It seems every other week that a social media influencer or politician gets outed for engaging in the unthinkable. But oftentimes, the vigilante work that goes into exposing potential pedophiles produces inadmissible legal evidence and allows truly legitimate criminals to evade police capture.
Author: Baylor Lariat
The Constitution states that Congress cannot make any law prohibiting the free exercise of the press. As Americans, we have a right to knowledge about our government and global events.
Sports betting and prediction markets take real people and events and turn them into numbers on a screen, dehumanizing them and turning them into vehicles for profit. The harms of sports betting are well documented and researched; you can’t step foot into a Las Vegas casino without seeing a “When the Fun Stops” brochure prominently displayed on an ATM.
It seems as though each year the importance of election season grows, with 2026 being no exception. With the ever-growing political tension and scrutiny between parties, the responsibility to build bridges falls on us — those with the power to vote. If you’re struggling with where to begin, here are five questions to help get you on the right path.
In classrooms across Baylor, an epidemic has gone silently unnoticed: a lack of motivation to learn. While this seems to be addressed in the conversation about literacy rates and artificial intelligence, it has yet to be discussed that students would rather do homework or respond to emails than sit attentively in class.
We live in a time and country with no shortage of things worth caring about. Yet too often, an issue does not seem to matter until its consequences are relevant, immediate, visible or catastrophic. A war thousands of miles away is an easy headline to scroll past; a local decision can happen without most of the people it affects ever knowing; an injustice can continue quietly for years if it never becomes dramatic enough to command national attention.
Joking about mental health is easy. Actually facing mental health issues head-on is not.
We seem to have forgotten the meaning of “What Would Jesus Do?” Instead, it has become a familiar saying that is slapped on bracelets, T-shirts or bumper stickers and fails to make it into our daily life. And, often, the way we live is not more than this.
Baylor’s student body has had the opportunity to react to various political events on campus over the past year. Tables add color to Fountain Mall day in and day out, and may or may not be political in nature. One constant remains, however: Baylor University is not, and ought not to be, directly political.
Marketed as license plate readers, cameras like Flock and other similar brands have impacts that extend far beyond helping hand out speeding tickets and traffic fines. They create an environment of mass surveillance where not only our privacy is threatened, but our constitutional rights.
A lot has happened since we left campus last spring: America turned 250 years old, Europeans discovered Buc-ee’s during the FIFA World Cup and the largest known outbreak of Cyclospora ever was recorded in the U.S., leading to over 15,000 confirmed cases from May 1 to Aug. 17.
Welcome back to campus, Bears. We are so glad you are here. Whether today is your first day at Baylor or you’ve done this a few times, we hope your first day of classes goes well. The Baylor Lariat’s editorial board is made up of a group of Lariat editors who meet each week to discuss the issues, events and conversations shaping the Baylor community and beyond. Our goal is to write on issues and events we believe are relevant to our readers.
Baylor’s fiscal issues are affecting far more than the dollar amount you see in BearWeb. It is fundamentally changing our university and what makes Baylor, Baylor. It’s hitting departments, retirement and, on a personal level, The Lariat’s newsroom.
Just blocks from campus, Wacoans live without a place to stay, asking for money on the corner of every popular grease pit location. All the while, one of the state’s largest universities hasn’t done much to drive change.
If I were still carrying a TPUSA title, what happened on April 22 would have been enough for me to walk away. You don’t fight for free speech by banning student journalists. You don’t build a movement by turning away supporters who drove hours to be there. And you don’t honor Charlie Kirk’s legacy mocking fellow students in a half-empty room.
If the majority of your principles as a voter align more closely with one side or the other, failing to vote with that party is not only throwing away one of our most important rights as Americans, but it is also helping the people you disagree with win.
What gives us the authority to decide what is “cringe”? We cannot possibly consider ourselves so important to be the all-knowing determiners of what is the norm. We’ve gotten so wrapped up in our perception of others that it’s warped our sense of self. The reason we joke, “to be cringe is to be free,” is simple — it gives us an excuse to be ourselves in a world that is often far too judgmental.
What might it look like if students attended All Are Neighbors, then walked together to the Quadrangle for prayer and, from there, continued on to the Turning Point USA event? What conversations might emerge not in isolation, but in movement — in the shared experience of listening, reflecting and then listening again?
Our media is designed for distraction; as a result, you can’t have productive conversations because they want intellectual diversions. The result is a kind of intellectual echo chamber masquerading as informed discourse. We mistake familiarity for accuracy and repetition for truth, echoing headlines we have absorbed rather than arguments we have examined.
Wherever you stand politically, it’s clear that President Donald Trump’s tactics are far different from those of any other president regarding the Iran conflict. He doesn’t stop at ultimatums or negotiations; rather, he humiliates, profanes, libels and threatens. And Iran isn’t the only victim.
Basing your diet on the advice of online influencers is a dangerous route to take, as it often lacks critical information that allows consumers to make healthy, responsible choices on their own.
In a world that is all over the place and constantly changing, cozy games help. Games like The Sims 4 and Animal Crossing offer low-stakes, calm gameplay. These games allow players to tend gardens, fish and decorate their dream homes at their own pace. There aren’t any fast-paced, quick time events or frustrating levels to complete, which helps promote relaxation.
Criticisms directed at TPUSA accuse the organization of “provocation” or creating a “spectacle.” These claims are reinforced by short viral clips rather than engagement with the organization’s actual ideologies. When judgements form this way, people risk oversimplifying complex viewpoints and reducing TPUSA and its supporters to an out-of-context viral clip.
Baylor University will host a stop on the campus tour of Turning Point USA, a national political organization that is known for staging confrontational political events at universities. While supporters say these events at universities promote free speech and bring conservative ideas onto campus, but Baylor students should be asking a deeper question: are these tours actually to foster dialogue, or are they designed to turn universities into a stage for political theatre?
Now more than ever, the confirmation of alien life is exactly what the world needs to bridge its divide. With economically and emotionally devastating wars and polarized thinking, something big could mend fences — and finding extraterrestrials would do just that.
We don’t need to reject technology or social media completely, but we do need to relearn where the line is and start acting as if it exists again. If everything becomes content, we all lose control of our own lives at some point.
If you’re worried about what a draft or what the Iran war might mean for you personally, listen to foreign policy experts, research your eligibility and — above all — stay engaged. Apathy and misinformation kill as bullets and bombs do, without us even setting foot on the battlefield.
Next month, TPUSA’s “This is the Turning Point Tour” will arrive on Baylor’s campus. What does it mean for Baylor — not simply as a university, but as a Christian academic community — to host an organization so closely associated with ideological aggravation?
