Earth Day at Emmanuel
With the warm weather of summer fast approaching, you may find yourself spending a lot more time outdoors. And, you probably noticed that the Muddy River looks, well, not so muddy lately. That’s because of the great work of students and teachers from Emmanuel and surrounding schools, who cleaned up the river on Earth Day this past weekend. I think it was a great way to celebrate Earth Day and also a great way to kick off the last week of the semester.
Country’s Brightest Star
Could Carrie Underwood be any more perfect?! ? First of all she’s gorgeous. Second, she oozes class. Third, damn can that girl sing! If you were lucky enough to catch her on the CMT Awards then you were lucky enough to see pure greatness. For years tween’s (11-14 year olds) have been looking for an acceptable roll-model. Britney was a bust, Christina got dirty real fast, and Jessica got married! If you’re looking for a girl to love because she’s impossible to hate, you found her.
Fight Global Warming
Think global warming can’t affect you? About 75% of Americans accept global warming as “real,” but only about one-third of them are willing to take action against it. Global warming might not affect our generation, but this video shows that it will affect future generations if we don’t stop it: http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/viewads.cfm?video=train.
You Enjoy Myself: Spring Weekends
Russell J. Patrick has a look at Spring Weekend, and why Emmanuel falls short.
This weekend is “Spring Weekend” at many colleges. Usually Spring Weekends include a Spring Concert. And if you come to this blog often, you know that I have been getting excited for the Spring Concerts at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. You may also know that I go to Emmanuel College in Boston, MA. So how come I am not excited about Emmanuel’s Spring Concert? Are they not having one this weekend?
I like Emmanuel College a lot. But there are some things that they just do not do right at all. Having construction on campus during the school year is one. Not letting me have a waffle for brunch when I really want a waffle for brunch is another. Hosting concerts is also on that list. The school is not even having its own concert…it is sharing a concert for FIVE other colleges. 6 Colleges are sponsoring a concert…should be a pretty sweet concert right? You would think…instead its Guster. Guster is playing one night and its a weeknight at that (I have class during the time the show will be happening (not that I was planning on going anyway))…Thanks Colleges of the Fenway!
For the rest of this entry, check out You Enjoy Myself here.
Apathy or Intelligence?
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is probably the most trusted news source among young Americans. It’s been proven that fake news is viewed more by Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 than news found on regular programming. What does this tell us about our generation? Some critics say it’s no good. Fake, satirical news mediums are causing young adults to think cynically and apathetically about current events, particularly government issues.
I beg to differ. We don’t like the way news is presented on the major networks so we simply walk the other way, towards The Daily Show. Too bad if we’re hurting your precious ratings. At least we’re trying to get our information somewhere. Our white flag isn’t up just yet folks. By utilizing our right to choose, we’re proving our independence and showing our appreciation for democracy. The Daily Show allows us to laugh at the real news, the stuff that makes us want to scream and cry while still portraying the message. One 19 year old student from Madison, WI describes Stewart’s show by saying, “It’s like therapy, the whole world is crazy and Jon Stewart is like your therapist, helping you get through it.” While I may not go as far as appointing Stewart as my personal therapist, I do agree he’s good at making light of some pretty heavy stuff. By making light of these events, we’re taking the right steps to absorbing and dealing with their meanings in a healthy and mature manner.
Put Your Vs Up: Feminism at Emmanuel
TheCougar takes it to the streets, or rather, the quad, and gets opinions from the Emmanuel community about issues in feminism.
This is Put Your Vs Up’s first and very own video. In it I went around EC campus asking random students/faculty members about feminism and its relevance in today’s society. I know the video quality isn’t top notch but something went wrong with the file and how it was processed. Regardless you get the gist and we worked hard on putting it together. Just getting people to talk about feminism was difficult, as soon as people heard the f-word they tended to turn the other way. Special thanks to Bryan for all your hard work, not many guys would help a crazy Cougar ransack college students with ideas of feminism—your help is much appreciated.
Blame Game
It took less than 6 hours after Cho Seung-Hui was dead for Jack Thompson to get his face on TV and blame the Virginia Tech shootings on video games. Thompson is a lawyer currently facing sanctions by the Florida Bar Association for innapropriate conduct in the courtroom and has previously waged war on rap music, Madonna and Howard Stern. In other words, Thompson is an ambulance chaser, going after the controversy of the day and getting his name attached to all of it by making as many outrageous claims as possible. Sadly, he’s not alone.
Dr. Phil was on Larry King Live to blame the tragic events of Monday on video games, and the Washington Post has published reports that Cho frequently played Counterstrike, a first-person shooting game, in high school. In other words, the country is looking for a scapegoat for the deadliest shooting spree in the country’s history, and video games seem to be target #1.
But there’s something much more obvious here. It doesn’t matter if a game taught Cho how to fire a weapon, if it desensitized him to violence, or if it somehow tricked him into killing his classmates. Even if this magical game managed to do all three of those things, don’t you think the problem lied within Cho all along? Something tells me that long before Cho picked up a controller or moved a mouse and starting shooting pixelated bullets at digital polygons, there was probably something wrong with him in the first place. And if that’s not true, and Cho used to be a happy, nice young boy before Counterstrike and Katamari Damacy ruined his fragile little psyche, then something else tells me that Cho probably wasn’t ready for the real world if video games made him open fire on his school.
Bitching Post: Disgust
Megan Barrows reacts to the Virginia Tech shootings on the Bitching Post.
I was watching the news today, and I must say that I am appalled at the sate this world is in. With the war raging on in Iraq and the recent massacre at Virginia Tech, I cannot express how disgusted I am that people still manage to Google the results of Anna Nicole Smith’s paternity test.
I am disgusted that security on the Virginia Tech campus allowed the second shooting to take place two hours later. Shouldn’t precautionary measures have been taken further to ensure students, faculty, and administrators were safe? I am horrified to think that that very same incident could happen at Emmanuel or any other college.
You Can’t Fight the Beast
I’ve always had my problems with Emmanuel College. I often find myself rambling complaints off to friends; I’m always talking about the food and the parking policies. It’s pretty much the usual deal. Most of my complaints are inconsequential and petty, and, for the most part, I complain just because the school is such an easy target. But, now, they’ve taken it too far.
I’m sure you’re all aware that the administration building is undergoing some “renovation.” I don’t think anyone actually knows what’s being done to the building, but whatever it is it requires some heavy duty construction. This heavy duty action tends to cause a substantial amount of noise. This, friends, is where my complaint comes into play. I am a St. James resident. This means these “renovations” are occurring right outside my window. Now, you would think Emmanuel’s administration would be considerate of a residential structure co-existing with the building undergoing renovation and, perhaps, have the heavy construction work start at a decent hour. But, that’s not the way Emmanuel works. Instead, they’ve given the green light to have construction start at 7 in the morning.
Union construction work is standardized throughout the city. When union workers are hired, it is assumed that the project will begin at 7 in the morning and end at 3 in the afternoon. This is the union standard, but, before the contract is signed, the second party is given the chance to change those time standards. Generally, if 7-3 doesn’t fit the project, the times are changed, but, of course, Emmanuel didn’t feel it necessary to change the union standard times. Even though there are students living right beside the construction site, Emmanuel’s administrators felt that it would be fine if they were woken up every day at 7 in the morning.
So, here I am, I finally have something truly substantial to complain about. I am sitting in a tiny cubical-like room that I can’t even get a decent night of sleep in, and I’m paying 12k a year for it. I don’t think there has been a bigger rip in the history of the world.
Democracy In Iraq
In response to an earlier comment about Iraq not having a democracy, I’ve decided to enlighten liberal demagogs about the facts of Iraq’s current political status. For several years now, Iraq has had a popularly elected executive and legislative branch of government. In these two branches of government, there has been representation of all supposedly warring factions in Iraq: the Kurds, the Sunis, and the Shities. The election of this government had a substantially higher voter turnout than any election that has taken place in America in recent history. Iraq has an elected President, Prime Minister, and Parliament. These elected representatives are currently governing Iraq and the majority of the country is peaceful enough, that the death rate from violence in Iraq is smaller than the death rate from violence in many metropolitan areas in America. American soldiers are still in Iraq to assist these elected representatives in controlling and stopping the radical Islamic facisits.
It’s easy to be misled by a variety of liberal news media who are more than willing to masticate and spoon feed their biased perspective to anyone with a sufficianly sluggish cerebrum. But, while people are entitled make up their own opinions, they are not entitled to make up their own facts. There is Democracy in Iraq.
Image – Itsuo Inouye, AP, 2003/04/07
