Sunspots (https://sunspots.cornellsun.com/author/johnnamargalotti/)
Happy Election Day! Congratulations on surviving yet another excruciatingly long electoral cycle. You have been slammed with enough articles on this subject, I will not add to your election fatigue. We are all sick of talking about it. Now go forth and vote.
I have an immense amount of respect for The Donald, and I could not be happier with how his campaign has unfolded. From his not-so-humble beginnings as just one hopeful drifting in a sea of infinitely more qualified candidates, Donald is the little, tiny-handed orange engine that could of American politics. Watching him rise to new levels of fame has truly been heartwarming, and has imparted some powerful lessons about what it truly means to be an American:
In America, you can be anything you want to be. No experience necessary! If you are white, wealthy and male, that is qualification enough.
Remember 2009 when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs and we all laughed and it either made you love Kanye or hate Kanye? It’s probably the most familiar example of a pervasive cultural phenomenon: manterrupting. If you’re a man, you’ve probably done it; if you’re a woman, you’ve probably experienced it. It’s an insidious social occurrence that emboldens men to speak over women and silences women from speaking up for fear of being perceived as too outspoken. It dictates all spheres of discourse, from the workplace to academia, from popular culture to the political arena.
Dear Undecided Voter,
Hey, I hope you’re doing well. I am not going to make this too long, because I get it, we’re all busy people. I just want to have a little chat. This is for all of you citizens out there who still haven’t made the ultimate choice: Trump or Clinton? You have your different reasons — some of you view yourselves as “independents” and would rather vote third party, some of you are just postponing what you perceive to be a choice between the “lesser of two evils” and some of you just feel so frustrated with our democracy and the way that this presidential election season has unfolded that you aren’t going to vote at all.
The biggest news story from this past weekend isn’t that our nation just grieved September 11th for the 15th time. Nope, the biggest headline following this historic day is that Hillary has pneumonia. Over the past few months, the 68-year-old Democratic nominee has faced a constant barrage of scrutiny surrounding her physical health, and after her stumble and early departure from a 9/11 commemoration ceremony, it was revealed that Clinton is currently being treated for pneumonia. Even more disconcerting than the fact that Clinton still works tirelessly despite her illness and tries to conceal it from us, is our grotesque fixation on her and the hyper-scrutiny we subject her to. Conspiracy theories ranging from seizures to an inability to support herself at a podium have surfaced, and a letter from her doctor claimed that Hillary is undoubtedly “fit to serve” as president.
In the wake of the recent and infamous Brock Turner case, Stanford University has responded with a new policy to combat sexual assault on their campus. Sexual assault is one of the foremost threats to student safety on college campuses across the nation, affecting one in five women and one in 16 men as of 2015. The university’s solution? A ban on hard liquor at campus parties. The idea behind the policy is that limiting student access to large quantities of hard liquor will construct a safer campus environment.