Opinion: Rolling Stone retracts controversial rape article

Michael Lyday
Features Editor

Rolling Stone magazine published an inflammatory article titled “A Rape on Campus” in its December 2014 issue, detailing an alleged gang rape that occurred at the University of Virginia. Ever since its publication the article has garnered controversy not only for its subject matter, but also for alleged gaps in its story. This led to Rolling Stone officially pulling the article from publication on April 5.

The article detailed the story of a woman who identified herself as Jackie, who alleged that members of the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brutally gang raped her for hours as a twisted induction ritual for new pledges, eventually rendering her unconscious. The gruesome details of the story led to the fraternity house being vandalized amidst protests raging outside. Though it accomplished its goal of stirring up sentiments about rape on college campuses and negative influences that Greek life on campus can bring, many parts of the story were called out for being inconsistent. This eventually led many in the journalism community to decry the article as flat fabrication. Police later investigated and found that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the fraternity. The writer of the article came under fire, being accused of writing with an agenda, calling into question the ethics of journalism and journalistic integrity.

Opinion: The forever tarnished era of Brady and Belichick

Cameron Goz
Staff Writer

The Brady-Belichick legacy has come a long way this past decade and a half. With a record of 148-43, Brady and Belichick have amassed more wins together than any quarterback and head coach combo in the history of the sport. They’ve been to five Super Bowls, winning three, and are going to their sixth together this year. They’ve often been seen as the class of the National Football League, with their success over the past decade and team first style of play, but their legacy together will forever be tainted, because they cheated. 

Opinion: American Sniper garners controversy after tweets

Michael Lyday
Features Editor

Controversy loomed around the patriotic blockbuster American Sniper following tweets made by actor Seth Rogen and director Michael Moore, leaving Hollywood and many Americans at large abuzz with opinions about the film.

In his January 18 tweet, Rogen stated that, “American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that's showing in the third act of Inglourious Basterds.” This references the satirical faux Nazi propaganda movie “National Pride” shown to a theater filled with Nazi officials in the climactic final act of the movie. Many attacked the tweet, alleging that it compared American troops to Nazis. Rogen later clarified, stating that, “I wasn't comparing the two. Big difference between comparing and reminding. Apples remind me of oranges. Can't compare them, though.”

Should college athletes be paid?

Adam Mancini
Sports Editor

In America, there exists a $6 billion a year industry. Its core labor force is almost entirely unpaid. Not only do these laborers accumulate a grand total of $0 an hour, they are actually punished for making any sort of money off of their job. The laborers are college athletes, and the multibillion dollar industry is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It’s time for this outdated hierarchy to be changed. College athletes need to be paid.

Media reports everything but the news

Michael Lyday
Editor-in-Chief

When you log onto your favorite news site or turn on your preferred 24-hour news network, you find anything but the news. Rather than information about the breaking news story of the day, you instead hear opinion and speculation. If you look to Fox News for coverage of a shooting, you are met with unhinged nitwits warning you that your guns are going to be taken away. If you look to MSNBC for coverage of the same event you see the same concept, but this time disseminating the idea that guns are evil. People look to the news for facts, but only receive propaganda that the network overseers wish to program into as many brains as they can get to watch the screen.

Esports are real

Zane Muzzillo
Staff Writer

Dictionary.com defines “sport” as an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. Esports are real sports because they are revolutionizing the sporting industry. They allow anyone, young or old, to participate and compete on an equal playing field. There are hundreds of professional esports players in several different games; the most popular include League of Legends, Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) 2, and Starcraft 2. Each game is constantly streamed throughout the Internet and the tournaments have large attendance rates. In 2013, 8,000 people attended the League of Legends World Championships, which were held at the Staples Center; tickets sold out within an hour.

Death of Westboro Baptist Church leader stirs controversy

Michael Lyday
Editor-in-Chief

Shortly before midnight last Thursday, infamous Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps died of natural causes. He founded the church in 1955 with just a few members, but nearly 40 years later began garnering attention for its picketing of public events and places, trying to push their radical and often bigoted views on the public. Their infamy recently spread to sensational levels via social media coverage of their protests during the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of many public places, even other churches.

Michael Sam breaks down NFL barriers

Adam Mancini
Sports Editor

Forget about Johnny Manziel or Jadeveon Clowney; All-American defensive end Michael Sam from Missouri is the talk of the 2014 NFL Draft. On tape, he’s nothing truly special. He led the Southeastern Conference with 11.5 sacks and 19 tackles for loss, but he’s not the strongest man on the field and isn’t the fastest either. He’s projected to go somewhere around the third or fourth round. So why is a mid-round, underwhelming defensive end grabbing all the headlines leading up to the draft? All because of an announcement that’s become commonplace everywhere except in the NFL: Sam is an openly homosexual man.

UNC Engulfed in Scandal

Adam Mancini
Sports Editor

Amid recent allegations of yet another academic scandal, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has gone on the defensive. Mary Willingham, a learning specialist at the UNC Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling, claims she has conducted research into the literacy levels of athletes of the most prestigious teams of the university, including the football team. According to Willingham, 8 to 10 percent of student athletes who played football or basketball between 2004 and 2012 read at a third-grade level or below, and 60 percent read between fourth and eighth-grade levels. Immediately after releasing the findings of her research, UNC refuted her claims, questioning her data. Provost Jim Dean brushed the research off as “a travesty, and unworthy of this university.”

Texas teenager sentenced to probation after killing four

Michael Lyday
Staff Writer

On an early morning in June on a Fort Worth, Texas highway, a pickup truck packed with seven teenagers, fresh from stealing beer at a local Wal-Mart, careened down the street at 70 miles per hour. The truck ended up smashing into a broken-down vehicle on the side of the road. Local authorities described the resulting wreckage as one of the worst they had ever seen. The stranded driver of the broken-down vehicle along with the three individuals trying to help were left dead, and one of the passengers riding in the bed of the truck was left paralyzed. The driver that night was Ethan Couch, the 16 year old son of a CEO. Couch had a blood alcohol content that was three times the legal limit.

America's future dependent on gun control

Matt Wotus
Features Editor

Newtown, Connecticut. Aurora, Colorado. Blacksburg, Virginia. Littleton, Colorado. These four towns are the sites of some of the deadliest mass shootings in United States history. While the massacres in these cities received the most media attention, there have been numerous others. Shootings such as the one in Newtown are occurring more frequently, a scary trend in a country where a ban on military-style assault weapons expired in 2004. The fact of the matter is, the United States has a problem. The mentally ill and unstable and those with criminal records are able to have not only guns in their possession, but incredibly dangerous military-style assault weapons as well. Something must be done to make this country safer. Capitol Hill must agree on reasonable gun control laws and their enforcement to stop these mass shootings. The future of the United States is at elementary, middle, and high schools, and our future is being gunned down.

In early January, after the massacre at Newtown, President Barack Obama outlined a plan to curb “the epidemic of gun violence in this country.” The 44th president’s plan involves universal background checks for all gun buyers, hindering gun trafficking, banning military-style assault weapons, as well as illegalizing ammunition magazines which hold more than 10 bullets. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 53 of percent of those polled favor Obama’s proposal. However, support is much larger for individual parts of the proposal. Large majorities ranging from 88 percent to 65 percent favor background checks, tracking gun sales, and banning high-capacity magazines. In a study by Johns Hopkins University, 89 percent of respondents support universal background checks. Out of these 89 percent, 75 percent identified themselves as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a longtime opponent of gun control. Wayne LaPierre, the vice president of the NRA, isn’t buying into gun control, saying on NBC’s Meet the Press, “It’s not going to work. It hasn’t worked.” However, these statistics show that more Americans feel the need for it, and frankly, society needs it. We shouldn’t have to mourn the death of children, teenagers, or adults killed by a rampant gunman. Obama and future presidents should not have to deliver tearful speeches, saddened and grieving for the deaths of the innocent.

Corporations Want to Buy Our Elections

Frankie Campisano
Arts and Entertainment Editor Opinion Piece

            America’s free elections are in danger of being legally bought out by powerful corporate interests. The 2012 presidential election will be unlike any that have come before it, due in part to a recent Supreme Court decision that we are only just now seeing the fallout from. The case of Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission was heard by the Supreme Court in 2010, and it ruled that corporations as legal entities are considered people.  The decision reversed existing rules that stopped corporations and non-profit organizations from airing campaign commercials within thirty days of a primary or sixty days of a general election. Coupled with an earlier Supreme Court decision in the case of Buckley versus Valeo, which ruled that the spending of money qualified as a form of protected speech, the results are disastrous.  The Citizens United case notably opened the door to the creation of independent expenditure political action committees, commonly referred to as Super PACs. When combined with a 501(c)(4) organization, a shell corporation with little practical use, Super PACs can exploit loopholes in the election system to collect unlimited, anonymous donations from corporations and individuals to use them for political campaigning for candidates.

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