Support systems are essential for students
By April Jaynes | Mar. 18, 2014Confession time: I’m still learning when I need to let myself lean on those who love me most.
COLUMNS
Gamer Girl: ‘Don’t Starve’ survival game is adorably addictive
By Sophie Kruse | Mar. 17, 2014Since one of my favorite hobbies is lying in my room playing video games, it’s nice when they make me feel a little more adventurous than I really am.
Gamer Girl: 'Don't Starve' survival game is adorably addictive
Mar. 16, 2014Since one of my favorite hobbies is lying in my room playing video games, it’s nice when they make me feel a little more adventurous than I really am.
From the Sports Desk: CIT bid is better than nothing for the Bobcats
Mar. 16, 2014At the end of last week, Ohio was fatefully ousted by Akron in its Mid-American Conference Tournament quarterfinal game. Shell-shocked and near the point of tears, I knew that any chance of an NCAA Tournament run — a la the Bobcats’ 2012 postseason — went out the window. Ohio’s future would be subject to the bidding of the National Invitational Tournament (fingers-crossed!), the College Basketball Invitational (we’ll take it!) or the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (gasp!).
College Matt-ers: OU’s student workers deserve fair wage raise
By Matt Farmer | Mar. 16, 2014In the State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called on Congress to “give America a raise” by raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Rather than wait for Congress to force its hand, Ohio University should act now and raise student workers’ wages to at least that amount.
College Matt-ers: OU's student workers deserve fair wage raise
Mar. 15, 2014In the State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called on Congress to “give America a raise” by raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Rather than wait for Congress to force its hand, Ohio University should act now and raise student workers’ wages to at least that amount.
NYX Cosmetics line is an impressive bargain buy
Mar. 13, 2014As I’m sure many of you Beauty ’Cats have noticed, the CVS Pharmacy on East State Street has added a new makeup brand to its lineup — NYX Cosmetics. Before recently, I had only ever purchased NYX at Ulta or Nordstrom Rack, and I’m excited to have it more easily accessible while at school.
NYX Cosmetics line is an impressive bargain buy
By Taylor La Puma | Mar. 13, 2014As I’m sure many of you Beauty ’Cats have noticed, the CVS Pharmacy on East State Street has added a new makeup brand to its lineup — NYX Cosmetics. Before recently, I had only ever purchased NYX at Ulta or Nordstrom Rack, and I’m excited to have it more easily accessible while at school.
Obama skirts major media for ‘Ferns’ sit-down
By Josh Jamerson | Mar. 12, 2014Sitting between two ferns, President Barack Obama spoke to actor Zach Galifianakis this week about the Affordable Care Act in an almost-last-ditch effort to get more young people to sign up for private health care plans by using the federal and state government-run marketplaces.But I’d bet most people reading this column, which appears in a college newspaper, already knew that. That’s because Obama’s sales pitch, in some ways, worked.As the White House would tell you, funnyordie.com, the website that hosts the semi-scripted show, was the No. 1 source of traffic yesterday to healthcare.gov, the federal marketplaces.And even if you’re 18-34 and you didn’t sign up for health care after watching the “Between Two Ferns” piece online, the president made his pitch and you remembered it. And, judging by the “Funny or Die” meter on the Galifianakis episode, you likely laughed.But some critics argue that a sitting president appearing on a Web-only, tit-for-tat comedy show — with a microphone pinned on to his lapel with masking tape — is not the best use of precious presidential time and resources.As The Washington Post noted, with the advent of the Internet, Obama is the first president who is able to bypass traditional news media in favor of more laid-back, non-traditional media that will be kinder in its line of questioning.For example, The Washington Post noted that Obama last met with the newspaper in 2009. Since then, Obama has given interviews to People, Entertainment Tonight and The View, as well as entertainers Jay Leno, Steve Harvey and Jon Stewart. NBA legend Charles Barkley interviewed the president this year. Now add Hangover star Zach Galifianakis to the bunch.Obviously, the White House’s agenda can be better delivered unfiltered by lighter media outlets. So it’s a no-brainer, perhaps, that a president with more than 27 million Twitter followers — many more than The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other top news outlets with a beefed-up Washington Bureau — doesn’t feel like he needs to cozy up to the traditional news media.Because they will ask tough questions and write stories that have deep context from seasoned reporters who know how Washington does and doesn’t work. That’s probably a scary thought for a president facing approval ratings near or touching his all-time lows, depending on the poll.But Obama often talks about what this nation’s leaders can do versus what is the right thing to do. He said that about the NSA programs that have come under intense scrutiny.“The power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do,” the president said in January during a landmark speech on U.S. intelligence gathering. “That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do.”I wonder how he would feel about applying that logic to disseminating his agenda.Now that traditional media — with reporters who will vet information and offer in-depth looks at a president’s public policy agenda — is becoming eclipsed by brand new forms of “light” media, should the president opt for the easy way or the hard way to inform the American people of his White House’s plans? Because we know he can opt — and is opting — for the easier way. But should he?Regardless of what he thinks of that, my prediction is an obvious one: Obama’s not going to stop the light interviews — which history might be kind to — any time soon.Joshua Jamerson is a junior studying journalism and local editor of The Post. What did you think of Obama’s “Between Two Ferns” interview? Talk about the episode with him at jj360410@ohiou.edu.
Hope for Humanity: Cybersexism edges women out of online communities
By Bekki Wyss | Mar. 12, 2014“All of my social media sites were flooded with threats of rape, violence, sexual assault, death. And you’ll notice that these threats and comments were all specifically targeting my gender,” Anita Sarkeesian said of her battle with cyber harassers, one of whom developed a game for punching her face into a bloody pulp, in her 2012 Ted Talk. Sarkeesian, a feminist pop culture critic perhaps best known for her “Tropes vs. Women” YouTube series, will speak Thursday in Baker Theatre at 5 p.m. Part of the Law, Justice, and Culture Center’s series on Critical Resistance in the Digital Age, Sarkeesian’s presentation focuses on the unprecedented scale of cybersexism she faced after launching a KickStarter campaign to raise money for a series of videos examining common representation of women in video games. Sarkeesian’s experience is far from unusual for women with significant Internet presences. In “A Woman’s Opinion Is the Miniskirt of the Internet,” left-wing journalist Laurie Penny recounts her experiences with direct threats made to both her and her “school-age sisters” as a result of her job. She writes that as a woman, “having (an opinion) and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you how they’d like to rape, kill and urinate on you.”Here at Ohio University, we’ve seen this phenomenon manifest itself as members of F--kRapeCulture were contacted on personal phones and social media accounts by men’s rights activists threatening to teach them “how it feels to be really raped,” as well as anonymous OU Confessions tweets saying FRC members “just need to be fked hard.” We’ve seen groups organized around harassing the supposedly “man-hating feminist” Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones and making an OU student falsely associated with the Court Street incident delete her social media presence to deter the threats.Amanda Hess’ piece “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet” suggests that the solution offered to the aforementioned student is almost universal: delete your accounts, modify your Internet use, and ignore the hate speech. “Don’t feed the trolls” is the cliché advice given to those who experience Internet bullying, as if this were an adequate response. Sounding suspiciously like the supposed rape prevention advice which recommends women don’t wear x things in y places, our conventional coping strategies for Internet harassment are neither progressive nor feasible in the digital age.Anita Sarkeesian’s story has a happy ending. Raising more than $120,000 for her series, she continues to produce content for Feminist Frequency that both critiques existing video games and imagines media that could make the gaming community a powerful cultural safe-space open to all. Hopefully, that possibility exists for the rest of us as we graduate into an Internet culture still much more hostile to those who are aren’t straight white men than we are prepared to admit.Bekki Wyss is a junior studying English literature. Have you experienced gender-targeted harassment online? Tell her about it at rw225570@ohiou.edu.
Beyond the Books: Smart, skillful money management is key for college students
Mar. 11, 2014Guys, budgets are severely underrated.
Gamer Girl: Wireless phone hook-up is car's coolest tech perk
Mar. 11, 2014This spring break for me was a memorable one. After waiting for what has felt like forever since getting my driver’s license, I finally purchased my first car: an adorable white Ford Focus.
