By Megan Rule | Staff Writer The Waco community is offering multiple ceremonies and events this coming weekend to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, starting with a wreath-laying ceremony today. “This was what Dr. King envisioned, that all boys and girls of different colors and nationalities would walk together as one,” said Coque Gibson, event coordinator. “That’s what we need to do to have more peace and be more tolerant of each other.” The wreath-laying ceremony will take place at noon today at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park at 300 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The…
Author: Megan Rule
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterNew year means new you, right? Unfortunately for most, New Year’s resolutions are not as easy as they sound. A Huffington Post study shows that only about 8 percent of people stick with their resolutions past the first week of January, even though almost half the population makes resolutions with the start of the new year. “Many people will self-reflect and say, ‘There’s a part of my life I want to do better in,'” said Dr. Michael Scullin, assistant professor of psychology at Baylor. “The problem is that fewer than 10 percent of people will…
Megan Rule | Staff Writer With the start of the new year, BaylorProud has released the top 10 Baylor Instagram photos of 2017 in order to wrap up the past year for the Bears. “I think we had a good covering of the highlights of 2017. From President Livingstone arriving to athletic victories, to student life, to fun activities like the puppy on Fountain Mall,” said Jeff Brown, director of social media communications at Baylor. The top ten photos included moments such as President Linda Livingstone receiving her Baylor ID, the morning of Move2BU, various views around campus and the…
Goodbye, processed sugar. Hello, coconut sugar.
By Megan Rule | Opinion Editor Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved reading. There was something about escaping into a book and learning about new characters that enthralled me when I was younger, and carried into my pre-teen and young adult years. Reading was something I picked up on pretty quickly; I was reading chapter books far earlier than most children, and I excelled in the reading categories on standardized tests. I read for fun and challenged myself each summer to read more books than I did the previous summer. Pretty quickly, I picked up writing as well.…
Stuffed meatballs and pumpkin pecan muffins, unbuttoned the top button on your pants because its Thanksgiving time.
By Megan Rule | Opinion EditorIn this day and age, it’s hard to avoid the flashy headlines that news organizations put out. Headlines dart across the bottom of our television screens, fill our Twitter feeds, cover the front pages of newspapers and run across the computer screens at work and on social media. Radio DJ’s read major headlines in between songs and dinner conversations focus on what the bold print was in any publication.Notice, however, how no one ever talks about a quote buried seven paragraphs into a story. Notice how no tweets encompass a whole story. Notice how radio…
Megan Rule | Opinion EditorThe 2016-2017 Prosper Waco Initiative Report was recently released, showing improvement in many initiative efforts throughout the community.”I think because our whole role is to convene community partners to come together, just convening everyone together and the consistency of people coming to meetings and seeing how people collaborate is what I continue to get excited about,” said Christina Helmick, director of communications for Prosper Waco. “It’s fun to include a wide variety of the people involved, mixing in health care professionals with businesses and nonprofits shows our community is in great partnership.”This is the second year…
By Megan Rule | Opinion EditorChip Gaines of HGTV’s Fixer Upper announced last week that he would cut his man bun off if fans donated to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Gaines said the more money raised, the more hair would be cut off. If fans “exceed the expectations,” he might even go to a buzz cut.Gaines and his wife, Joanna, are visiting St. Jude’s Research Hospital in Memphis, which sparked the idea of this post. Gaines said in his caption, “No family ever pays @StJude for treatment, travel or food—so basically, we want to bring them a giant check from…
By Megan Rule | Opinion EditorBaseball fan or not, the American League Championship Series (ALCS) has been quite a series of games. With the fifth game wrapping up Wednesday night, the underdog New York Yankees are leading the favored Houston Astros 3-2. As a New Yorker, I’ve had a bit of hostility toward me this week as I wear my pinstripes proudly. Beginning last Friday, I had been told that I was “wearing the wrong jersey” and I “should just give up hope now.” But with the turn of events on Monday, what started as jokes turned into me making…
By Megan Rule | Opinion EditorThe common stigma of the friend zone is a girl telling a guy that they’re just friends. However, as a girl, this stigma is wrong. Yes, there have been guys that I’ve friend-zoned, but I’ve also experienced the flip side of the coin; guys have friend-zoned me too. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t be rejected, and just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m in the wrong for setting boundaries on a strictly-friends relationship. The friend zone, for those lucky ones unfamiliar with it, is a dark and hopeless limbo that…
It’s time to dusted off that oversized sweater that has been hibernating in your closet and get to cooking.
By Megan Rule | Opinion EditorOne of the scariest conversation starters is, “Hey, we need to talk.” My palms start sweating, my heart beats a little faster and I immediately panic and think back to everything I’ve done or said in the past few days that could summon such a serious conversation.Why are we, as college students, so afraid to speak in mature settings? Why do we prefer conversations with memes and emojis as opposed to actual emotions and issues? Why do we prefer to passive-aggresively leave a person’s text message unanswered rather than tell them our feelings are hurt…
From pancakes to casseroles, you’ll no longer have a reason to skip the most important meal of the day.
Fixer Upper changes the name of a local Waco favorite, and not everyone is happy about it
Welcome to Baylor! It’s been evident throughout the summer that your involvement in the Baylor community and your desire to engage with everyone is genuine. We appreciate that, and we wanted to let you know. The level of respect you have for our traditions, as well as the characteristics that make Baylor unique, is a testament to the way we want to see Baylor move forward. We hope you continue this constant communication throughout the year. You’ve made an impact on students so far with the continued communication, that we hope it doesn’t stop as the year picks up and…
Baylor campus chaplain welcomes students back
Megan Rule | Opinion EditorYou’ve seen it all over Twitter and Instagram, the notorious couple of lines with line breaks that seem random with words that are never capitalized. The book ‘milk and honey’ by Rupi Kaur has garnered quite the social media rumble with people arguing seriously for or against its poetic impact. As a classic example of crowd psychology, the social media attention has led people who don’t normally pick up poetry books to give this one a whirl.The book is powerful, brutally honest and can be triggering for those who have gone through some of the same…
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterAlthough information technology may historically be known as a male-dominated field, a recent graduate and Baylor professor found that the female presence in IT leadership is slowly but surely growing.”One of the things we were trying to do with the chief information officers is show that these are women that have made it to the top, broken barriers and moved through boundaries that are out there for women in the IT field,” Dr. Cindy Riemenschneider, associate dean for research and faculty development and professor of information systems, said. “Essentially, we wanted to visit with these…
The image that comes to mind when many people say “internship” is a young college student frantically running around getting coffee and not getting paid to do so, but the intern experience is much more than that, according to students and professors. “I think there is no such thing as a bad internship because even a bad one will teach valuable lessons,” Macarena Hernandez, the Fred Hartman Distinguished Professor of Journalism, said. “When I was a sophomore in college, I went to Washington D.C. thinking I would eventually work in politics in some capacity, but I came away realizing what…
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterRegistration is now open for the Baylor Public Deliberation Initiative Civic Life Summit this summer, the first of its kind, in order to improve civic engagement and teach different ways to work together.”We try to teach different ways to have conversations, different ways to deliberate together, different ways to have dialogue together and different ways to take community action together,” Dr. Joshua Ritter, assistant director of the department of formation in the Office of Spiritual Life, said. “We do this recognizing everyone has significant differences and recognizing that everyone’s identity is really important but at…
Twitter blurbs: Caritas Feast of Caring to take place at Waco Convention Center; Support Caritas by coming to annual fundraising event
About two or three weeks ago, “13 Reasons Why” took over the Netflix world. Everywhere I went, at least two or three nearby conversations that I picked up on were about the show and how intense and addicting it was. I read the book when I was in middle school and remembered it being really good and really impactful. So I paused “Gilmore Girls” and decided to watch this show. It’s only 13 episodes, so why not?In a nutshell, 13 Reasons Why focuses on Hannah Baker, a high school student that commits suicide in the first episode. She left behind…
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterTravel time between the Houston metro area and the North Texas metro area will be significantly reduced due to a new form of transportation, the Texas Bullet Train.According to the Texas Bullet Train website, project construction could begin as early as late 2018. “Right now, Texas engineers, architects and environmental experts are designing and planning construction of the Texas Bullet Train,” Holly Reed, managing director of external affairs at Texas Central Partners, LLC, wrote in an email to the Lariat. “The designs and specifications these experts are developing support the ongoing regulatory approval process.” Studies…
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterThe Baylor Professional Selling Program held its Explore Pro Sales corporate visit Wednesday afternoon, hosting companies that are interested in recruiting students and learning about Baylor.”I think what’s valuable about the Explore Pro Sales model is that as the variety of different companies come in and ask questions of the students, they actually learn from their colleagues, so there’s multiple layers of learning here,” said Dr. Andrea Dixon, associate professor of marketing, executive director of the Keller Center and executive director of the Center for Professional Selling.The event took place from 10 a.m. to 2…
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterA public information workshop last week updated the Waco community on the progress and direction of the Waco Regional Airport master plan.”The master plan is literally a plan to help us identify what we need,” said Joel Martinez, director of aviation at Waco Regional Airport. “As the funds become available, that’s when we act on those project lists. So we’ll start as early as next year, but again the master plan is just mapping out the next 15 years’ worth of projects for how our facility will progress. It will be an ongoing thing.”The meeting…
By Megan Rule | Staff WriterThe fate of student debt just got a little darker due to recent actions by the United States Department of Education.With a program started in 2007 called Public Service Loan Forgiveness, student loan borrowers were told their student loan balance would be forgiven after 10 years of on-time payments and qualifying work in the public sector, according to a National Public Radio (NPR) report. Eligible work includes nonprofit, federal, local, state or tribal government.Because it is a 10-year program, this coming fall would be the first group of student debts to be forgiven. However, last…
Twitter blurbs: Baylor Business Career Management making strides; Students embrace resources from Baylor Business Career Management
By Megan Rule | Staff Writer Better Together BU is a Baylor group that is all about inclusiveness, so when the Syrian refugee crisis became a worldwide issue, the club began to advocate for refugees and educate the Baylor campus. “The name is the organization because we are better together,” said Humble senior Memona Niazi, former Better Together BU co-leader. “That’s why the refugee crisis is a big thing. The issue is you’re excluding people, and you’re saying, ‘We are not better together. I am better on my own.’” Plano sophomore Wafa Demashkiah, co-leader of Better Together BU, got involved…
The Waco legal community gets a chance to give back to the city through the Greater Waco Legal Services, an independent nonprofit that provides legal services and representation to those who are unable to afford the services of a private attorney. “It came out of a desire to really serve the community and really address these gaps in access to justice that plague our entire nation and all of our communities,” Kent McKeever, executive director of Greater Waco Legal Services, said. “Just to really dig in deep to a community and really listen and bend to the needs of a…