Browsing: Editorials

We all like to hear the inspirational stories of someone who managed to turn unlikely ambitions into realities. For example, Cristy Nicole Deweese is a former Playboy model. She aspired to be a teacher even during her time as a model. She started working at Dallas ISD as a Spanish teacher this year, and the school was aware of her past when she was hired.

Unfortunately, by October, she was fired. She wasn’t fired because she was a bad teacher. She wasn’t fired because she was mean to her students. She was fired for her Playboy past.

One of the things Baylor is known for is its low student-teacher ratio of 15:1. It boasts that more than 88 percent of classes are taught by professors. We understand that it’s not possible to have 100 percent of classes taught by professors, but it’s frustrating to walk into a class expecting a professor and then see a bunch of graduate teaching assistants teaching the course.

If a professor is listed as the instructor of the course, the professor should be the primary person teaching the class — not a graduate student.

Life is filled with inconveniences, but technology exists to help ease these troubles.

People needed ways to get around, so Henry Ford invented the automobile. People wanted to talk with friends and family across the country, so Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. People were grossed out by the smell of farts, so Paul O’Leary invented Shreddies.

What happened to music? Will the music of our generation have any lasting power?

Iconic bands of the past still blast through stadium speakers at events and legendary music from decades ago still fills the atmosphere at restaurants and shopping malls.

When we go to football games, we root for our team. We cheer to the extent of encouraging our team to “kill” the other, all in good fun of course. Baylor is certainly no stranger to whooping another team by way of points, especially this season. We, however, have never been accused of bullying.

Flying in an airplane these days is a major hassle and relief is not on its way.

Major United States airline companies are removing old, hefty seats in airplane models and replacing them with slimline model seats that will take up less space from front to back.

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who needs government assistance to purchase groceries. If it weren’t for your Electronic Benefit Transfer card, you wouldn’t be able to purchase enough food for your family to eat. If you did, then other bills would go unpaid.

With talent and grace, these women have trained for most of their lives on how to sit up straight, flash the pearly whites and wave without the bend of a wrist.

While it’s certainly a spectacle here, France has finally gotten to the heart of it.

According to the Los Angeles Times, 40 percent of U.S. food is thrown away. Yes, you read that correctly.

Roughly 90 percent of Americans misread the “sell by,” “use by” and “best before” labels on food. This causes people to throw away perfectly healthy food just because of a simple mistake.

There are a lot of things said about our generation, Gen Y, and one of the things is our apparent sense of entitlement. And we agree. We grew up in a time where we were coddled into thinking we were great at something, even if we weren’t.

Throughout our life, our parents and society in general have treated us with “kid gloves.” In other words, in this idealized reality, everyone is special.

It’s October, and that means it’s breast cancer awareness month. Cancer is a horrible disease that scientists will hopefully find a cure for soon, and during breast cancer awareness month, people are called to donate toward research organizations.

Some organizations, however, have turned these pink ribbons into green stacks of cash.

We’ve all had that class where we show up preparing to learn something with a professor that doesn’t do much more than tell copious number of personal stories and mentally kick his feet up on a desk to teach the class.

Typically, most of these students admit they’re there because they only want to pass the class.

As the government shutdown continues, America is realizing exactly how much the government manages. While Republicans and Democrats continue to bicker and argue, America is paying the price of this temper tantrum though several avenues.

The shutdown is supposed to prevent non-essential spending, but this isn’t happening in all cases. The servers that host government websites are still running, but they are redirecting to a shutdown page. It would have made more sense, if the government wanted to really save money, to shut down the servers to federal websites. It isn’t saving the government any money to block these websites. They’re only annoying the American people.

When college students consider whether to accept an internship with a company, typically they look at numerous factors: is the company reputable, is it in a nice area, is it in their field of study and is it a paid or unpaid internship.

In the future, college students need to take a closer look at whether or not an internship is paid.

In its present form, the Affordable Care Act provides every American with health care, which will benefit the country in the long run. Unfortunately, the cost associated with this might drive away both current and future doctors.

With the government currently shut down and the debt ceiling looming, the immediate future of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is in question. The act has been passed and is the law of the land, but this law needs to be amended. The United States needs affordable universal coverage, but it has to figure out a way to do this without making doctors suffer.

In recent days, it has come to light that the NSA conducted a secret experimental program during 2010 and 2011 that collected bulk data concerning the location of Americans’ cellphones. The agency claims it never moved ahead with the program and the data was never available for intelligence analysis purposes.

It has also been revealed that the NSA has used its data to create graphs of Americans’ social connections. These graphs are able to identify Americans’ associates, locations, traveling companions and other personal information. However, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, NSA chief, denied the NSA was creating these dossiers on Americans.

Gov. Rick Perry signed Texas House Bill 2 into law July 18. The bill, which will go into effect Oct. 29, places restrictions on abortion clinics. These restrictions have the potential to increase women’s health and safety during this procedure. While we support the right to life, this law is a step in the right direction.

Abortion clinics in Texas will not be allowed to administer abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which is four weeks shy of the standard set by Roe v. Wade. The reasoning behind this statement is that the unborn child could potentially feel pain after the 20-week mark of pregnancy. This is reasonable, as research supports this claim.

Central Texas is in a drought, but when walking on Baylor’s campus, no one would know.

Campus is slowly turning into a swampland, lacking only the gators and Cajun food.

The squish of nearly every grassy patch on campus indicates the healthy dose of water that was administered overnight by way of sprinklers.

While Baylor’s campus has lush green grass, it’s coming at a price.

Students have to balance a variety of schoolwork, jobs, as well as several extracurricular activities in any given week. As a result, many students have very little time to do anything other than their to-do lists, such as sleep or spend any time with their friends and maintain relationships.

To add to students’ already busy and unpredictable schedules, professors have been scheduling several out-of-class activities that students are unaware of when signing up for the class.

Long gone are the days of speaking with an actual human when the Internet service is down or the latest technology gets a glitch.

In most cases, a mere phone call to a company’s tech support results in countless automated menu options offered by a recorded voice.

It seems as though technology companies want more than just an arm’s length from their patrons. However, Amazon’s new Kindle Fire just might make that customer connection again.

Allegations of NCAA rules violations rocked the world of college football several times during the 2013 football season, and we are only in week six.

Before the season even began, ESPN Outside The Lines reported Johnny Manziel was under investigation by the NCAA for accepting money for signing hundreds of autographs. He is accused of receiving a five-figure flat fee while in Miami for the Discover BCS National Championship in January.

After staying away from any issues involving guns, Starbucks recently asked customers to keep guns out of their stores. Starbucks did not ban guns, they just politely asked customers to keep guns out of their more than 12,000 stores nationwide.

That doesn’t mean that customers in states where guns are legal can’t still walk in to Starbucks with a gun and get their frappuccinos, cappuccinos or lattes. Starbucks just doesn’t want firearms in its stores.

Since its debut in 2008, the explosive TV drama “Breaking Bad” has shocked viewers with its rich storytelling and visceral elements, reaching upwards of 6.6 million viewers in its latest episode Sunday night.

Critics, too, can’t seem to get enough of Heisenburg, the main character’s alter ego. The show has nabbed 50 awards in its potent five-year run.

Many couples dream of adopting a child and will do whatever it takes to bring a child to the family, even if it means through less than legal means. A Reuters reporter investigated an underground network for adopted children where children and teenagers are handed off to other families.

An underground market can seem like a dream come true for couples who desperately want children but do not have the time or money to go through the lengthy adoption process to become official adoptive parents. However, if one child is sold, or given, to a family that will abuse him or her in any way, it negates anything positive that can be gained from this underground market.

Nina Davuluri, Miss New York, made history when she was crowned Miss America. She is the first Miss America to be of Indian decent and, unfortunately, this brought out the worst qualities in many Americans: racism and ignorance.

This backlash mimics the 1983 crowning of Vanessa Williams, the first African-American Miss America, and the 1945 crowning of Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America.

Since the school year began, there have been a few changes in parking. The addition of 100 faculty parking spaces, the loss of 200 student parking spaces and tickets being handed out for keeping last year’s parking permit on your windshield in addition to this year’s permit.

You read that right. Students are being ticketed for having the current and past year’s stickers on their windshield. The first offense is just a warning, but the next offense costs $10 and every ticket after that comes with a $25 fine.

On Sept. 10, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook unveiled two buzz-worthy upgrades to its phone family set for a Friday release — the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C.

Although they will have similar features to the existing models, the new iPhones will run on the revamped iOS7 software, which includes a fresh design and layout.

Voter ID laws are a contentious issue throughout the country. People on both sides of the political spectrum become fired up when this issue is debated.

Those that support voter ID laws state they are necessary to prevent voter fraud while those that are in opposition claim that these laws disenfranchise the poor and minorities, both groups that lean Democrat, from voting.

Pose, snap, send for 10 seconds, destroy. That is the beauty of Snapchat, right?

Wrong. Whatever happens on Snapchat stays in the public realm of online information. Snapchat, the two-year-old app that markets itself as one of the fastest, most private photo and video sharing outlets available, warns users not to “use Snapchat to send messages if you want to be certain that the recipient cannot keep a copy.”

It seems Baylor is in a place of being half in the technology world and half out, because many students bring the technology to class and some professors bring the dark of ages past.

Some professors do well with using technology in the classroom such as the projector, response cards and slideshow presentations.