plane dives too quickly, goes too fast, or goes too slow.

This technology costs about $50,000 per aircraft according to Stephen Trimble, bureau chief of U.K. aviation news website, Flightglobal, as found on ABC News. Jon M. Chang of ABC News found that American Airlines has about 900 planes.

This means they would have to pay almost $50 million to adopt this technology.

As shown in the case of Flight 370, when a plane’s transponder is turned off, it essentially becomes invisible.

This is where tracking technology could make a difference. If we had technology like this on every plane, 9/11 might have been a little different, for example.

At this point, there is no solid evidence about what happened to Flight 370, but if the airlines had the tracking technology, we might have more answers to this mystery by now, along with more of a clue where to begin the search for Flight 370 and its 293 passengers and crew.

As stated by the Washington Post, “There is no evidence of pilot error, pilot suicide, hijacking or any kind of terrorist event, nor is there evidence of a mechanical malfunction, fire or decompression. There is, in essence, no evidence of anything other than that the aircraft did not go to China as planned but rather flew in a zigzag fashion into the southern Indian Ocean.”

Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com

Censorship and ‘art’ is debated

A teenage male and a ham and cheese Hot Pocket are at the center of controversy this month — and it is believed to have allegedly led to the ban of sexually explicit content on the six-second video application, Vine. 

Twitter, the social network that owns Vine, made these changes to the application on March 6.

The change occurred ten days after a teenage male videotaped himself being intimate, first with a Pop-Tart box and later with a heated Hot Pocket. The teenager posted these actions on his Vine and Twitter profiles.

The young man claimed it was an attempt to gain more followers and become Internet famous, according to Huffington Post’s Christian Nilsson.

The Vine video spread like wildfire, becoming viral almost immediately, according to Nilsson.  Although the young man accomplished his goal of becoming Internet famous, his fame was short-lived. Both Twitter and Vine removed his posts and suspended his accounts. Even Hot Pocket’s Twitter account, @hotpockets, blocked the teenage boy, as reported by Nilsson. According to CNN, Vine announced changes to the applications privacy policy March 6, following the incident. Although there has been no statement from Vine that this post was the cause of Vine’s new policy, the sequence of events suggests it was not a coincidence.

Erin D’Aleo / Graphics Editor

Haley McConville, a Keene State College senior, shared her opinion about Vine’s decision to change it’s privacy policies, and stated, “I think it depends on how explicit the content is. A lot of young kids use Twitter and Vine. I think it should be censored to some extent.”

Haley Mizzi, a KSC freshman, shared, “It doesn’t bother me personally and I feel like we can’t be told what we can and cannot say on social media.” Within four days after the app launched in January of 2013, a video featuring sexually explicit content was inadvertently posted on the “Editor’s Picks” section, as stated by DigitalTrends.com’s Trevor Mogg.

Several changes have been made to Vine’s policies to prevent such pornographic material on the application, but no official rules banning this content were made until now, according to CNN.com’s Heather Kelly.

According to CNN, there have been attempts by Vine to prevent such posts from making their way into the news or the public eye. For example, they raised the minimum age for an account from 12 to 17.  A warning message was also added to posts that were reported as inappropriate, according to CNN.com’s Doug Gross. The warning requires a quick click before the video is shown.

A disclaimer on Apple’s App Store site was also added to the description of Vine, stating that the application contained “Frequent/intense sexual content or nudity.” Previously, it had been described as “infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity,” according to Heather Kelly’s article on CNN. The App Store has allegedly stopped the sale of other apps that involve sexually explicit content, but has not done so with Vine.

“If they [Apple] don’t own the app, I don’t think they should be able to censor that just because it gets downloaded onto their product. I don’t really think we need Apple to control or decide what is too inappropriate for us to see,” Mizzi stated.

Megan Bradley, a KSC freshman, shared her opinion, “Since it’s Apple’s products, I think they should be able to regulate what can be on their products.”

Vine’s new policy makes exceptions to nudity in documentarian, artistic and educational senses. They allow sexually suggestive content, but no explicitly sexual content such as any sexual acts alone, with people, or with objects, according to the application guidelines. Vine also banned any nudity including animation, according to Kelly’s CNN article titled “Twitter Bans Porn Videos on Vine.”

“I think companies should be more aware of what their media is being used for and therefore more responsible for censoring their own apps,” McConville said. Vine also allows users to flag posts they deem to be inappropriate.

If this new rule is not followed, the user will be suspended until that particular post is removed. If this rule is continually violated, the account will be suspended. According to statements from the Vine company, most of the users will not even notice a difference in the app. Vine claims the issue at hand is not the explicit sexual content on the internet, but simply that Vine prefers not to be the source of such content.

“Many people believe that the more followers or likes they have, the more liked they are…I don’t post anything to please anyone. I don’t care how many followers I have,” Bradley stated.

Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com

The Olympic Games are a time for athletes to shine and show their skills, but it is also an opportunity for technological advances to make their world debut.  Two major companies in particular took advantage of this showcasing opportunity in ice hockey: OMEGA and Bauer.

OMEGA has been the pfficial timekeeper of the Olympic Games 26 times, according to Omegawatches.com. This year, OMEGA introduced new timing equipment for ice hockey along with the International Ice Hockey Federation. Together, they developed the IH whistle detection system. Each referee was equipped with a whistle which had a wireless connected to the official time clock and a microphone to speak to the scorekeeper.

According to the OMEGA website, the whistle is like voice recognition in that it knows the sound of three different whistle tones. When it detects one of these sounds, it connects to the clock and stops it within 1/10th of a second. This increases the accuracy and allows more time for game play by eliminating the manual time keeper.

When I spoke with Adin Sobel, a Keene State College freshman men’s club hockey player, he explained the advantages of eliminating the time keeper. “I think the whistle is genius, because during the game we could be on the bench and just watch the scoreboard and at least half of a second [passes between] the scoreboard [and] the whistle,” he said.

Pavel Golovkin / AP Photo:
The Olympic flame burns during the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympics. Sochi was site where OMEGA decided to unveil its new timing technology.

The time it takes the timekeeper to hear the whistle and respond to it can be at least a half second of reaction time, and this time adds up. With OMEGA’s technology, about 30 seconds or more can be added to the game. Not only would this make the time more accurate, but it would also stop the game from being interrupted over timing disputes.

Although this new whistle may sound beneficial, KSC junior club hockey player Taylor Adolphson brought up some possible downfalls. “You have to trust that the technology will work and not falter, because if you think the whistle has been blown and the scoreboard doesn’t read it, you have no one to stop the clock,” he said.

There is no doubt this technology is cutting edge, but people will have to wait and see if it becomes a trend in the NHL.

Another technological advance featured in the Olympics is Bauer’s OD1N line of gear and skates for players and goalies.

Bauer worked on the line for two years with their research, design and development team. They set out to create equipment scientifically proven to make players better. Bauer CEO and President, Kevin Davis, eliminated any limitations of cost, materials and commercialization because he wanted to focus on making the best equipment possible. This equipment has been worn by six NHL players as of November and was worn by five Olympians from Canada, USA, Russia and Sweden, according to Canada.com’s Stu Cowan.

When asked how this technologically advanced gear will change the game of hockey, KSC freshman and women’s club hockey player, Danielle Cobleigh, said, “I feel like this will make the game faster, but it won’t really change the game of hockey.”

Although these products are revolutionary, they come at a cost. Bauer stated this is not something they would like to market to everyone.

Therefore it may not be available beyond the superstars who are already using it. In the OD1N line, Bauer revamped the traditional hockey skate, making it the lightest skate at a half-pound lighter than other high- end models on the market. This weight difference and new design increases a player’s speed, allowing the player to skate a foot faster during a 50-foot sprint from blue line to blue line, as stated by Bauer’s general manager of equipment, Craig Desjardins.

“I think new equipment is great….but to some extent it’s not beneficial if only certain people can afford it,” Sobel, who has played hockey for 17 years, said.

“I think buying skates that weigh…more for less money seems much more practical. All the superstars have all the best equipment because they’re superstars,” he added.

The protective gear in Bauer’s line is personalized with optical body scans, allowing the equipment to fit directly to the body.

Bauer’s technology also allows the goalie to tailor his or her pads to their style and preferences, allowing them to put emphasis on directing rebounds or absorbing shots for example.

The pads are lighter than ever, decreasing fatigue throughout a game. With these new pads, players can save more than 1,000 pounds of lifted weight during just one regulation game.

According to Bauer, the gear is lighter, faster and safer.

“I would love to use that equipment if it’s going to make me faster and better on the ice,” Adolphson, who has played hockey for 18 years, said. “But equipment doesn’t make a hockey player,” he added.

Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com

On Monday, March 3, an argument ensued in front of the Supreme Court for the case of Freddie Lee Hall v. Florida, in which Hall, who has been on death row for 35 years for committing two murders, could be sentenced to death as a mentally disabled person.

Hall is on the edge of being considered mentally disabled based on his most recent IQ score, according to Florida’s standards.

This brings up the issue: what determines if a person is mentally disabled and is a rigid cut off for the IQ score appropriate? I believe that an IQ test is not enough to determine if one is mentally disabled and the assessment should be much more intensive.

Hall is a 68-year-old man in Florida who was labeled as “mentally retarded” in the 1950s during school when that was the term widely used.

In February of 1978, Hall was convicted for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a 21-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant. This crime is what sentenced him to death and placed him on death row.

It was left up to the state to determine what qualified a person as mentally disabled. According to Huffington Post’s Mark Sherman, Hall has taken nine IQ tests between 1968 and 2008, scoring between 60 and 80. According to the state, his most recent scores were between 69 and 74.

In the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled it was against the Eighth Amendment to execute a mentally disabled person on account of cruel and unusual punishment.

Florida considers those with IQs up to 75 as mildly mentally disabled and eligible for help getting a job, but the same does not apply in the state’s prison system. Instead, the rigid cut off is 70 which means that if an inmate has an IQ of 71, the person qualifies for the death penalty.

Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, before Maryland repealing the death penalty, also chose 70 as the deciding IQ score based on statistics used by clinicians. Florida’s policy states that usually an inmate would go through a total of three steps that would involve an IQ test first, then an array of psychiatric and psychological assessment.

In Florida, if the inmate scores above a 70, they simply do not move on to the other forms of assessment even if they show other indications of being disabled.

An IQ test alone is not a good measure of intellectual ability and leaves too much room for error. In the Supreme Court discussions, several solutions were suggested by Hall’s lawyer as well as the Supreme Court judges. The first was taking the test multiple times and finding a composite score rather than an average.

The next proposed solution was administering a margin of error plus or minus five points of the IQ score of 70. This last suggestion would result in abolishing the rigid score and allowing those scoring under 75 to be considered mentally disabled, including Hall.

When Judge Stephen G. Breyer suggested having a statistician expert explain the statistics involved in determining a mental disability and possibly adopting the margin of error of five points, Florida’s lawyer replied, “What is so terrible about doing [that] is you would end up increasing the number of people who would be eligible for a mental retardation finding.”

But won’t these recommended changes just allow those who are truly mentally disabled to be relieved of the death penalty?

Some may think others will try to prove they are mentally disabled after they have been placed on death row, but this will be extremely difficult to accomplish.

As said by Seth P. Waxman, Hall’s lawyer, in the Supreme Court’s discussion, mental disability is not a condition which emerges halfway through one’s life, unlike mental illness. In order for one to be considered mentally disabled, it must emerge early in life.

Although there is no denying the crimes Hall committed were horrific and brutal, those with an intellectual disability often do not have the same level of moral capacity as those without mental disability who committed such crimes, as said in the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia.

There is no harm in evaluating an inmate further to make sure no error is made in an evaluation. It will take more resources in the jails as well as more time but if it prevents the Eighth Amendment from being violated, there should be no reason to prevent this change.

Florida’s current standards are not promoting the well-being of those with mental disabilities and if Florida is allowed to continue such policies, they would inevitably end up putting mentally disabled inmates to death.

Florida’s overall policy and heavy reliance on IQ tests is an infringement of the Eighth Amendment for those with an intellectual disability.

Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com

Imagine this: you walk into any old pharmacy and the wall behind the counter is nearly empty, no longer filled with a mural of cigarette boxes waiting to be sold to the next smoker that walks through the automatic doors.

Some think this could be the case after CVS Pharmacy announced its decision to end the sales of cigarettes this week, set to begin October 1, 2014. I believe that this could be the future of pharmacies across the nation in just a few years. It seems as if this decision is more about strategic growth, marketing and profit than it is about the concern for its customers’ health and I believe we need to reevaluate our concentrations on pharmacies in terms of decreasing smoking habits.

According to Business Insider’s reproter Lauren F. Friedman, CVS is currently setting out to expand their pharmacies to health care, also known as the MinuteClinic expansion. The rapidly expanding MinuteClinic is an in-store primary care center with nurse practitioners and physician assistants where you can get physicals, immunizations and lab work done.

AP Photo

On the CVS website, it states there are currently more than 800 clinics in 28 states and based on Stephanie Strom’s article for the New York Times, CVS hopes to add 700 more clinics by 2017. According to Business Insider, these clinics have partnerships with insurance companies as well as hospital systems from which they profit; therefore they must follow the appropriate principles of a health care provider, thus the reason for the ban on cigarettes.

CVS also supports the Affordable Care Act and even offers in-store experts at some events and online guides for customers regarding the act. This helps people sort out insurance and the more people who are insured, the more paying customers CVS receives. Not only will it make money at the clinic and through the insurers, but these client customers will most likely have a waiting period and during this time, they are going to be walking around the store shopping.

As said in the New York Times, it is predicted that CVS will lose a total of $2 billion annually from the lack of cigarette sales. This loss seems small when compared to their $23 billion revenue this past year. Primarily, it appears CVS believes they will make more money in the healthcare business than in the cigarette-selling business.

Not only will they make money from the clinics, but just their announcement of the cigarette ban has allowed CVS to get an unbelievable amount of free press—and good press, at that. There are countless articles regarding CVS’s decision, including this one, allowing the news to essentially go viral. CVS is gaining an unbelievably good reputation from all of the press and is becoming the pioneer of a cigarette-free pharmacy: all part of their strategic, well thought-out and intelligent plan that will most likely pay off in the coming years. Now that CVS has taken the lead, I fully believe these pharmaceutical clinics could very well become a trend in the U.S. As soon as other pharmacies start to see CVS making more of a profit through their clinic, they are bound to follow suit, making the empty shelves behind the front counter a reality.

I am in no way suggesting that CVS should continue to sell cigarettes or choose cigarette sales over the profit made from clinics, but rather I am stating there is some confusion regarding why exactly CVS made this decision. If we truly wanted to decrease the smoking habits and better the health of our citizens, we would focus on banning cigarette sales at gas stations, where, according to Shirley Leung of The Boston Globe, more than 60 percent of cigarette sales occur compared to the 3.6 percent at drug stores.

We need to reevaluate what we truly want to accomplish in regards to decreasing smoking in our country.

Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com

The Sochi Olympics have begun, and there has been great talk about the controversies regarding Russia and their human rights, or lack thereof.

Some have even gone to the extreme of suggesting a boycott of the Sochi Olympic Games, which brings up the question: should politics be a part of the sports culture? My answer to this question is no.

There’s no denying that politics and the Olympic Games have had a complicated relationship in the past, especially between the United States and Russia.

According to USA Today writer, Doug Stanglin, Russia seems to have come full circle from the last time they hosted the Olympics in 1980.

Then, the United States was just starting to mend their relationship with Russia until Russia entered Afghanistan Christmas Eve of 1979.

The United States President during this time, Jimmy Carter, started to take action against the Moscow Olympics by urging the U.S. Olympics committee to withdraw. A total of 65 countries abandoned the Moscow Olympics, letting their Olympic careers and aspirations pass by for the sake of a political debate.

Denise Grattage / Equinox Staff

And the story doesn’t end there. The Soviets made sure to get their revenge on the United States by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, giving up their right to participate.

The irony even goes a bit further. The United States bailed out of the 1980 Olympics because of Russia’s decision to enter into Afghanistan. Now look at us.

According to USA Today’s Rick Hampson, America’s role in our own war against Afghanistan started Oct. 7, 2001 when U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan.

Now, 12 years later, Afghanistan is America’s longest war.

Much of the controversy surrounding this year’s Sochi Olympic Games is Russia’s decision made earlier this past year to ban all homosexual propaganda.

There is no denying that this is a violation of human rights, especially gay rights. Much of America is shocked and angry about this disrespect and breach of human rights, but forget to look at our own country.

Based on an article presented by CNN featuring statistics from Pew Forum, Human Rights Campaign on Jan. 15, 2014, only 16 out of our 50 states have legalized gay marriage.

How can we criticize Russia for entering Afghanistan and taking away the human rights of homosexuals when we have done both of these acts ourselves?

We may be less extreme in our acts of discrimination against homosexuals when compared to Russia, but we still have not fully embraced the rights of homosexuals here at home. With all of this political controversy, I think we’ve started to lose sight of the real purpose of the Olympic Games. The Olympics are meant to unite the world through the hard work of the participants and the entertainment it offers to the audiences.

It’s one of the very few ways the world unites, without having to worry about politics for once, but it seems we can’t even do that.

Even though what is happening in the host country of the Olympic Games hosts may be questionable, I feel that it is simply not a time for political controversy.

Not only would boycotting the Sochi Olympics be unfair to the athletes who have worked day after day for this one moment, but it would be a direct insult to the mission of the Olympics.

It’s time we start enjoying the Olympic Games and all they have to offer, and stop bringing politics into athletics. We should enjoy these games and support our country in each event, while also celebrating the fact that the world is coming together once again for the Olympic Games.

Taylor  Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com