In response to your recent article, “Four years after MU, BB&T agreement, questions remain,” I have to say I am honestly disappointed in the response of the Marshall University faculty and students. I’ll start with comments made by Donna Sullivan, associate professor of sociology at Marshall.
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I read with interest the Parthenon article discussing the controversy of Marshall’s acceptance of BB&T money to indoctrinate students in Ayn Rand’s “philosophy.” There are any number of ironies here. First, Rand didn’t believe that places like Marshall should exist at all.
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Column
Last week, I was foisted into two separate situations where I had to report on protests. The first was for the raising of tuition by the Board of the Governors and the second one was a feminist demonstration on the corner of Hal Greer and Fifth Avenue.
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Editorial
It’s been two nearly two years since the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the issues that the company responsible — British Petroleum — says are resolved are proving to be wrong. In recent studies on the Gulf spill, researchers have found that the long-term effects of the spill on aquatic life in are far-reaching and exceed what was expected.
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EDITORIAL
This week, the Supreme Court will rule to see if Arizona’s controversial immigration law is constitutional. The court should rule against this law that only opens the door to further abuse of racial profiling and intimidation by police. In theory, this law seeks to make life so difficult for illegal immigrants within Arizona that they will leave.
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Column
While we do not live in a state that is necessarily seen in the media frequently, we sure do live in a state, more often than not, portrayed in a negative way in the media. Between MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom,” West Virginia has been made to look like a sad joke.
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GUEST EDITORIAL
In February, a bill to ban “children” from indoor tanning in the state of West Virginia moved one step closer to becoming a law. The Senate voted 30-4 on a decision to pass the law, which would keep those 18 years of age and younger from being able to tan indoors anywhere in the state.
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Column
While most of the focus was on the Secret Service picking up Colombian hookers last Friday, some actual, world-shaping realities surfaced out of the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena. While the irregularly scheduled meeting allows leaders from all but one country in the Western Hemisphere to discuss a wide variety of topics, one in particular struck me as foreshadowing of United States’ relations in North, Central and South America.
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Guest Editorial
Known as “America’s oldest teenager,” television personality Dick Clark died Wednesday. Clark’s death sparked hundreds of musicians to take to Twitter to announce their condolences toward his family. And while the former host of “American Bandstand” and “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” had possibly one of the greatest holds on the music industry of all time, it was Clark’s influence on television that should perhaps turn the most heads.
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Editorial
As if the Quran burning, the killing of 16 innocents by a crazed United States soldier and pictures of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of dead Middle Easterners were not bad enough, another failure has surfaced. Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times published a photo of what appears to be a soldier of the U.
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Column
You ever seen an invisible person? I’m not talking about ghosts, an H.G. Wells’s character, or Hollow Man. I’m talking about the people who students at Marshall University hardly notice, and when they do, become completely uncomfortable. I’m talking about the homeless, the poor and the addicted.
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Editorial
The Marshall University Board of Governors approved an increase in tuition for all Marshall students yesterday. At Tuesday’s meeting, only one board member had a dissenting vote on the increases. What is to come now because of this decision are some notable increases in students’ tuition.
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Column
Fun fact: Cow farts are destroying the ozone layer. I’m totally not joking. It’s all over the internet. In 2009 Congress was seriously considering a bill that would tax farmers extra for the amount of gas their cows were expelling. You can buy t-shirts on Amazon that say “Tax Cow Farts Now”.
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Editorial
Today, Marshall University Board of Governors will vote to raise tuition from 4 to 7.9 percent for undergraduates and 3.8 to 7.6 percent for graduate students. Marshall students who will see the most notable increase in tuition are the metro-area students, according to an article in Sunday’s The Herald-Dispatch.
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Column
As students in college, we all need breaks every now and then. Whether it’s a movie night at the apartment with friends, taking a much needed nap or gorging on a greasy pizza, we all have our ways of unwinding when school and work get the best of us.
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Members of the Cecil Underwood Senior Center were presented with a “senior prom” Friday. Members of Marshall’s business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, with the help of Gamma Beta Phi, provided music, photos, refreshments and even dates to the prom.
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There’s not a sport as sacredly ingrained in the American psyche as baseball. It almost has a religious aura about it. Hats come off during the National Anthem as reverently as if we were praying. Fathers and sons speak of legendary players as if they were saints.
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Guest Editorial
A carnival will take place today on Buskirk Field with the purpose of “educating” the student body and faculty about natural gas. BeHerd Marketing Agency, America’s Natural Gas Alliance, EdVenture and the World’s Strongest Man 2006 are responsible for this misleading event.
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Editorial
After accidentally setting off a LifeAid-medical alarm, an unarmed 68-year-old veteran with a heart condition was shot and killed by police in White Plains, N.Y. Kenneth Chamberlin Sr. was at his home on the night of Nov. 17, 2011 when he, presumably, rolled over and set off his LifeAid alarm.
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Column
The other day, I entered Target with no specific goal in mind other than to purposelessly peruse the aisles. Except for we all know that’s impossible, because Target knows people are going to wander in their store –– people expecting to take a break from the stuffy atmosphere of their home, maybe bump into a friend or two and then return home empty-handed.
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Column
GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum held back tears Tuesday as he announced he would be suspending his presidential campaign. Santorum did not specify why he would be dropping out of the race, though he did make mention of wanting to focus on family, with his three-year-old daughter Ella’s recent return home from the hospital after suffering from pneumonia.
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Editorial
It has been revealed that under the Bush administration the United States helped train a terrorist group that has been linked to the deaths of Americans and Iranian nuclear scientists. This was revealed after investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh filed a story a blog for “The New Yorker” linking the U.
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Guest Editorial
As Americans, we don’t always extrapolate the appropriate meaning behind concepts: Forgetting the true meaning of holidays is one of our faults on that list. Wouldn’t it be nice if the majority of the public could actually agree upon what the definition of Easter is? Or has consumerism pushed everyone off the deep end into a basket of Peeps.
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Editorial
Do you know who writes your laws? Ideally, laws are written and approved by the legislators you elect, right? That is the presumed occupation of these elected officials. They are meant to write and pass bills into law that will better protect citizens and their rights.
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Editorial
My best friend is a comedian. Back in January, he asked me to drive him to Baltimore so he could perform at the Maryland Institute College of Art. After a straight 10-hour drive, we arrived and decided to take a little tour of the campus.
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Editorial
West Virginia State Senator Joe Manchin III said he will fight against the Environmental Protection Agency for attempting to control the greenhouse emission that West Virginia coal-powered plants produce. This comes after the EPA suggested that all coal-powered plants have proper equipment installed to abate greenhouse gases from being released because of their operations.
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Guest Column
There is nothing more indicative of the fact that the play of humanity is a tragicomedy than when a worker can, in one gesture, turn out their empty pockets to the International Revenue Service while declaring with all sincerity that increasing taxes on the rich is, by its very nature, the punishment of success.
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Editorial
Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster that left 29 miners dead and went down as the worst coal-mining disasters in America in the last 40 years. It has not been until recently that we have seen the operators of UBB facing criminal charges and some receiving the longest sentences ever given to coal officials.
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Guest Column
During much of April, the Marshall University Women’s Studies Program will host a number of innovative and informative events on campus that celebrate women in history and the important social and legal milestones that have advanced the civil liberties and rights of women in America.
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Editorial
In a 5-to-4 decision Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement officials have now can strip search anyone arrested, no matter the seriousness of the crime, before putting them into a jail. What this means now is this: No matter what crime a person has been arrested for, they can now be made to strip naked and have their body examined by officers.
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Column
Within the past couple of weeks, I have noticed that the parking around campus has freed up significantly. What before spring break would have meant several passes up and down Third and Fourth Avenues for a single parking meter is now open season for parking.
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Editorial
Corporations are not people. This seems like an obvious statement. However, it was not an obvious statement to the United States Supreme Court in January 2012 when they ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations were in fact human.
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I am the program director of The Luke Lee Listening, Language, and Learning Lab here at Marshall. We were very excited to have an article published about our program in Tuesday’s Parthenon written by Molly Urian and thought it was a well-written article.
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Column
Have you done anything original? I think this is a question we should ask ourselves on a daily basis. I was listening to the recent hit “We are Young” by Fun and I realized that students at Marshall are squandering their youth. The song summarizes the experiences of your typical Marshall student by describing how love can be found amidst a drunken night of revelry.
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Editorial
As each new technological advance manifests, civil liberties become more challenged. This is the case with cell phones–– the appendage that nearly all Americans currently have. Although we may love our smart phones because they give us the world at our fingertips, they also open up the door to easier use of phone tapping and tracing.
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Column
There is nothing more blasphemous –– in my eyes–– than a human forgetting their humanity. To the religious minded, we are the greatest, most intricate of God’s creations. To those of a more skeptical nature, we’re blessed to have formed into beings capable of this much feeling and reason.
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Column
Money or happiness? Doctor or a not-so-established career? Comfortable living or scraping for change to afford this month’s rent? These are questions with which I was constantly faced when I was declaring my major and concentration at the beginning of college.
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Editorial
As Marshall University continues to have record high freshman enrollment numbers, there is much to be taken into consideration when evaluating this —mainly the university’s high admission rate. Marshall, according to college-board.org, is a ‘less selective’ school, with an acceptance rate of 81 percent.
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Editorial
Last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled that a permit issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 to not allow mountaintop removal in Logan County was unconstitutional. Amy Berman Jackson, the judge who ruled on the decision stated, that the EPA’s decision to ban mountaintop removal at Spruce Mine No.
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Column
My spring break blissful state of mind was cruelly interrupted by news of a gunshot in Sanford, Fla. In a gated, pleasant suburban community outside of Orlando, 28-year-old community watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in the chest.
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Editorial
This past weekend one of the worst house fires in the history of Charleston took the lives of nine individuals, seven of which were under the age of eight. The house, a rental property located on Arlington Avenue in Charleston, caught fire early Saturday morning around 3:25 a.
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Column
This is 2012. Times have changed, and the way times are changing have themselves changed by the ghost hands of forces overt and secretive. We can no longer govern ourselves by applications of the past in an uncertain and emotionally charged future. There is power in a collective of human emotion.
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Column
I’ve been avoiding something for weeks now. I didn’t want to be put in this situation so I ran when I knew it was close. I can’t explain why I avoided it, but I do know that I was finally faced with it today on campus. I’m sure you’ve all noticed people being surveyed around the Memorial Student Center.
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Guest Editorial
College is a time when people are expected to grow up –– to start figuring out what they should be doing with their lives. Many students take this to mean they should be giving up on some of the things they love: No more last minute road trips to Memphis.
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Column
By now you’ve seen, or at least heard of the Kony 2012 video. In case you were in comatose last week, the human rights organization “Invisible Children” released a video documenting the crimes and atrocities perpetuated by Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.
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Editorial
In the next half century there will be a noticeable rise in the water level of the seas, leaving approximately four million Americans to deal with common flooding. The cause: Global warming. According to a report that has been released by scientists, global warming is beginning to show signs of evolvement.
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Column
You know what’s been bothering me lately? Cell phones. Actually, it’s been bothering me a lot longer than “lately,” but for fear of sounding like a complete cynic, I will leave it there. Where do I even begin? I’m not here to rant about the dangers of texting while driving, the studies linking cell phone activity to brain tumors or any of that political brouhaha.
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Editorial
You’ve heard the term income inequality. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have been talking about it for the past year in their campaigns. President Barack Obama has also weighed in on the issue. Alas, talk has come to no avail. Do many fully understand how unequal the wealth distribution in the United States currently is? We hear about the free market and how the free market and the “market place of ideas” places everyone at the same level.
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Column
It is late afternoon, and we are standing in a flood plane in rural Wayne County, W.Va., to assess the damage caused by the Tornado last week to a mobile home. A woman in her late 40s is standing in the yard with her teenage daughter. “You can see where the hail put holes in my siding,” she says, as we tour the perimeter of her home.
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Editorial
In recent months there has been a large amount of hostility toward American forces in Afghanistan due to an accidental burning of the Quran and a viral video that showed United States armed forces personnel urinating on corpses of militants. Over the weekend, these feelings were reaffirmed because of a U.
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Column
An old era has been brought back to life through the movie "The Artist." With its many award nominations and wins, people are wondering can silent films if make a comeback in today's society. Silent films started in the late 1800s and became extremely popular in the 1920s.
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Editorial
Did anybody know who Joseph Kony was before the viral video "Kony 2012" was released? The answer is probably no. And that is fair, not many Americans are up-to-date on current and past African militias and their penchant for violence. But now, thousands of Americans are crusading on the behalf of ending Kony's reign and bringing him to justice, this ,of course, is thanks to the video that the nonprofit, Invisible Children started.
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Column
I'm willing to bet a great deal that the vast majority of young American adults had no idea who Joseph Kony, or the Lord's Resistance, Army was until roughly a week ago. Unless you've got a background understanding of the internal struggles of central Africa, it's just not something people discussed with any discernable amount of voracity.
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Column
As a sophomore here at Marshall University, I am still living in the dorms –– not because I want to –– but because it is required of non-commuting students to live on campus for their first two years. Don't get me wrong, not everything about dorm life is awful, but it would be nice to already have my own place with my own bathroom and kitchen.
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Editorial
Is it really a surprise to see conservatives derailing public discourse for the sake of discussing social issues that have been discussed for hundreds of years? In the current race for the Republican nomination, it seems not to be about issues that are pertinent to the United States at this point in time, but rather it seems to be about issues that shouldn't even be a matter of discussion.
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Guest Column
In advanced capitalist economies, the creation of goods through the use of sophisticated technology becomes so efficient that overproduction eventually occurs, resulting in diminished prices and layoffs. This phenomenon became plain to American auto workers in the 1970s and 1980s when factories began to adopt large-scale automation, which resulted in massive layoffs.
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Guest Editorial
It's been nearly 50 years since the Civil Rights Movement began. Although many Americans overlook the issue of race in today's society, West Virginians were once again in shock and devastation Tuesday as a Pocahontas County pastor was severely beaten because of color of his skin color.
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Coumn
The other day, I drove behind a couple on the West end of Huntington at the exact moment they had their picture taken. I started thinking about how I had just been documented as a piece of history. I daydreamed about how my modern car would, in the far future, be pointed out by their grandchildren as old-fashioned.
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Column
National media outlets have been clamoring about the importance of yesterday's "Super Tuesday" in which 10 states held contests for GOP nominees. This was not only a pivotal moment in the election on a national level. Those in the Tri-State area were affected because Ohio has been considered to be the most significant state for nominees to secure votes in.
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Editorial
These days, it seems that everybody is going to college. It is not commonplace to find people who already have a degree reentering college to better their economic value in the workplace. Many have been scared into universities in the last five years due to the recession, and in some instances, people have been waiting to make money off of this anxiety.
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Column
We Americans live in the time of the "magic pill." At no time in our collective past have we had more access to regular and easily digestible medicine than what we do now. What would have been considered science fiction 100 years ago has now become science fact for nearly every man, woman and child in our country.
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Column
This past Thursday was a big day for those of us in the fight for reproductive rights. Senator Roy Blunt's invasive workplace insurance bill –– one of the most extreme bill proposals ever –– was dropped with a vote of 51-48. The bill would have allowed employers to deny medical insurance of their choice to their employees.
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Editorial
Whether it is about the Keystone XL Pipeline, hydraulic fracturing or offshore drilling, energy is a subject that has received much talk during this election season. Two years after British Petroleum created one of the worst oil spills in history, they have not begun drilling offshore again.
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Editorial
Over the weekend, 38 people were killed in a series of 97 tornadoes that touched ground in the Midwest, South and Appalachian regions. Some of the areas in the Midwest had been hit earlier in the week by a separate series of tornadoes, left unprepared for the coming ones that occurred over the weekend, they were hit again.
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Column
Think back to when you were first taught about sexual assault in school. Did your instructors teach you how to act in a situation of rape? Yes. Did they teach you about how to cope if you were to become a victim? Yes. I bet I know what they didn't tell you, "Don't rape.
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Editorial
While it might not be factual evidence, it's safe to assume a vast number of individuals — at least college-aged ones — partake in the abuse of an illicit substance. Moreover, in a 2007 USA Today article, it was concluded nearly 50 percent of the 5.
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Guest Column
As the student body president, one major concern that is frequently brought to me by my fellow students is the fact that they "have nothing to do" here at Marshall University. One organization that has worked year-round for 75 years to overcome this sentiment is the Marshall Artists Series.
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Editorial
The West Virginia House of Delegates has passed a new mine safety bill that was watered down after coal-mine lobbyists were opposed to some of the provisions in the original bill. It is widely agreed upon, between safety officials and private investigators, the issues the new bill addresses — especially after coal lobbyists disagreed with some provisions –– have failed to address what actually caused the Upper Big Branch mine explosion.
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Column
We as Americans, have a complex relationship with our food. It is no wonder, because we have more access to all kinds of food (good and bad) at any given moment in human history. Since the Industrial Revolution, industrial products like corrugated board, cellophane plastic wraps and vacuum sealing have made our food last longer and taste more fresh than ever before.
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Column
I am sure some, if not most, of you have seen the movie "Leap Year." For those of you who haven't seen it, "Leap Year" is about a woman who believes her boyfriend is about to propose to her before he goes on a business trip to Ireland. When this does not happen, the woman follows her boyfriend to Ireland to propose to him after her father tells her that it is acceptable to do in a leap year.
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Editorial
After a high-school shooting that left three students dead in Ohio on Monday, the nation was reminded of the harm that loose gun control laws can have. Chardon High School, 30 miles northeast of Cleveland, Ohio was the school struck by this tragedy. A student entered the cafeteria at around 7:40 a.
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I was having a conversation with a friend recently about what we want to do "when we grow up," and it got me thinking about how other people perceive my interests. I've always been torn between my love of journalism and my love of theater. In a lot of ways, I consider journalism to be the nobler, because I love the idea of exposing corruption and righting wrongs as a profession.
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Editorial
It's been 10 years and we are still 96,000 troops strong in Afghanistan. In recent news, there have been riots in the streets of Afghanistan because of American and NATO forces burning the Quran, the holy doctrine of Islam. Since the incident of burning the Qurans has been public, an apology has been issued from United States officials claiming the action was inadvertent and not malicious.
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Column
Of all places to strike up an actual debate, Facebook is the medium responsible for this column. It started, unsurprisingly, with some random post by a girl I went to high school with. I was flipping through the pages of mundane updates (because, really, all I use Facebook for is to nose in on and judge the people I barely know anyway) when I noticed this particular peer was announcing that she was pregnant.
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Editorial
If you're in college you've probably heard of it by now. You may not understand what it is or how it works, but you at least know the basic details of it: Affirmative action. Last week, the Supreme Court made a decision to rehear a case that could overturn the ability for universities to consider race when selecting applicants for admission.
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Column
Do you ever walk into a room and forget what you went in there to do? I feel like the United States did that with Afghanistan. I mean, seriously, does anyone on the street have a definitive answer as to what the heck we're still doing there? What's the endgame? Where's the frontline? Where are the bad guys coming from? Are the bad guys even the right bad guys? Can you even find Afghanistan on a map? What's a Hamid Karzai? We really should know what's going on in a country into which we've been dumping hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
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Column
Today, it seems as though there is a medication to cure anything that ails you. You name an ache or pain, and you've got a prescription with your name on the label. What about those pains that aren't visible by a bruise or lump or scratch? These are a little more difficult to medicate in most cases.
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Editorial
In the past two decades, bottled water has become a cultural phenomenon. The purchase of bottled water has skyrocketed from almost nonexistent in the 1960s and 1970s into a multi-billion dollar industry today. According to the Centers for Disease Control, bottled water is the fastest growing drink choice in the United States with Americans spending billions of dollars each year on the product.
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A recent Parthenon column regarding Rick Santorum characterized his views on abortion as "barbaric." On the contrary, the deliberate termination of innocent human life much more closely fits the definition of that word. Abortion advocates have attempted to create a very sanitary picture of elective abortion.
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Column
Every year in the spring, students appear walking around campus with yellow buckets on their heads. Wait, what? That's right. Students join together every spring for an event called "Be Hope To Her," during which they walk a mile around campus with a yellow bucket filled with water on top of their head.
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Editorial
If you are reading this, chances are you took — or are in the process of taking –– the ACT, SAT, MCAT or the GRE. You also paid an application fee to the universities you applied to. And you probably shelled out some travel money to come take tours of campuses before you applied to the schools.
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Column
According to a recent Gallup Poll, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum now leads his opponents, with 36 percent of the vote. Mitt Romney has fallen behind and is now trailing frontrunner Santorum by 10 percentage points. According to a Texas Tribune poll, the results are much more grim: Santorum leads with 45 percent of the vote with the nearest opponent, Newt Gingrich, at 18 percent.
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EDITOR'S NOTE : This letter is in response to an article that was published Feb. 15. The article covered a demonstration conducted by gay rights activist who were counter demonstrated by anti-gay rights activists at City Hall. Marriage is something that can be complex to define, but it is simple contract law.
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Editorial
West Virginia has a problem with its prisons. There are not enough of them to house the number of inmates that are being locked up each year. For a state that has ranked consistently low — usually 39 among the 50 states –– in violent crime rates for the past decade, our prison population has quadrupled since the 1980s.
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Column
By nearly every standard of living, Americans have it better than any generation that has come before us. From education and healthcare to transportation and crime rates, we don't have it too bad at all. But, we should not become complacent and assume it will always be this way.
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Editorial
The West Virginia Senate passed a bill that severely increases the punishment an individual can receive if found guilty defacing public property, last week. A person can now receive a fine of up to a $10,000 fine and three years in jail for the defacing of property.
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Guest Column
Breaking news of suspects planning to carry out attacks against America and other foreign interests has unfortunately become an, "I'm-not-surprised-to-hear-this" sort of thing in the media today. Whatever the motives of these suspects, I personally cannot help but wonder when this wave of negative representation of Islam, the threads of which are sometimes — and unfortunately — interlaced by Muslims themselves, will stop.
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I read your article about the Navy veteran and felt the need to offer some feedback. First, as a Marshall student who is a veteran, I found the enrollment process to be easy, and my professor to work with me and to have reasonable expectations.
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Editorial
It's that time of the year. College graduates and students are searching high and low for summer internships, some hoping to get a foot into the door that will help them jump-start their career. Except, within the last five years, something has changed regarding how college students find their way into the workforce.
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Column
If you've ever been a part of ––or even just viewed –– any social networking site, you probably didn't have to do much scrolling to find someone saying something negative about another person. Whether the person making the post intends for the victim to see their words or not, they are making the other person just that: A victim.
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Column
Opinions on the Republican primary race are a dime-a-dozen and often not even worth the electricity needed to broadcast them, but there's just too much to be said as of late. The whole situation freaks me out. Not because I'm afraid one of them might become president (I 100 percent believe whoever gets the nomination is going to get smashed by President Barack Obama, regardless), or because I'm invested in keeping Obama in office, which I'm not.
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Editorial
It seems each week, our civil liberties are continually being attacked. This week further affirms this point. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, can now –– thanks to a bill signed by President Barack Obama Tuesday –– fly in American skies with less regulation than before.
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Column
One of the most beneficial opportunities students can take advantage of when they are in college is travelling. There are numerous options for students to be able to explore different places and experience communities. Study abroad is always an option for students as well as the National Student Exchange program.
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Editorial
It has been nearly two years since the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, and court cases are beginning to emerge for the officials who federal investigators see responsible for the incident. The Charleston Gazette reports federal prosecutors will seek a 25-year sentence for Hughie Elbert Stover, former Massey Energy security chief.
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Column
I recently completed my orientation to be an American Red Cross volunteer. The orientation was held in Cross Lanes, W.Va., at the American Red Cross chapter building, facilitated by four staff members and a handful of other people who showed up to begin their volunteer orientation for the AmeriAcan Red Cross.
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Editorial
Former Marshall University football player Randy Moss announced Monday via his UStream account that he was planning on returning to the National Football League after a one-year hiatus from football. Moss' accomplishments throughout his 13-year career, dating from 1998 to 2010, have been numerous.
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Column
As I'm writing this I'm listening to two women at my work talk about food. I keep trying to find a way to jump into the conversation, but it's really difficult to think of a good contribution to comparing and contrasting the chicken at Bojangle's versus the chicken at Popeye's.
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Column
About five years ago I had a reoccurring dream over a period of several weeks that I was losing all of my teeth. It was more of a nightmare than a dream actually, having all of my teeth disintegrate at once. In my case these dreams were more of the prophetic variety.
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Editorial
The majority of Americans adore Valentine's Day. This can go as an undisputed fact. This day is intended to express love and sentiment to your significant other. But like many other holidays, Valentine's Day has been commercialized. It has been ascribed a value — or at least the gifts that are given have been.
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Column
When it comes to the topic of taking foreign language courses in college, most of us will readily agree it is a more than a stressful task. These courses are almost always structured strictly around memorization, which doesn't sound too difficult at first.
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With Valentine's Day quickly approaching, I've been reflecting on the meaning of this special day and how it evolves the older I get. I remember sitting in my living room in elementary school with my class list and addressing princess and Power Ranger valentines to everyone –– writing special notes to all my best friends: Back then, valentines were simple.
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Editorial
In a decision last week, President Barack Obama shifted his new policy to better cater to religious institutions and how they provide birth control coverage to their employees. These institutions include religious universities, hospitals and many other places that employ thousands.
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Column
It's nothing new to hear the Republican primary is holding strong as a giant cluster of buzzwords and pandering. No number of statisticians, analysts or journalists (myself included) can predict the outcome of this mess. But something from the maelstrom came to me this week out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich, and it's telling of radicalized Republican foreign policy.
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Editorial
It's been almost two years since the mining disaster at Upper Big Branch occurred, and still no mine safety laws have been created to directly address the causes of the disaster. There has, however, been a recent attempt by the governor of West Virginia, Earl Ray Tomblin, to propose a bill that would curve mine fatalities — at least in his mind.
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Column
See, there's this mountain and I want it, in fact, I need it. It sits among many other mountains, but it's different, you see? This mountain is special in the sense that is has had some blood shed on it for something that happened in an insignificant epoch — insignificant, at least to me.
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Editorial
In a historical ruling, a federal appeals court ruled against California's ban on gay marriage, Proposition 8, Tuesday. The courts argued what has been blatantly obvious all along: The ban is unconstitutional. Courts said the ban served no other purpose than "to lessen the status and human dignity" of gays and lesbians.
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Column
I hear drums, and I am not talking about Occupy protestors. The drums of war haven't stopped for more than 10 years. My country has been at war for almost half my life (I am 22), and we are just now bringing Iraq and Afghanistan to an "end." President Barack Obama's war narrative follows George W.
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Column
I'm a movie snob. No kidding, one of my favorite things to do is go to a movie and scoff at how ridiculous the previews are. There's something fun about it, I guess, critiquing other people's art in the comfort of a dark theater where no one can identify me.
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Editorial
In a recent instance, a contractor who received federal money to perform projects for the government decided to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. What did it take for this to occur? Well, it took 50,000 signatures on an online petition before the company decided to ban, officially, workplace discriminations against these individuals.
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