Conditions in Gaza have become unlivable. According to the Human Rights Watch, the Israeli military has intentionally destroyed life-sustaining infrastructure, leaving the city with little to no cropland, water, sanitation facilities and hospital services. Israel has also blocked trucks that carry life-saving international humanitarian aid to Gaza, where its 2.2 million people now face starvation, according to reports provided to the United Nations. Bombing campaigns continue and perpetual displacement has not stopped.

Throughout this violence, the United States has continued its pattern of unconditional support for Israel. In February, President Donald Trump and his administration approved about 7.2 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel, per reporting from Reuters, and defunded the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, one of Gaza’s most vital aid agencies, during his first term.

The United States and Israel claim to be bastions of democracy, human rights and freedom of speech — this is a blatant lie. Genocidal intent is baked into political discourse, with propaganda and government repression keeping us complicit and active participants in violence.

In Israel, dehumanizing, racist and derogatory language toward Palestinians is frequently used by officials. For example, in October 2023, former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said of Hamas that “we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” In June 2024, the Israeli government posted a now-deleted video on X, where a released hostage said that “there are no innocent civilians” in Gaza.

This language only justifies and normalizes genocide against Palestinians. Reports from Amnesty International suggest that there is “systemic impunity but also the creation of an environment that emboldens, if not tacitly rewards, such behaviour” like unlawful conduct and violence — even now. For instance, last week, the Israeli war cabinet announced an operation called “Gideon’s Chariots,” which details potentially permanently occupying Gaza through a mass removal of Palestinians. This plan’s genocidal details are clear — the name itself is a reference to a biblical warrior who led people to annihilate the Midianites, a group of people in the Middle East.

Here in the United States, atrocity propaganda is common in mainstream media reports on Gaza. This is a form of psychological warfare that spreads “information about the crimes committed by an enemy, especially deliberate fabrications or exaggerations,” according to a Mondoweiss article. Propaganda like this keeps us complacent through its goal of vilifying the enemy to justify violence as “retaliation.”

The common “fighting to free the hostages” narrative is atrocity propaganda. Israel is not meaningfully fighting to save the hostages, as it repeatedly sabotages ceasefire deals. The violated agreement with Hamas in January is a clear example of this.

This deal, which led to 25 Israeli hostages being released in its first phase, was supposed to continue, but Israel broke the agreement. As of May 12, 58 hostages remain in Gaza. On March 29, over 100,000 people across Israel protested the government’s failure to protect its citizens and decision to continue an unpopular war.

Recently, Trump said that aid to Gaza has not reached civilians because “Hamas is making it impossible because they’re taking everything that’s brought in.” This contradicts aid officials who have stated that little humanitarian aid went astray when supplies were allowed in January, according to the Guardian. Misinformation like this makes Israel’s intentional starvation of the population in Gaza seem justified.

In the United States and Israel, Palestinians are portrayed as aggressors, overlooking the fact that Israel attacks the fabric of Palestinian identity and life. This narrative in media and language conditions us to believe that Israel’s violence is a form of self-defense, shielding us from the reality of genocide. Being critical of mainstream narratives and educating ourselves on colonial violence and Palestinian liberation movements is necessary to unlearn this propaganda.

Doing what we can to help Palestinians and dismantle the systems around us that cause this violence should be our obligation.

Rocco DiMatteo is a senior majoring in environmental science.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.

Terminated.

Not just me — our entire Office of Communications at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 20 professionals in total, wiped out in an instant. Elon Musk and his faux “Department of Government Efficiency” dissolved the office entirely, abolishing every single position under the guise of eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse.”

A reporter followed me as I left the building, my face streaked with tears.

But this isn’t just about me. It’s about what’s happening to public service itself.

The government is being gutted before our eyes. I recently visited the Hart Senate Office Building to meet with other federal employees who have been fired. Here’s what I heard:

A web developer at the Social Security Administration was working on a project modernizing our payment system. His entire team was let go. Does making Social Security more efficient not count as “government efficiency?”

A researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was studying the effects of climate change and natural disasters on the Gulf Coast. Her work is now gone. Is protecting citizens from hurricanes and flooding a waste of resources?

Former U.S. Agency for International Development employees were creating international markets for American farmers, helping them sell soybeans to East Asia and Africa. Since when is supporting our farmers considered abuse?

I’ve seen firsthand how hardworking, understaffed teams at the OPM devoted themselves to making government services more effective. I was part of the effort to rebuild the OPM’s website so job seekers, federal employees and veterans could easily access the resources they need. Maybe some billionaire thinks fixing outdated systems is “wasteful.” I’d argue the real waste is keeping broken systems in place and forcing Americans to struggle with them.

These cuts aren’t just numbers on a budget. They’re people.

I was your RA. Your academic advisor. Your peer counselor. Your intramural referee. I built my career around helping others, and I believed my whole life that public service was an honor. But today, we’re being told that serving the public is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Look around. You know someone in public service — a nurse, a firefighter, a teacher. Your professors are public servants. The roads you drive on, the water you drink, the safety of your community — these are protected by public servants. When we defund the government, we don’t just lose jobs. We lose safety, stability and opportunity.

Billionaires call public service a “Ponzi scheme.” Tell that to the senior citizens relying on Social Security to survive. Tell that to the families depending on disaster relief after a hurricane. Tell that to the farmers who need government trade programs to sell their crops.

U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand voted to advance a budget that slashes vital services and hands our government over to private billionaires. They voted to let Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantle the institutions that serve us.

They need to hear from you.

Call their offices now:

● Sen. Schumer: (202) 224-6542

● Sen. Gillibrand: (202) 224-4451

Tell them they’ve abandoned their constituents. Tell them they won’t win their next primaries. Tell them that public service is not expendable.

Be loud. Show up at their offices. Make it clear that they work for us — not for billionaires. Because if we stay silent, we’ll wake up in a country where public service is a relic of the past.

And by then, it’ll be too late.

Dominic Bossey ‘23, MPA ‘24 received undergraduate degrees in political science and human development and earned a Master of Public Administration in 2024. 

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial. 

In New York, the insulin price was capped at $35 per monthly prescription for those without health insurance, leaving all the financial burden on public health care systems. In 2025, the state eliminated the insulin copay for people with state-regulated medical insurance. Because universities offer students these types of health insurance plans, self-funded universities now need to cover the entirety of insurance costs for students with diabetes.

As data shows, insurance costs went up proportionally with costs saved by patients after caps. Because of this, universities with external health care providers, including Binghamton University, may face rising premiums as insurers absorb costs from state-mandated insulin price caps. This could lead to contract renegotiations, cost-shifting to other services or adjustments in coverage tiers.

At Binghamton University, students are automatically enrolled in a health insurance plan unless they can provide evidence of equivalent coverage from another provider. These insurance plans are granted by United Health Care, where Tier 3 medication, including insulin, requires a copayment of $50 from students. With the cap now set at $35, the remaining $15 must be covered by either the insurance provider or the University. In practice, this implies that either one of these organizations will have to increase the price of their health insurance plans, which will ultimately still affect students. Notably, as insulin prices increase, this strategy becomes unfeasible for either students or health insurance providers.

The insulin pricing crisis is a free market gone wrong. According to an independent report by RAND, insulin prices in the United States are nine times higher than those of 33 other developed nations. Currently, insulin manufacturing costs range from $2 to $4, yet the shelf price reaches as much as $500 in some states and even $800 in others. This staggering price difference stems from something market analysts refer to as inelastic demand.

In a free market, price is indirectly regulated through supply and demand. When the supply exceeds the demand, prices inadvertently go down for said product to be sold by enticing buyers through cheaper costs and maintaining a competitive advantage, as other sellers also drop prices in these circumstances. However, when the demand is high, prices are likely to rise.

Yet demand is dictated by need. Somebody may want a new car but not need it. Hence, they may also not buy it. However, when talking about insulin, this product is something that patients need to live. Demand in this case is therefore constant, or inelastic, enabling pharmaceutical companies to drive prices high for profit. In the lack of state regulatory action, these companies are left unchecked and exploit this dependency to maximize their financial gain without concern for patient affordability. Now, this patient affordability seems to have reached a top ceiling.

According to research conducted at Yale University in 2022, over 14 percent of people needing insulin to survive had to spend 40 percent of their income solely on this life-saving drug. In 2018, when prices were noticeably lower compared to 2022, 25 percent of patients on insulin had to ration the medication due to costs.

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act set a cap on insulin copayments at $35 per month for those with Medicare. Nevertheless, since this benefit was granted only to those on federal insurance, costs were diverted to these organizations. This approach, therefore, does not cover university insurance plans. New York’s departure from federal legislation in 2023 and the subsequent elimination of copayments under state-regulated insurance plans in 2025 significantly alleviates the financial burden on students but not on universities and their health insurers, which now need to cover the additional costs.

In the absence of state-level intervention, the financial pressures caused by the cost of insulin triggered legal actions. Several states are now part of a Multidistrict Litigation (MDL No. 3080) against insulin manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers who are accused of artificially raising the prices and blocking cheaper generic options to maximize profits.
Plaintiffs here include various states, local government entities and public bodies such as universities, which raised concerns about the significant increases in health insurance premiums for their students with diabetes. As universities often contribute to or fully cover health insurance for their students, these educational bodies are directly impacted by the rising medical costs.

Notably, this collective legal action makes one thing clear — there is a growing consensus among states and their educational institutions on the urgency of state-level interventions to effectively control and regulate insulin prices. Corporations are unlikely to exhibit pro-social behaviors without these regulatory actions and simply fall back on their for-profit agenda.

Yahn Olson is a skilled attorney working at Environmental Litigation Group, P.C., where he specializes in providing case evaluations and legal representation for those who have suffered due to corporate misconduct.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.

Every day I’m here and every day that passes by, I think about separation and loss. Now that we don’t live on campus, I think about the impermanence of the faces that were at one point so constant around me — those hallway buddies you never even ever spoke to but knew because you were both always late for that one class. I go to class now, and I like to watch people and think of who they just might be. I imagine them living the beautiful parts of my experience in a way that’s just recognizable enough, in a world that I’ll never be able to comprehend even if I knew everything about it.

I sit alone in CIW dining hall after class and see a group of girls eating together, and I smile and think of my first meal with my housemates. I reminisce about these old stomping grounds without memory — I feel without thinking. When I say I think of all these people around me, I do so in terms of me and you and everything we ever did, experienced or could feel. And though these different universes around me will never fit into the hollowness of my heart, knowing that theirs at least might beat the same is simply enough to fill it just the same.

Some of your faces I see as a brother and cannot even begin to imagine college life without. Then there are those of you whose minds in this most ineffable, conscious way reflect mine so uniquely that there is a certain magnetism despite every difference, every flaw, between us. There are others, those I’ve always admired and, at times, yearned to truly know. But we’ve already met each other, so it’s easier not to daydream of a night when we’re walking alone through campus, laughter roaring in the dead of the night. You’re people I’ve wanted to learn from, people I’ve wanted to kiss, people I’ve wanted to hug and promise better things. I remember those sleepless teenage nights when I dreamed of meeting you.

It’s cruel to let me be around you with my soul unable to know yours, your fences locking me out because the world you exist in forces you to. Then again, we adapt to pick up on the cruelty of it all, to think, isn’t it all fucking-A if we stay apart? So I do what you do and my eyes blink away all your faces into a blur. Into concepts and tropes and ideas and all other sorts of clearly defined bullshit categories; self-isolating intellectualizations. They eventually only assure me of the great irony that even my deepest emotions are meaninglessly impermanent.

When I dream with my eyes open, about us and every emotion our lives together could ever evoke, it is an infinity so small. One that is just enough for me to feel so intensely about so much all the time, and then choose to continue to look away and get on with my day. It is a palette with the colors so liminal, so complex, yet so impotent to capture what really is, so that to sit down to paint would be to let life run over me and speed off into the distance. My world is and has always been you. I have never been in my life. I can’t sit to paint. But from time to time, the blinking turns to tears, and I remember.

What do I have but you? The soul that I met and got to know in whatever capacity in a time of my life where I’m expected to put my feelings on a shelf, preserved for a perfect partner or a close friend to pick up in the correct moment, just so we can both begin to get to know me. Every lovable part of me is what we made “me,” whatever little fleeting moment your souls knew mine, every word you said, every smile you asked for, every boyhood dream of mine you fulfilled. It’s me and you. I love you.

Why shouldn’t I crumble beneath the profundity of just how beautiful the fact we ever shook hands is? Why shouldn’t I write to you in abstractions and bare my heart praying for your familiarity? Why shouldn’t I tell you that I have thought your thoughts, that I know? That nothing that you could say to me will scare me from you, because unlike the world, all that I ever wanted from you was your affection?

With all the pain my heart can take and the contagious joy that my brittle soul can muster, this is a love letter to you, oh friend, you’re my favorite stranger.

Armaan Rizvi is a junior triple-majoring in political science, anthropology and history. He is the president of the Binghamton Law Quarterly and has previously served as social vice president of College-in-the-Woods. 

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial. 

“Behind the scenes, I’m on the elections committee, and I was able to warn the committee [of the divestment question] beforehand,” the SA member said. “Don’t write this down. I warned the committee, and I told everyone ‘this is what he’s planning on doing.’ So, the only reason [Ferrara] got to ask [his question] twice is because he was the only one to raise his hand, so we had to call on him.”

Ignoring the self-aware culpability in saying not to write down their “behind-the-scenes” actions, this is a clear example of SA representatives using their power to silence dissent to Zionist hegemony on BU’s campus. I am a student whose Jewish heritage makes me keenly concerned with the historical patterns of oppression and genocide wrought by imperialism and ethnostate construction. In fact, I am one of many such Jews who oppose the forced homogenization of the Jewish diaspora. The International Court of Justice has indicated that Israeli actions plausibly constitute genocide, and the true settler-colonial goals of Israel’s invasion are alarmingly clear to those paying attention — the Israeli government seeks the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and in the West Bank and the destruction of the Palestinian people and culture. While it is disheartening that Jewish voices are being centered above those of my far-too-often-silenced Palestinian colleagues, many of whom have lost family in the Israeli siege, I feel compelled to use my privilege as a white Jewish student to uplift the Palestinian cause. To that end, consider this a direct challenge to the SA — you have an obligation as student leaders to take a public stance and act upon instituting BDS.

It is idealistic and misguided to argue that the SA is a historically apolitical organization, and it is dangerous to posit that the SA must maintain political “neutrality” despite its massive influence. In 1985, the SA opposed the South African apartheid regime, supporting divestment from an institution that profited from its occupation. It was this effort — which Binghamton University administration resisted until they were dragged kicking and screaming away from putting profits over people — that gave the University Union’s Mandela Room its name and led to SUNY-wide divestment. The SA can legally act politically, within the bounds of its constitution, and should be encouraged to do so.

The modern BDS movement is founded upon the principles and strategies of these successful anti-apartheid campaigns. BDS is a non-violent strategy that utilizes the efficacy of economic pressure, and it is the best way for the student body to make our voice heard. In practice, the SA is not an apolitical institution. Thus, it is the duty of any SA representative who supports lasting peace and Palestinian sovereignty to make every possible effort to pass legislation that achieves transparency from the BU Foundation, and divestment from Israel and the military-industrial complex throughout the University.

To our current representatives on SA Congress and E-Board — now is the time to take action in support of divestment. Admittedly, as many of you will soon graduate, it would be easy to ride out the rest of your terms without taking a stance. If you feel this impulse, I must ask — why, then, did we elect you to your position in the first place? Far too often, student government is used as a means for students to cosplay as politicians — this cowardly practice shirks the responsibility to your community that you take on as elected representatives. You are our leaders and the people we turn to for support and guidance in times of hardship. Right now, you have the rare opportunity to make real progress — do not squander it just because the regressive University establishment opposes you.

Finally, to our incoming president, you told me that you would “lead by example” on BDS. Unfortunately, private, individual boycotting is not enough. I challenge you to emulate former SA President Fred Azcarate, who was a staunch leader in the aforementioned student movement for divestment from South Africa. You have the trust and respect of the students — now use it.

The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated. Over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 80 percent of the Gazan population has been displaced. We are facing one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our generation — an egregious attempt at permanently solidifying over 100 years of imperialism — and the SA has the power to combat it. Your actions now will be remembered forever by the international community, by your friends, by your descendants and by yourselves.

John Ferrara is a guest columnist and a junior double-majoring in biology and Italian.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece which represents the views of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial. 

On Tuesday, April 16, a BDS resolution will be presented to the Binghamton University Student Association’s (SA) Congressional Representatives. This is the first step for BDS policy implementation on our campus. Campus groups spearheading the push for BDS adoption are the BU chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), The Yiddish Bund of Binghamton and the BU chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, who are among other prominent campus groups sponsoring the legislation. As a concerned Jewish student, I feel as though it is my duty to voice my opinion.

The cause to boycott Israeli economy, companies and academic institutions solidified in 2005 with the founding of the current Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement by Omar Barghouti and Ramy Shaat. Israel, its adherents argue, has not sufficiently met their demands and now must face up to their choices. It claims that the Jewish state subjects the Palestinian people to, “settler colonialism, apartheid and occupation.” Since the escalation of the conflict in October of 2023, the movement has joined the call with other anti-Israel groups and has charged Israel with genocide. All of these charges are a libelous mischaracterization of Israel and its policies. The Jewish people’s history in the land of Israel spans over 3,000 years, and there has been archeological evidence found to support this. Israel provides great opportunities to all of its citizens, no matter their religious affiliation or ethnicity. Legally speaking, all Israelis are equal citizens under the law. A report by the U.S. State Department in 2001 says “the Declaration of Independence describes the country as a ‘Jewish state,’ but also provides for full social and political equality regardless of religious affiliation.” Furthermore, the genocide claim levied against Israel has not been supported by a number of world leaders. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin affirmed that there is no evidence that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza at a Senate Armed Services Committee on April 9.

A notable aspect of BDS is its repeated support for Hamas, the terrorist organization who perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 attack against Israel in which 1,163 people were raped, assaulted and murdered. The movement, in a since-deleted post to their official website, called the Hamas attack “heroic” and “reasonable.” The sickening support of Hamas by BDS sheds light on what the movement truly stands for, namely, the destruction of Jewish lives. A report released by Israel in 2019 found that there are links between BDS and Hamas militants.

BDS-aligned policies hurt Palestinians economically. In the second quarter of 2014, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released data that showed that 85,200 Palestinians worked in Israel and 24,200 worked in Israeli settlements, a majority of these jobs being in construction. Any blanket boycott of Israeli goods and services will certainly punish Palestinians who work at Israeli firms.

Pro-BDS legislation also disrupts academic infrastructure and research programs utilized by Palestinian professors and students. Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, a notable Palestinian professor who formerly taught at Al-Quds University, voiced his opposition to BDS back in 2014 (19). He declared, “I’m against the boycott in general. We need more dialogue with each other.” Dajani asserts that those wishing to boycott can do so by targeting the universities who are, “calling for occupation.” The Palestinian academic also argues that anti-Israel activists should not, “target those Israelis and those universities and those institutions which actually are your partner.” BDS policies call for the complete termination of all academic institutions supporting Israel.

American universities who have entertained and/or enacted forms of BDS are among the schools with the highest rates of antisemitism, which has skyrocketed in recent months. At Harvard University, the gem of American higher education, an antisemitic cartoon was posted to Instagram by the Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine on February 19. The image portrayed Jews as puppet masters, playing into the trope that Jews secretly control the world. The following month, Harvard Law School passed an academic BDS resolution.

Fellow Ivy League school, Columbia University, is also in the midst of antisemitic wave after the Columbia College Student Council passed a BDS referendum in early March. On April 17, the House Education and Workforce Committee will hold a hearing featuring Columbia President Minouche Shafik during which she will respond to the pervasive Jew-hatred permeating across the storied campus. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC 5th District), who heads the Committee, stated that, “some of the worst cases of antisemitic assaults, harassment and vandalism on campus have occurred at Columbia University.” Only time will tell what President Shafik’s response to rabid antisemitism on her campus will be.

The precedence is clear, working toward the implementation of BDS policies directly correlates with a sharp increase of Jew-hatred on American campuses. I implore the SA’s Congressional Representatives to reject this dangerous piece of legislation this upcoming Tuesday just like the over 5,800 individuals, as of publication, who have signed a petition against the implementation at our school. BU should retain its image as an elite and fair school, and not submit to a sinister movement fueled by hatred.

Aviad Levy is a guest columnist and a senior majoring in political science.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece which represents the views of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial. 

In April 2020, a mass pig producer called Iowa Select Farms installed large heaters and humidifiers on four of their barns. On April 30, they transported a group of 1,470 pigs into one of these barns, shut off the ventilation and turned on the heaters and humidifiers. The veterinarians overseeing this operation for the company waited outside as temperatures in the barn climbed to 130°F and the humidity passed 90 percent. When the screaming died down and the pigs stopped moving, they turned on the ventilation and entered to check whether any animals were still alive. The few survivors were shot on the spot with a captive bolt gun. From April to June, they did this many more times with shipments of 1,500 adult pigs or 3,500 to 4,000 infants. The veterinarians reported that it took the adults on average 110 minutes to die — the infants died in 90 minutes. In total they cooked 243,016 pigs to deatH.

Iowa Select Farms was not the only pig producer to use this method, known in industry as “Ventilation Shutdown + heat and humidity” (VSD+) to “depopulate” their barns. During the height of COVID-19, many slaughterhouses closed. Unable to send their pigs to markets, producers say they resorted to other methods to keep their barns from overcrowding. The veterinarians estimate one million pigs were “depopulated” in 2020.

Why was the South California man so deeply condemned, but the cruel massacre of a million pigs barely made a peep? On every measure, the second crime exceeds the first by orders of magnitude. A million times more animals suffered to their last heartbeat. Science also shows that pigs are capable of feeling pain and at least as intelligent as dogs. So where’s the outrage? The answer is straightforward — our society applies an inconsistent standard to animals. We prize the small handful of species we keep as pets — the rest are objects we can use as we please and dispose of when we no longer need them.

The factory farming industry, which produces most meat, milk and eggs, takes the objectification of animals to its logical conclusion. VSD+ is hardly the exception — abuse of animals stands at the core of the industry. To give you an idea of how it’s run, I’ll describe only a few of their heinous crimes here. But, for a more detailed account, I recommend reading chapter three of Peter Singer’s classic “Animal Liberation Now.”

Broiler chickens are kept tightly packed in ammonia ridden, windowless sheds where they have almost no space. They are bred to eat enormous quantities of food, leaving them in chronic pain for much of their lives. Many die from overfeeding. In the slaughterhouse, they are shackled upside down by their legs and a conveyor belt moves them through electrified water, meant to render them unconscious, after which their throats are slit and they’re thrown into boiling water to remove their feathers. In practice, the electric bath doesn’t work on many chickens and, after having their throats slit, they are boiled alive, fully conscious.

At hatchery factories that produce laying hens, the male chicks, who cannot lay eggs, are thrown alive into a meat grinder. Most laying hens spend their entire lives in tiny battery cages with no room to move or spread their wings. And, when there’s an outbreak of avian flu, broiler chicks, laying hens and turkey alike are all cooked alive with VSD+. In the winter of 2022-23, 72 million birds suffered this fate. Yes, laying hens were heated to death in their battery cages.

Cattle too, are confined. Dairy cows are kept in stalls with barely enough room to lie down. Every year they are impregnated and their calf is taken away soon after birth, to maximize the milk companies can sell.

The factory farming industry ignores animal welfare, treats animals as objects and tries to maximize “production” in ways that lead to unfathomable suffering. What can we do about this? Activists can pressure governments into adopting regulations that somewhat improve animal welfare, but the industry’s horrors directly result from the demand for animal products and won’t fully cease until that demand subsides. You may think killing a chicken and consuming its flesh is okay, but so long as there’s a market for broiler chickens, the industry will abuse them. Regardless, the chickens you buy all live miserable lives, and, in buying them, you incentivize the companies do it again.

Some people doubt whether their purchases can affect a multi-billion dollar industry. They argue that buying one less chicken won’t truly spare a chicken from torture. But, the economists Bailey Norwood and Jayson Lusk studied the question and, even after accounting for price adjustments that may result from decreased demand, they found that buying fewer animal products actually saves animals. For eggs, decreasing your demand by some amount will decrease production by 91 percent of that amount. For chickens, 76 percent, for pigs, 74 percent, for cattle, 68 percent and for milk, 56 percent.

Eating fully vegan on our campus is not easy, and we must pressure Sodexo to improve. But, even if you don’t become fully vegan, a sliding scale is better than none — choosing the plant-based option half, or a third, of the time still spares many animals a fate far worse than being pushed off a cliff. Don’t be like that Southern California man — order the plant-based option!

Isaac Cohen is a senior majoring in computer science and a guest columnist.

Students are taught to love a country that values guns over our lives.

Some of us hear the sound of gunfire when we watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, or when we watch a drumline performance at halftime. But all of us have heard the siren of an active shooter drill and fear that one day our campus will be next.

By painful necessity, we have grown to become much more than students learning in a classroom — we have shed every last remnant of our childhood innocence. The steady silence of Congress is as deafening as gunfire.

We will not wait for individual trauma to affect us all before we respond together — our empathy is not that brittle. Our generation responds to shootings by bearing witness and sharing solidarity like none other. We text each other our last thoughts and we cry on each others’ shoulders and we mourn with each other at vigils. We convene in classrooms and we congregate in churches and we deliberate in dining halls. We’re staunch and we’re stubborn and we’re steadfast.

Our hearts bleed from this uniquely American brand of gun violence. Yet, we still summon the courage to witness firework shows and remind ourselves that we love our country so much that we expect better from it.

We believe that our country has the capacity to love us back.

History has taught us that when injustice calls students to act, we shape the moral arc of this country.

Students in the Civil Rights Movement shared their stories through protest, creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that organized Freedom Rides, sit-ins and marches. In demanding freedom from racial violence, this group’s activism became woven into American history.

Students across America organized teach-ins during the Vietnam War to expose its calculated cruelties — in doing so, rediscovering this country’s empathy. Their work, in demanding freedom from conscription and taxpayer-funded violence, is intertwined with the American story.

This fall, UNC Chapel Hill students’ text exchanges during the Aug. 28 shooting reached the hands of the president. The nation read the desperate words of our wounded community, as we organized support, rallied and got thrown out of the North Carolina General Assembly. We demanded freedom from gun violence, just as we have in Parkland and Sandy Hook and MSU and UNLV.

For over 360,000 of us since Columbine, the toll of bearing witness, of losing our classmates and friends, of succumbing to the cursed emotional vocabulary of survivorship, has become our American story.

Yes, it is not fair that we must rise up against problems that we did not create, but the organizers of past student movements know from lived experience that we decide the future of the country.

The country watched student sit-ins at Greensboro, and Congress subsequently passed civil rights legislation. The country witnessed as students exposed its lies on Vietnam, and Congress subsequently withdrew from the war.

In recent years, the country watched student survivors march against gun violence, and the White House subsequently created the National Office of Gun Violence Prevention on Sept. 22, 2023.

So as students and young people alike, we should know our words don’t end on this page — we will channel them into change.

We invite you to join this generation’s community of organizers, all of us united in demanding a future free of gun violence. We understand the gravity of this commitment, because it’s not simply our lives we protect with prose and protest. It is our way of life itself.

We will not allow America to be painted in a new layer of blood. We will not allow politicians to gamble our lives for NRA money.

And most of all, politicians will not have the shallow privilege of reading another front-cover op-ed by students on their knees, begging them to do their jobs — we do not need a permission slip to defend our freedoms. They will instead contend with the reality that by uniting with each other and among parents, educators and communities, our demands become undeniable.

We feel intense anger and frustration and sadness, and in its wake we search for reaffirmations of our empathy — the remarkable human capacity to take on a tiny part of someone else’s suffering. We rediscover this fulfillment in our organizing, in our community, in not just moving away from the unbearable pain of our yesterday but in moving toward an unrelenting hope for our tomorrow.

Our generation dares politicians to look us in the eye and tell us they’re too afraid to try.

This article was written by Andrew Sun and Alexander Denza, UNC Chapel Hill March for Our Lives. Signed by

The human capital model is the implicit justification for all pain inflicted on students at school. Throughout our time in college, we’re told to write essays, study for exams and complete assignments, often on material we’re not interested in. Students spend sleepless nights sitting in front of their MacBooks, scrolling through notes. The explicit goal in their minds? Pass the exam. We’re told we need to learn the material for our own good. Just as a child cries while receiving a vaccine, a student may cry over calculus homework. But in the end, it’s better for them both. At its finest, the model is invoked to justify the insidious Orwellian idea that helping your classmates is “unauthorized collaboration.” Helping people doesn’t help them, professors say, because they’ll never learn on their own. But is the model true? Are we really in college to learn?

Although the human capital model has many fans, particularly among faculty who are fascinated with their subjects and eager to push policies that give them a captive audience onto whom they can thrust their nerdiest interests, it struggles to explain the everyday realities of college. As you probably noticed, much of the curriculum is esoteric and unrelated to actual jobs. People complain about general education requirements, but the issue persists for in-major courses as well. Even computer science, supposedly one of the most applied majors, features requirements like automata theory, where students spend a semester proving abstract theorems that few of them care about and none of them will ever use. The most applied part of computer science, at least for the majority of students, is “programming for the web,” a random elective students can take in their final year. If employers pay more to hire college graduates because we know more, why is our curriculum so ill-adapted to the job market?

The human capital model also cannot explain why so few students actually want to learn the material despite being told to believe it’s good for them. As students, we almost never talk about learning. Instead, we talk about credits, requirements, easy-A’s, how many points each exam is worth and what we still need to do before graduating from DegreeWorks. Even professors spend a considerable portion of class time on this stuff. If college is about learning, who needs exams, grades or credits? And do you ever cheat? Most people have, at least once. But what are cheaters trying to accomplish? And why does the University try to stop them? If cheaters only hurt themselves by depriving themselves of learning, why is cheating a social problem?

Finally, the human capital model’s contention that knowledge learned in school gets applied on the job, requires that people remember what they learned in school. But, even this simple prediction doesn’t hold. Most people take biology and history in high school. Do you recall what DNA Polymerase does or when Jamestown was founded? And you’re an intelligent student at Binghamton University. Surveys of the general American population find that most Americans don’t know electrons are smaller than atoms. Regardless of why students forget most of what they learn, this forgotten knowledge can’t be what’s driving their increased salaries.

So really, now, why are we in college? You knew the answer all along — we’re here to get a degree. We all want degrees because they make it easier to get high-paying jobs. Employers hire people with degrees because having a degree sends a signal about you. It says you are smart, normal, competent and conformist. You go to college like everyone else, you can master complex topics for brief periods of time, you can shut up and listen even to a boring lecture and you have the patience and time management skills to go through with long-term projects. Now do you understand why most of the curriculum is irrelevant, why people cheat, why cheating hurts the university, why exams matter so much, why you supposedly shouldn’t help your classmates and why retention of information is a nonissue?

This explanation regarding the power of a college degree, which economists call the “signaling” model, has an important implication — it’s not the degree itself that is valuable — it’s your level of education relative to others in the job market. No one needed an associates degree until everyone started getting them. Now you need a masters degree to stand out from the crowd of bachelors degrees. In other words, we’re all engaged in a nasty zero-sum competition with no winners. We spend time and money going to college, forgo fun activities to do useless assignments, torture ourselves with all-nighters to cram before finals and inflict punishments on cheaters or people who can’t keep up — all in the service of out-signaling our fellow students. If only we put an end to degree mills, we’d live in a happy, cooperative world, where we can all learn out of curiosity and have fun together purely for the joy.

Isaac Cohen is a senior majoring in computer science.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator defines a living wage as “the minimum income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity. In light of this fact, the living wage is perhaps better defined as a minimum subsistence wage for persons living in the United States.” In Broome County, the Living Wage Calculator sets the living wage for a single-adult household at $31,896 per year.

It has long been widely accepted — if somewhat sheepishly — that overwork and bad pay are to be expected in graduate school, and that this unwritten rule is part of a deal that GA or TA workers have implicitly consented to in exchange for the privilege of leading a “life of the mind,” or at least landing a potentially well-compensated job sometime in the future. While this process was never particularly fair, the changing job market, rapidly rising prices of basic necessities and growing diversity of graduate-student workers over recent years has made it especially condemnable.

I have spent most of my life in jobs that society has expected me to perform out of my passion for the work or for its beneficiaries. So, I’ve heard all the classic counterarguments to decent pay — “You’re here to study — if you consider the cost of tuition, you actually make quite a lot more than what appears on your paychecks” or “you must not care about the education you provide your students if all you can think about is the money you want to be making.” It’s a bit of a double bind — am I a student being lavished with the benefits of a great education and the time and resources to perform my own research? Or am I an education worker whose primary obligation is to my undergraduate students?

Ultimately, these counterarguments distract from two essential facts. My working conditions are my students’ learning conditions, and my research is part of my work. Living paycheck to paycheck is an immense drain on my time, energy and self-esteem, and despite my best efforts, this has consequences for the quality of attention I can give my students or my research.

This school year, the BU chapter of the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) has launched a campaign for a living wage in an effort to improve this untenable situation for both graduate and undergraduate students. In a petition that has garnered over 1,400 signatures, BU GSEU members have pointed out the inextricability of graduate-student workers’ own studies and their teaching or other paid work at the University, in addition to reminding the campus community of the incalculable value of grad student labor to the University.

While it should come as no surprise to anyone who sees the discrepancy between the Broome County living wage and the range of incomes provided to BU graduate workers, GSEU also confirmed in a fall 2022 survey that over 40 percent of BU grad workers are unable to afford adequate housing.

Graduate-student workers at multiple SUNYs, or State Universities of New York — The University at Buffalo, Stony Brook University, College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Upstate Medical University — have recently won major wage hikes after similar campaigns. BU is fully capable of following suit. If the administration refuses or claims to be unable to do so, all members of the campus community should be asking serious questions about who this institution is meant to serve and how. A good education for all BU students depends on the material security of graduate workers.

To support GSEU workers in their fight for a living wage, sign our petition and join us for a Vestal Campus rally as we deliver our signed petition to the office of the president on Wednesday, Feb. 15 on the Peace Quad.

Camille Gagnier is a graduate student in the Translation Research and Instruction Program.

Most individuals are overindulging in food and drink, and there is endless temptation, especially with alcohol.

Staying safe and sober during the holiday season is challenging. Whether someone is recovering from addiction or choosing sobriety for personal reasons, it can be an uphill battle.

Nevertheless, the holiday season can bring a wide variety of emotions. In addition, holiday parties, work functions and celebrations may seem endless. Stress levels can run high, making it challenging to abstain from alcohol or drugs.

The two most practical ways to maintain sobriety during the holidays are to have a plan and to maintain self-care.

A plan may include figuring out what you will do if you feel uncomfortable, always having a ride or way out and making sure to bring non-alcoholic drinks or mocktails to social events. A plan should also include knowing how to turn down a drink and what to say when someone does not take no for an answer.

The most important aspect of this method is having an escape plan if things become overwhelming. For example, someone new to recovery from addiction would have an escape plan to avoid a triggering situation. The same principle could apply to someone choosing holiday sobriety.

Triggers lead to relapse or overindulgence. Recognizing these triggers makes it possible to avoid them and plan ahead. “Essentially, this is a personal holiday survival guide to prevent relapse, binge drinking and dangerous situations,” said Marcel Gemme of Addicted.org, in an interview with me.

To be at the top of your game during the holiday season, it is critical to practice self-care. The acronym H.A.L.T. (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) represents an ideal way to remember how to accomplish this.

Little things like ensuring you are well-fed, not disregarding negative emotions, staying connected with those you love and staying well-rested go a long way in curbing unwanted stress. We tend to ignore many of these things during the holidays.

Adequate sleep, for example, is critical, and even some physical exercise makes a world of difference. Take the necessary time to practice self-care.

Additionally, you should make sure to have a support system. It really doesn’t matter whether it is small or large. Just having someone to lean on goes a long way. For example, an individual in recovery from addiction may have to attend support meetings or work with a sponsor.

Someone choosing holiday sobriety may have a friend or family member they are choosing to be sober with, bringing this person to holiday parties or functions. Your support system can be anything and anyone you need to get through the holidays safely and sober.

Finally, enjoy yourself this holiday season and express gratitude. The holidays are all about giving and giving thanks. Take time to create and share new holiday traditions while also focusing on love, compassion, kindness and joy.

Michael Leach has spent most of his career as a health care professional specializing in substance use disorder and addiction recovery. He is a certified clinical medical assistant and a contributor to the health care website Recovery Begins.

In the spring of 2021, a graduate student teaching assistant was referred to by a derogatory racial slur, and the aftermath of this event included an email that reprimanded sociology professor Dr. Price, stating that “everyone has as much of a right to be racist as they do culturally competent,” and that instructors have a duty to their racist students to make sure they are “able to move through the course and trust they can be treated fairly.” Dr. Price has since left BU.

In defense of graduate student TAs who face hostile and racist students in their classrooms, the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) drafted a petition demanding that BU administration stand by faculty and staff, including graduate student assistants and come up with a plan to address future racism in the class. Over 1,500 members of the University have signed the petition. The petition was met with a reiteration that free speech is a protected right and that University employees are welcome to speak with the Office of Disability and Equal Opportunity on an individual basis.

More recently, a white male undergraduate economics major by the name of Sean Harrigan released the names of his professor, Ana Candela, and her TAs to the online journal Campus Reform for her use of anti-racism policies in the classroom. Campus Reform is particularly harmful to faculty members, as those whose names have been published face threats via email, social media, physical mail and in person. Faculty members who are of a marginalized identity and who teach topics of race or politics are more likely to be targeted. In the face of threats, affected faculty frequently reduce their online presence, and some have even switched universities or changed their teaching and research agendas. Harrigan went even further by baiting his graduate TA into a long series of email debates regarding the efficiency of masking during COVID-19 and sharing these personal email exchanges, out of context, with Campus Reform. This prompted xenophobic comments and slurs from readers of the journal, as this TA is an international student. When GSEU reached out to see how the University, particularly Harpur College, planned to protect this TA, we were told that if anything threatening were to happen, we were welcome to contact campus police. That was the extent of the action they were willing to provide. Candela has since left BU.

Even more recently, a BU alumnus by the name of Jon Lizak, who was both a former president of BU College Republicans and integral in bringing Turning Point USA onto BU’s campus, was arrested for violently storming the U.S. Capital. Both Lizak and Harrigan were members of the College Republicans, as were other students who provided comments to Campus Reform.

These are just two examples in the last year and a half where BU has prioritized the feelings of its white male students over those of its marginalized graduate employees, who often have very little recourse to protect themselves in the classroom. As we just saw with the recent arrest of Lizak and the harm that can come from being targeted by Campus Reform, these are not simply words coming out of the mouths of angry men but are linked to real incidents of violence. The complacency of BU in the face of harm to its most vulnerable is both disheartening and dangerous.

With the current political climate becoming more accepting of bigotry against marginalized folks and educators, often finding themselves on the front lines of a culture war they are neither trained for nor paid enough for, these incidents will only increase in quantity and severity.

Now more than ever, we need to stick up for our friends and colleagues, our professors, mentors and our students. As the chapter president of the GSEU, to all my fellow graduate employees — we are here for you and we are willing to fight this fight with you. As a teaching assistant, to my students — I will do what I can to protect you and to advocate for you whenever I can. To my mentors, supervisors and professors — graduate students are also here for you and will stand up for your rights and safety.

Emily Blakley is a cognitive and brain sciences Ph.D. candidate and is the president of Binghamton University’s chapter of the GSEU.

In these last five months, nothing insanely unexpected has happened, but life has still managed to be incredibly busy. Graduate school is in full swing, I’m living on my own and I’m slowly learning how to manage my time as each week passes by. At risk of overusing the word, life after college is… weird. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good weird, but it’s still weird.

I can grab a drink after a late day whenever I want, I can head out to the park for an afternoon out and I can, slowly but surely, make plans with new friends. It’s almost like I’m an adult or something.

I actually have a class on Saturdays, so I don’t exactly have a full weekend like I used to. I spend my odd days off, mostly cleaning my apartment, cooking and trying to prep for the next few days while simultaneously attempting to relax. Living on your own in an apartment means you clean a lot — largely because small spaces get messy in the blink of an eye, and because you’re responsible for everything. The dishes sitting in my sink are mine, the laundry card that needs refilling is mine and the cat glaring at me for his food is mine. I’m in charge of it all. It’s both freeing and, at times, overwhelming. But it’s also really fun. I do my best to keep the positives on the forefront of my mind.

If you want more practical or specific tips, I’ve got you.

Don’t go crazy with spending money on decorating your apartment, because you’ll accumulate stuff as you go. However, invest in a good bed, a solid couch and, if you work from home a lot like I do, a really functional desk. If you commute two ways on mass transit more than five days a week, just get the monthly pass. Recognize and accommodate your struggles rather than just fighting against them. I know sometimes I get too overwhelmed to plan meals, so I often use a meal subscription. For the love of god, utilize your student discounts. Do what you need to do to feel safe. Clean gradually rather than saving it all for later. Be friendly to people in your building and be a good neighbor. Set up boundaries for all aspects of your life, even with yourself. I personally don’t do any work while I’m eating a meal — I love food too much to taint it with workplace stress. Take the time to know more about where you live. Get a good pair of longish rain boots.

If you had told 13-year-old me that she would be living in Brooklyn with her cat, managing her own life and getting a master’s degree, she’d probably keel over. When you find yourself in a similar position, let that joy and that realization overwhelm the negatives. You’re an adult for the rest of your life — don’t let anyone else define what that means, and certainly don’t let anyone else dictate where you draw your joy.

Elizabeth Short graduated in May 2021 and was Opinions Editor from 2020-2021.

Take Hasan Piker, 29, who garnered nearly 1.2 million followers and 41,000 subscribers, under his Twitch handle Hasanabi. According to twitch.tv, paying a subscription to a streamer grants access to several benefits, including the ability to use emotes in a community chat, streams solely accessible to subscribers, “ad-free viewing and more,” but anyone can follow a streamer, regularly watch their content and receive updates from the channel for free. The more popular a streamer is, the more subscribers and followers they have, and Piker currently stands seventh on the leaderboard of Twitch’s current active subs.

But why is Piker’s popularity important? Previously an associate of The Young Turks, one of the most popular progressive news shows online, he encourages leftist politics — particularly among young men, who make up Twitch’s primary viewership. Throughout 2020, Piker reacted live to videos of the countrywide Black Lives Matter protests. Piker told The New York Times, “I showed what the people on the ground were saying rather than the way local news or the mainstream media was covering it to some degree … I broadly criticized the local news networks that hyper-focused on looting and all these other tropes they were building about these protests.” According to that same article, he streamed for 16 straight hours on Election Day 2020, reaching a peak of “225,000 concurrent viewers” — and this stream has since been viewed over 4.5 million times. It’s known that young voters came out in unusual droves during the last election cycle, and streamers like Piker certainly played a positive role by energizing voters, though the magnitude of their impact is unclear.

Politicians and mainstream activists have also realized Twitch’s ability to reach potential voters. In October 2019, the Trump campaign joined Twitch to broadcast the former president’s campaign speeches. Then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders did the same that year. Trump was removed from Twitch following the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, but Sanders continues to broadcast. On March 26, for instance, Sanders screened speeches in support of Amazon workers creating their own union to over 5,700 viewers total. Perhaps most notably, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) streamed themselves playing the video game “Among Us” with several other popular streamers, Hasan Piker included. Ocasio-Cortez’s first stream reached 700,000 concurrent viewers, and there have been 1.6 million views on the video. Moreover, Stacey Abrams is lauded for her voter turnout initiatives in Georgia, arguably shifting the whole of the 2020 election in the Democratic Party’s favor. As a means to do so, the New Georgia Project, which Abrams co-founded at the end of 2013, streamed a 12-hour marathon on Election Day. According to The Esports Observer, the stream featured live music, a panel discussion, prizes, celebrities and more to encourage Americans to vote. Abrams later streamed with Tanya DePass, 48, otherwise known as cypheroftyr on Twitch. “I’m joining activist and gamer @cypheroftyr tomorrow, 1/4, in an Animal Crossing gaming session to discuss what’s at stake in Georgia’s Senate runoff election,” she posted on Twitter on January 3.

Returning to the original question, the political legitimacy of streamers cannot be totally dismissed, as several of the platform’s most famous faces are politicians, pundits and activists. Of course, mostly apolitical streamers have the ability to influence their audiences too. One might argue that they ought not to use their influence without some formal education in contemporary issues. However, the internet as a whole allows other influencers and celebrities to do so on platforms besides Twitch. Former President Donald Trump, for instance, used Twitter as a political outsider in order to become the commander in chief. Liberals and leftists certainly detested the former president’s Twitter, but that did not neutralize the legitimacy of his messages among those who agree with them.

If another political candidate or an up-and-coming influencer begins pressing left-wing talking points, left-wingers should not condemn this person due to a lack of qualifications. Instead, they should accept these talking points as the means to legitimize that person as an acceptable political commentator. Moreover, claiming that apolitical influencers should not voice politicized opinions online is elitist. One might as well say that no one aside from college-educated persons and network employees should have input in politics. In another sense, this argument is pointlessly utopian — people will never willingly remove themselves from the political sphere. Furthermore, the bias against Twitch streamers, who can flesh out their arguments without restrictions, is odd considering Twitter only allows for 280 characters per tweet. So instead of being hesitant to hear a streamer’s opinion, no matter their qualifications, critics should acknowledge that Twitch actually provides relatively honest, unedited perspectives more often than other platforms. Given American’s fixation on the “marketplace of ideas,” the notion that the best ideas will win out through logic, most would agree that viewers will quickly notice that a streamer is uneducated on the issues. The popularity of these influencers’ unqualified opinions, therefore, should die out naturally.

Gavin VanHorn is a senior double-majoring in history and philosophy, politics and law.

It’s been about a year since I graduated, and it would be a lie if I said it’s been easier — college was a breeze, for me, at least. It was easy in the sense that I knew what came next. I had my routine: study, complete weekly coursework, take an exam, write a paper and repeat. It was simple. I was good at it. I graduated as a double-major without ever getting below an A-. Again, I was good at college. I was good at planning what needed to be studied, what needed to be written and what needed to be handed in. I wasn’t good at putting myself first.

I tried so hard to maintain that familiar perfection, and I did, but why? I hadn’t even applied to graduate school like I assumed I would. I missed parties and nights outs, I missed time with my friends, I missed time with myself. It was going to all be worth it spring semester my senior year — at least that’s what I thought before COVID-19 struck. It was going to finally be my time to celebrate my success and, spoiler alert, I didn’t get it and neither did anyone in my graduating class. I’m not disheartened by this anymore, but if I could prevent another student from wasting a night to perfect a paper instead of making a memory, then I hope I’m the example.

I can’t fully discredit all my work because the extra classes and academics did help me develop my passions, wherever they may lie. The truth is, I was comfortable with the workload and actually preferred to be busy and studious, but here I am, a year later, without a singular career path. It’s taken time, but I’m okay with that, because I’ve never been the type to pinpoint exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. We shouldn’t have to decide if we want to be a writer, teacher or a doctor when it’s clear we don’t even know who we are yet. I thought I knew what I wanted to do as an “adult.” Now, 23 years old, and I have about five different paths I want to take — why can’t I take them all? College can be so restricting, and I’m thankful I had the privilege to be able to take internships and extra courses to narrow down my passions, but some aren’t as lucky. That’s why we should halt the pressures of answering these questions of the future at a time when we, truthfully, don’t have answers.

All I know is I want to be a writer. That’s about the only consistency I’ve had in my “What do you want to do when you’re older” question, but there’s so much more than that. Do I want to be a television script writer, novel writer, screenwriter, journalist, etc.? Am I supposed to know? I don’t think so. I want to try it all — maybe not all today, or tomorrow, or before I’m 30, maybe not before I’m 40, but eventually. It’s okay to change your mind, major, dream job, career and it’s okay to not know what you want your plan to be. We should be able to change our path as many times as we want because life isn’t linear, so neither should the versions of ourselves be.

I was recently told that I’m not lost, I’m just unsure where my passions connect. Then, I was told to write everything I enjoy about life, what I like to do and then the reasons why I like them. I wrote 10 pages single-spaced. If that’s not an indicator that I’m indecisive, then I don’t know what is. I took some time and connected them. I came to the realization that most of them were tied to wanting to give others a chance to escape reality and life stressors the same way I was able to. I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I want to be creative, write and be able to give others a safe place to escape their responsibilities. As a kid, I would read for hours, braving the winters to sit outside just so I could be alone with a new world. Then, I would write anything I wanted, and fiction was my go-to. It’s been a while since I wrote that way, but I replaced that with television shows that I can binge for hours and get lost in someone else’s adventures. I was lucky to have my escapes when I needed them, and even now as an “adult,” and that’s what I want to give to someone else, however that may be.

To BU students, and all students, you aren’t trapped in one path or profession. If you want to put all sense of the future aside for a night or two, then do it and focus on right now. Put yourself in the present instead of five years from now. So, if you’re struggling and feeling the pressure of picking a major, an internship, a job — anything at all — just know, none of it really matters to anyone besides yourself. If it makes you happy to take an internship completely outside your major or a job that has nothing to do with your original career path, then do it. Make your path as you go, instead of planning every step of the way.

The only person you’ve got to make proud of in your life is truly yourself, because in the end, you’re all you’ve got.

It’s okay to break the norm and not know for once in our lives. In a pandemic with so much uncertainty, why are we still being programmed to “know?” The question we should’ve been asking all along should never have been, “What do you want to be?” but rather, “Who do you want to be?”

Melanie Gulbas, ‘20, is a BU alumna and was a Pipe Dream staff writer from 2017 to 2020.

The Farhud was just one of hundreds of ruthless pogroms that spurred the wider Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Egypt and others. According to dbpedia.org, approximately 850,000 Jews, predominantly Sephardi and Mizrahi background, were expelled from their homes from 1948 to the early 1970s.

Unfortunately, many are sorely uneducated about Sephardi (from Spain) and Mizrahi (from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia) Jews, who make up 50.2 percent of Israeli Jews. As a result of this ignorance, some unfairly classify all Jews as solely white and European. However, most Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews descend from Jews expelled by the Romans after the siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. — meaning that the majority of today’s Jews have never even lived in Europe. Of course, European Jews are no less authentic than Middle Eastern Jews, I solely aim to point out that this generalization is factually incorrect.

This mass exodus affected my own family. As the son of Iranian immigrants, throughout my childhood, I have heard about the colorful, serene life my family enjoyed, abruptly cut short by radical Islamists who propelled the Iranian Revolution of 1979 — an event spurred by conservative Iranians growing resentment toward the Shah and his Western-influenced policies, relations and opinions. Unfortunately, my great-grandfather was a victim of such cruel sentiment. In the decade leading up to the Revolution, he was murdered by these individuals in broad daylight during a routine haircut. At the height of the Revolution in 1979, anti-Jewish rhetoric peaked. According to Orly R. Rahimiyan of myjewishlearning.com, “pamphlets were circulated threatening to take revenge upon the Jews for plundering Iran’s treasures” in Tehran. My parents were among the two-thirds of Iran’s Jewish population that fled the country as a result of such violent conditions.

Although these individuals descended from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and more, they are often connected by the lack of recognition of their communities and, subsequently, the need for education about their diverse Jewish practices. For example, a common difference between Sephardim and Ashkenazim is the pronunciation of certain Hebrew letters. In addition, Ashkenazim have the custom not to eat rice on Passover, while Sephardim do. Furthermore, the prayer style between groups is vastly different, with non-Hasidic Ashkenazim mainly praying what is known as Nusach Ashkenaz, while Hasidim pray Nusach Sefard or Nusach Ari. Most Sephardim pray Edot HaMizrach. These are some of the few differences that connect Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews worldwide.

These efforts are imperative — in fact, I have seen the need for them right here in Binghamton.

During the course of my myriad conversations with alumni of Binghamton University during my on-campus job, I once spoke to an individual who was entirely unaware that Iranian Jews existed. This is personal for me, I feel a need to contribute to this cause, leading the charge to educate Jews and non-Jews alike about the rich diversity of the Jewish people.

Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews differ from other Jews culturally, diverging in style of religious observance, language and more. For example, my hometown community of Great Neck, New York is home to the second-largest collection of Persians in the United States — nearly 21 percent of the town’s residents report Persian heritage, the majority of whom are Jewish Iranians that fled Iran as a result of the Islamic Revolution. Thus, my family’s primary language, the one spoken in our home, is Farsi, the national language of Iran. For Jews who descended from Arab lands, most of their communication was in Arabic and not until recently, after mass Mizrahi immigration to Israel and the United States, did Arabic cease to be a primary language in Mizrahi Jewish society. In addition, Mizrahi culture differs from non-Mizrahi customs in our observance of holidays, bible interpretations from our sages and increased emphasis on community. In fact, most don’t know that the Talmud, or primary source of Jewish law, was developed in Babylonia, or present-day Iraq, around 100 C.E. Therefore, the assumption that Jews are primarily European and nothing else is not solely naive — it is plainly incorrect.

My mission statement to you, the readers, is to become tellers of the diversity of the Jewish people. By constantly reinforcing that there is not one type of Jew, but a vast collection of different identities, this can directly aid in combating stereotypical tropes commonly aimed at the Jewish community. I encourage those in the Binghamton community and beyond to educate others about the rich, unique and hidden culture of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews. Together, we can lessen dangerous discrimination and pave the way for a more accurate, well-rounded view of Jewish diversity.

Eden Janfar is a senior majoring in business administration.

The origin of this system was a compromise between the small states and their larger counterparts at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The larger states, such as Virginia and Pennsylvania, were propped up by hefty populations of slaves — up to a full third of their populations — and wanted exclusively proportional representation in the federal government in order to hold more control over policy. Virginia and Pennsylvania were up to nine times larger than the smaller states. The smaller states, like New Hampshire and Delaware, rebelled, arguing that slaves, who could not vote, should not be considered for congressional apportionment in the House. On a broader scale, the small states feared that the larger states would reign over them in a proportional Congress, preventing their voices from being heard — as of the most recent Congress, seven states combined to hold just 1.6 percent of the seats in the House. They wanted a second chamber, one in which they knew they would be equally represented to the federal government. To the chagrin of the larger states, the Senate was formed. It ensures that small states, practically irrelevant in the House of Representatives, have a stable voice in government. The equal representation of the states in the Senate, then, is a vital check on the power of the majoritarianism embodied in the House. This settlement was known as the Great Compromise, highly regarded as having saved the Constitution from certain death.

This balance of power is critical in government, assuring that for legislation to pass, it must have the support of both chambers of Congress — in other words, be beneficial for both the states and the people. This often results in partisan gridlock and the slow movement of bills through the pipes of Washington. Though it may seem inefficient, it is precisely what the framers intended, because they trusted in state and local governments to get things done — not the federal government. State and local governments, not the federal, are capable of managing the regional nuances required in governing a country as large and diverse as ours. In the framers’ experience, a speedy government was used to impose widespread restrictions, not freedoms, on the people. The unfettered power and ferocity of a proportional unicameral government was specifically rejected in 1789 with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the document that guaranteed a restricted federal government.

Moreover, the author dislikes the proportional House of Representatives, which, she writes, “can oftentimes fail the majority of voting Americans.” Thus, her real concern is not that the Senate is undemocratic, nor that the House may not fulfill its supposed obligation to implement the will of the majority. Her actual complaint, it appears, is that we do not live in a majoritarian society. After all, if the House was restricted to following what the majority of Americans allegedly support, what is the point of having the House in the first place? Why not hold a national election every time a bill is up for a vote, and give in to pure democratic rule? The framers disdained this for a reason: it can only lead to oppression of the minority by the majority. As the saying goes, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” — in other words, lethal for the lamb. We do not live in, nor do we aspire to be, a majoritarian society because the minority would be crushed. Our system is the only way in which the minority can have a tangible impact on the government. Anything else is not just anti-republic, but immoral.

E.J. Meltzer is a sophomore majoring in economics.

Beyond the top of the ballot, though, Republicans had an excellent night on Nov. 3. Incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) defied the polls to hang onto their seats. The GOP is just one runoff victory in Georgia away from retaining the Senate against all odds. In the House, the results were even more surprising for the GOP, with the party making unlikely gains in Iowa, California, South Florida and elsewhere.

The standout storyline in the congressional elections is the success of female and minority Republican candidates. Every single House seat that flipped from blue to red this cycle was done so by a female or a person of color. The number of female Republicans in the U.S. House is set to at least double from its current count of 13. These numbers and the surprising GOP success in down-ballot races is no coincidence — the recruitment of women and minorities helped the GOP make these gains, and the party must continue to support these candidates in order to appeal to the increasingly diverse populations of America and achieve electoral success in the future.

On some level, elements of the conservative movement already recognize this. After seeing the number of GOP women in the House shrink from 23 to just 13 after the 2018 midterms, many conservative groups rose to help fix the problem. Groups such as Winning for Women, VIEW Pac and E-PAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost Republican women in GOP primaries, and their efforts clearly paid off on Nov. 3.

But, in many ways, the Republican Party has been failing to see what it needs to do. In the 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump largely sought to play to his own base by holding large, fiery rallies in which all he did was give off-the-rails speeches to inflame America’s partisan divides and gin up his own supporters. He did nothing to moderate himself or reach out to persuadable voters, many of whom are people of color, and Republicans largely followed his lead. In doing this, Republicans basically ceded the big cities and suburbs to the Democrats. Trump didn’t give these diverse voters any reason to vote Republican.

And yet, amazingly, many of them did anyway. Trump improved his performance among Black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian American voters compared to 2016, garnering the second-highest minority vote share of any Republican since 1976. These results are reflected the most in Miami-Dade County, Florida and Zapata County, Texas. In Miami-Dade, Trump lost by nearly seven points after losing by nearly 30 in 2016. In Zapata County, Trump overturned a nearly 33-point loss in 2016 to win the county by over five points, becoming the first Republican in a century to win there. Both counties are largely Hispanic, and both were crucial to Trump’s victories in those swing states. Imagine what could have happened if Republicans actually tried to appeal to those voters.

Clearly, minority voters are in play, and the GOP can no longer continue to ignore them as America grows more diverse. Republicans need to demonstrate that their party is for everyone and that their agenda can in fact work for all Americans of all backgrounds. A key part of doing so is investing in these candidates at both the congressional and presidential levels.

The results of the election give the GOP a clear roadmap on how to perform well in future elections. The conflicting results at the top and bottom of the ballot suggest that the Republicans’ loss of the White House was not due to their message, but their messenger at the top of the ticket. Many voters unwilling to vote for President Donald Trump seemed to have pulled the lever for down-ballot Republicans, enabling the party to make the gains that it made in unlikely places. This election showed that, with the right candidates, the GOP platform is a winning one that can lead to victories down the road. There is an opportunity in this country for the Republican Party to expand its sphere of support. It must take it.

Justin Zion is a senior majoring in political science and is Sports Editor at Pipe Dream.

Certainly, what I was watching on that broadcast was a titanic shift in the geopolitical order unfolding with startling rapidity, one with a complex backstory and still unsettled ramifications. But through the flicker of the television screen, I was also witnessing a human moment of epochal significance, as well as countless smaller moments unfolding between individuals — families reuniting, friends celebrating, young people heralding a future that suddenly looked more hopeful, old people whose lives had just unexpectedly become more free. The historical implications of the fall of the Berlin Wall have clearly stayed with me — I am now an architectural historian who specializes in German architecture built after the country’s official reunification in 1990. But in addition to its political meanings, the euphoric feeling of human connection that characterized that moment has remained with me as well. This memory is more poignant than ever right now, in a time in which the COVID-19 pandemic has made this kind of connection so difficult. Our history is written on human faces, just as it was three decades ago.

In case your interest in my tale is waning, let me pause and pivot to the takeaway here: at this moment, it is you who stands to be the face of history. American voters, no matter their party affiliation, are currently facing a choice with decisive consequences for the entire world. This is history — and you are its motor. Bear in mind that you are taking a stand on the direction of history, whether you vote or not. If you vote, you actively choose this direction. If you do not, you let others choose for you. To be clear, I am not writing to tell you for whom you should vote. That’s not my job, and I think I speak for many of your professors at Binghamton University when I express confidence that your intelligence and integrity mean that you can decide for yourself. I am writing to state that I sincerely hope you will exercise your right to vote. Just as your professors often tell you in class, participation counts — and the stakes right now are sky-high.

In addition to voting in person on Nov. 3, in New York state you can also vote early between Oct. 24 and Nov. 1 or request an absentee ballot until Oct. 27. Some of you are newly eligible to vote and chomping at the bit, which is profoundly inspiring to witness. But I also know there are many reasons that others of you might not vote. Even though turnout among U.S. college students more than doubled between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections, surging from 19 percent to nearly 40 percent of eligible voters, that still leaves 60 percent of students who did not cast a ballot. There are good reasons this might have been the case, such as voter suppression, voter intimidation and the sometimes-Byzantine rules governing who can vote and how it is carried out. The Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) on campus is here to help you with any questions you might have on these fronts, especially in a year when the process is particularly confusing.

But let’s be honest — there are some not-great reasons as well. In 2018, perhaps you were distracted by classes, perhaps you were whipsawed with stress or maybe you just forgot to register in time. Therefore, here in 2020, I want to leave you with this thought: remember that you are not just voting for the president of the United States. You are also voting for the future of health care and the handling of the ongoing public health crisis, the direction of climate policy, the rights of women and LGBTQ people, the administration of our national borders, the religious and racial character of our country, the status of science and the freedom of the press. This is your future — and in this case, participation counts for 100 percent of your grade.

Julia Walker is an associate professor in the art history department.

Perhaps nothing says it better than this harrowing, now-famous New York Times front page that reads: “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss,” with as many of the thousands of names of the deceased that could fit sprawled out on the front page. Right now, we are almost at 200,000. But it’s the small print under this headline that really gets me: “They were not simply names on a list. They were us.”

It’s so easy to separate ourselves from these deaths and to think that it could never affect us, or that it’s something happening “somewhere else,” whether that’s New York City a few months ago or the Southern states now. But the truth is, this is real and could become very, very personal before we know it. While we are all healthy college students who ourselves may be okay, it’s not about us. This virus can easily devastate the lives of our immunocompromised family and friends or those of people we know if we have an outbreak on campus. And it doesn’t take that many students to do so; just look at SUNY Oneonta. I wish this weren’t true, but I have lived it and I will tell you — this is much, much more than some flu.

I lived at the heart of this outbreak myself and it was terrifying. I live right next to Queens Hospital Center, not too far from what was, at one point, considered the global epicenter of the outbreak. Elmhurst Hospital, where not only did the staff of this over-capacity hospital scramble to find respirators for patients, but where hospital staff members themselves were dying. I heard ambulances day and night. When I’d go outside to get air, elderly people who I would walk by would look at me with fear as they maximized the distance between us on the narrow sidewalk. In late April, a high school friend of mine lost her father.

To put this into perspective, imagine, for just a second, if BU had twice the amount of undergraduate students that it had. Now, imagine they all dropped dead. That is still less than the 32,629 people who have died in New York state from COVID-19 up until this date and counting.

To the people saying, “The school shouldn’t have brought us on to campus in the first place — what do they expect college students to do?,” I hear you. It’s not fair to only put this on individual responsibility while ignoring policies enacted by governments and universities that make outbreaks possible. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be on campus and there wouldn’t be the fear of packed college bars and frat houses. I agree. However, that’s not the case, as much as it should be. We are on campus and we have to accept that our actions have very real-world impacts, both to those on campus, the city of Binghamton and even our communities at home.

If you are a BU student reading this, please understand the significant implications of your actions. You may be okay. I may be okay. But the professors and staff members, at-risk dining hall workers, the 16.5 percent of the city of Binghamton’s population that are elderly citizens and any of your own family and friends who are immunocompromised that you can bring the virus home to if we have an outbreak on campus will not be okay.

It’s enough that I have to fear for my mother’s life with every health scare we get after she underwent a nearly deadly liver transplant last year, making her extremely vulnerable to this virus. I never thought I would be saying this, but please do not kill my mother and so many others.

This isn’t a fun semester or the one any of us wanted by any means. But what will be much, much less fun is having to have it on our collective conscience for the rest of our lives that people died because we wanted to party or didn’t feel like wearing our masks. Thankfully, this isn’t anywhere near the majority of students, and so far we have not had an outbreak thanks to so many of us working together and doing our best in such a difficult situation, but I felt the need to write this because I’ve seen how easily this virus spreads and the damage it can do. Letting our guard down once we get too bored on a weekend or for something like HalloWeekend or Santacon later in the semester could be detrimental — it doesn’t take that much to start an outbreak.

Six months ago, I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for not taking this seriously. We didn’t know any better. I didn’t know any better. Now, we know the reality of this virus. And if you don’t, please, take some time to research the reality of COVID-19. This is not a joke.

Max Kurant is a sophomore majoring in sociology.

It was my junior year and I had just switched majors from computer science to SSIE in the Watson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I’d heard rumors about an esteemed member of faculty who was going to be teaching a couple of my courses. It was common knowledge among SSIE students that he has an online persona under an alias where he posts pictures of naked girls’ selfies at clubs with celebrities like Paris Hilton. I confirmed these rumors when I easily found the notorious accounts. Fine, he has a valid pastime outside of BU, but the simplicity in which students could access these accounts and his clear comfort with naked women gave me a queasy feeling. My classmates and I joked about it, but never dared mentioned anything to faculty.

I walked into his office in the beginning of the semester to introduce myself as a new face in the SSIE 2018 cohort. His first words to me were, as I entered the room, “Wow! You’re so short I can barely see you.”

He asked me why I was here, and I told him writing code was fun and fulfilling. “A girl like you,” he said, “should not think that coding is fun. A girl like you should think licking an ice cream cone is fun. How’s that? Want to lick an ice cream cone for me?”

He gestured toward the cup of Charms Blow Pops at the corner of the desk. “Or maybe sucking on a lollipop would be fun for you,” he said. “You’d be better at that than you are at coding. You don’t belong here, Chloe. You shouldn’t even try to be in [the] Watson [school].”

I walked out of the meeting and cried in the newly remodeled bathroom stall on the third floor of the Engineering Building.

When I was a freshman, I thought going to BU was the best choice I’d ever made. It was a haven of intelligent faculty and comrades with whom I’d have discussions, ask questions and seek challenges. That’s what a university should be. It should provide promise and opportunity to its students, who pay a lot of money in turn for an education that will propel them into a stable career and successful adulthood.

I wish I could say that my blind faith in our education system could have continued throughout my undergraduate career. I wish I could say that my blind faith was substantiated, eventually, by a prosperous first year as a graduate. I can only say the opposite, that BU challenged me in all the wrong ways. Four years later, I still worry that my professor was right when he proclaimed that I “don’t belong here.” I worry that I will disappoint employers, should I get hired for a full-time job.

What I was subjected to only scratches the surface of the sexism that permeates academic infrastructure. I am also aware that as a white woman, I have certain privileges that others don’t. It pains me to imagine the desperation other students with fewer luxuries or support systems must feel as they encounter adversity from the real world and their own school, should this behavior of faculty fail to change.

The University is an institution that is above all of this. The problem is not inherent in our University. However, it is incumbent upon administration to be cognizant of these issues when they occur. It is my plea for others to not turn a blind eye to sexism within universities and realize it can exist in all corners. Pay attention to the snarky comments by teaching assistants or grade discrepancies between males and females; these can be signs of a deeper issue.

It is just as imperative for students to voice their concerns as it is for staff to listen to them, believe them and provide adequate help. I regret not having spoken up when I was in school, but I hope this will inspire current students and alumni alike to speak up in uncomfortable situations, even if speaking up can be just as uncomfortable. Everyone could use additional support. Everyone should have someone tell them, “You belong here, and it is okay to make mistakes. Try again until you succeed.”

Chloe Rehfield, ‘18, is a BU alumna and was a Pipe Dream staff writer from 2014 to 2018.

Upon hearing that all courses would move online for the remainder of the semester, several students reached out to the Student Association (SA) with a variety of issues such as: “How will students obtain credit for health and wellness studies courses, labs or other classes that are dependent upon an in-person element?” and “Will this impact a student’s ability to graduate?” In speaking with administrators, who went on to broadcast these answers, we found that students will receive necessary credits and seniors will graduate uninhibited. While we commend the administration for their responses to such questions, it is imperative they take the mental health concerns that come out of our current predicament as seriously as they have the academic ones. The immediate future is still vague to all parties: administrators, faculty and students alike.

As the March 19 deadline approaches, the SA has been notified by multiple students that their professors are moving up exams. These accounts state that exams originally scheduled for after March 19 were shifted to just before the transition. One student noted that their professor would distribute the original exam despite the lack of instruction on some of the content; moreover, the professor would attempt to make up for lost time by supplying students of the course with an “upgraded” study guide. While we are pleased to see Provost Donald Nieman’s March 15 B-Line message indicating that tests cannot be moved up to a date before classes go online, professors should still consider how the current situation may be affecting their students’ mental health and respond accordingly.

We are currently faced with what may be the most stressful period in modern academic history. COVID-19 has thrust the United States into a state of national emergency. Such sentiments are not lost in the BU community, where students are faced with threats of a pandemic that has already drastically altered their learning environment. It is difficult to “unwind” and “connect with others,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests, while practicing social distancing and acclimating to an unfamiliar model for coursework. In times of such crisis, the University can show it cares about mental health.

We implore the faculty at BU to consider the strain that a sweeping online transition will place on the student population — to consider the well-being of students overall. It is understandable that professors would make amendments to syllabuses in response to the upcoming conversion. Yet, we strongly advise against arrangements that add undue anxiety before the switch, of which the sole purpose is to avoid certain inconveniences of distance learning. There is no acceptable reason why a student should balance adjustment to current health standards and online academic tools with unexpected examinations.

Furthermore, we call on the administration to address concerns related to the mental well-being of the BU community. The World Health Organization (WHO) has compiled a comprehensive list of mental health considerations that range from the general public to those in isolation. A step in the right direction would be to mimic — or even adopt and promote — this wording in a University-wide announcement. Although BU prides itself on academic achievement, it is essential that we prioritize health and safety over collegiate endeavors. As such, we must adopt a campus-wide mentality of leniency as to not compromise on our promise of protection.

While it is increasingly apparent that this pandemic weakens both physical body and social order, we encourage all appropriate entities to collaborate on proactive measures to contain a mental health epidemic.

John Santare is the SA vice president for academic affairs (VPAA) and a senior double-majoring in biology and comparative literature. Maxwell Hisiger is the chief of staff for the VPAA and a senior double-majoring in economics and mathematics.

A stock market is a public market where people can buy and sell shares on the stock exchange. The price of a stock is determined between the suppliers’ and buyers’ willingness to pay for partial ownership of a business or company, otherwise known as a share. Many factors can affect traders’ decisions in whether they want to sell or buy their stocks, including interest rates, inflation, unemployment, economic growth, politics and natural or man-made disasters. One such example is how the coronavirus has been impacting the stock market enormously by disrupting supply chains among globally connected companies combined with a decrease in consumer spending. Specifically, Chinese companies have shut down factories, which means they will have trouble fulfilling the promise of importing U.S. goods.

A current market price analysis shows how severely the global financial markets are responding to the spread of the coronavirus. Since fear of the disease took over the market on Feb. 20, the S&P 500 dropped about 13 percent by market close on Feb. 28. The index had lost all its gains of 2020. Major indexes from the last week of February show that the S&P in the United States decreased by 11 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States decreased by 12 percent, the KOSPI in South Korea decreased by 8 percent, the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong by 4 percent and Nikkei 225 in Japan decreased by 10 percent, showing how widespread the coronavirus’ effects have been on global markets.

How should college students respond to a volatile stock market like this? Well, unless you own stocks, you likely won’t see stock market changes affect you. If you’re looking to invest, however, you should think before acting. Stock beginners usually react too sensitively by making their decisions based on the newspaper headlines, which results in bad trades and lost money. Instead, like a smart investor, you shouldn’t react too much to the headlines. If you have trust in your company, and if you know the core value of that firm, keep your stock.

Statistics from past epidemics also suggest holding onto shares because of the positive stock market prospect in the near future. According to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P index rose 14.59 percent six months after SARS and 20.76 percent after 12 months. After six months of the MERS outbreak, the index rose 10.74 percent and after 12 months, it rose by 17.96 percent. When similar viruses broke out, such as Ebola and Zika, the market also fluctuated at first but then rose again as time went by. Because of this, it’s difficult to conclude that the current situation will affect the stock market negatively in the long run.

A smart investor might also have an interest in sectors that have continued to grow despite the slump, like the semiconductor sector. In the KOSPI, stock prices in travel, duty-free shops, airlines and cosmetics have plummeted, but despite the slowdown in these sectors, stock prices in the semiconductor industry continue to grow because the factories remain open.

Lastly, diversifying in stock sectors is another good response to this kind of financial event. Investing all of your cash into one company can be a risky choice to make. Despite the high-risk-for-high-return rule, investors are likely to get anxious as their stock values rapidly drop — especially with the coronavirus scare. Therefore, a mix of business sectors that are not affected will give investors some security against the market’s ups and downs since it’s less likely that all of your investments will go down.

However, before purchasing or selling shares, you need to fully consider the value and price of the firm itself. If the company’s earnings are steadily growing but the stock price went down just because of the coronavirus, it’s good timing to buy additional stocks for that firm. On the other hand, it’s not recommended that you make a decision to buy any stocks just because they are cheaper than their usual prices, coronavirus or not.

Epidemics are inevitable, especially as people live more closely together in modern society. Special circumstances come and go in the market, and you ought not to be too afraid about what’s happening right now — especially if you are planning for long-term investment. From this event, we once again can realize the importance of being aware of a wider context in the stock market. With this knowledge, new college-aged investors may have a chance to get higher yields on their investments — and a better appreciation for how the stock market responds to real-world events.

Yeryeong Kim is a junior majoring in business administration.

BAE Systems is a military contractor that profits primarily from its sale of weapons and surveillance technology to the American military and authoritarian governments throughout the world. The most striking example of this is the company’s role in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, providing Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia with the bombs that have been used to target Yemeni schools, farms and hospitals. BAE Systems also provides crucial military infrastructure, with one BAE Systems employee commenting, “If we weren’t [in Yemen], in seven to 14 days there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”

In order to recruit new engineers to design, construct and maintain these tools of oppression, BAE Systems and military contractors like them exploit poor engineering students and students of color anxious to find work after graduation. These students are lured in with promises of high starting pay and career-boosting credentials. However, BAE Systems and contractors like them do not care about the well-being of our peers, whose skills may be put to better use in industries which do not profit from murder. The fact that the University allows these companies to recruit on our campus is disgraceful and unacceptable.

As DIVEST BING, we stand against the University’s complicity in industries that profit from death and human misery. We stand in solidarity with the people around the world that these companies harm, and with the students these companies seek to exploit.

DIVEST BING is a student-coordinated campaign for financial transparency and ethical investment at BU.

We believe the rights to speech protected by the First Amendment are essential to any democracy, and fully support any campus policy that protects those speech rights. However, we also believe that the application of University policy regarding speech has been biased against students of color, contributing to the creation of a hostile environment. The incidents of these past few weeks are illustrative of this bias. The tabling event that catalyzed the campus unrest was organized in violation of campus policy and without permission from the University. Those students face no consequence for their violation of University rules. Rather, Binghamton’s New York State University Police acted to protect and support the continued presence of the unauthorized tabling event. Students of color regularly experience repression on campus when they organize against racial discrimination, even when their actions comply with University policy. Given this disparate treatment, it is not unreasonable for students of color to feel unwelcome and silenced at this institution.

We ask that the University administrators not hide behind the First Amendment. We seek their assurance that the University administration will take measures to provide the students, faculty and staff of color a safe, supportive environment to learn and grow. The first step in this direction would be to refrain from the criminalization of the student participants. The administration instead should offer apologies for the campus climate that forced the need for students to respond. While white supremacist ideas may be protected under the First Amendment, the University should not be providing more protection for these ideas than values of egalitarianism and diversity.

For those who walk this campus as racialized and marginalized people, the administrative response to acts of racism has been inadequate and ineffective. The arrest of one student of color who is one of our human development students has enhanced the culture of terror for people of color on this campus. We ask for a commitment from the administration to implement a policy that does not tolerate and support “hate” in any form on this campus, and to implement all University policy in a nondiscriminatory manner. The students, faculty and staff of color deserve nothing less.

Denise Yull is chair of the human development department and an associate professor of human development.

On Nov. 18, protesters shut down an event hosted by Binghamton University College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation, who invited Arthur Laffer to speak on campus. If you’re familiar with Laffer, the most recent target of the “crazed leftists,” you may know that he was a key adviser to former President Ronald Reagan and an architect of the explosion in inequality that transpired under that administration. Does that sound like someone who’s at risk of having their free speech taken away by college students? Am I expected to believe that my freedoms, security and comfort are under threat from college protesters, and powerful and wealthy men like Laffer are my allies in this fight for free speech? I feel insulted by the suggestion that this could be true.

“Freedom of speech,” an inviolable principle of political democracy, has been turned into a political bludgeon by the political right. There is not a single student or student organization on campus that has the power to threaten the “freedom of speech” of someone like Laffer. Freedom of speech exists so that people like Laffer can be held accountable, not so that they can endlessly run the university lecture circuit. I was under the impression that student protest was considered a component of freedom of speech, and not evidence of “crazed leftism.”

When students yell, lack civility or use politically polarizing language, are they not exercising their right to freedom of speech? We may disagree politically and on what manner of action is appropriate to voice our views, but this disagreement is not one around the freedom of speech. Progressive student organizations on campus have their political views and goals, and clearly so do Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and College Republicans. Are we supposed to pretend these arguments will never result in protests, angry yelling or confrontation?

While the average BU student enjoys a relatively privileged lifestyle, it is important to remember that political decisions affect people’s lives. People like Laffer helped construct policies that hurt workers, while their superiors like Reagan went on racist rants behind closed doors. When Reagan dealt a death blow to the power of organized labor in America, the right did not protest the repression of their freedom of speech or right to strike. Rather, they celebrated the accomplishment of their political goal. When you choose to agitate for your political views, when you choose to bring archconservatives to campus, you have entered the sphere of public debate. I think that TPUSA and College Republicans should be allowed to say what they say. But I think if politics is to be understood as the serious matter it is, then rhetorical tricks using “free speech” as a bludgeon against “crazed leftists” should be off the table. Calling organized students “mobs” also strikes me as a deeply anti-democratic sentiment. If students of color, LGBTQ students and their allies see a reason to yell and protest, people should listen. Disagreement is a natural fact of political life and is protected by freedom of speech — which is exactly what protesting students were exercising.

John-Paul Keblinski is a junior double-majoring in sociology and geography.

On Monday, Nov. 18, I went to see a talk by noted, if not minorly controversial, Reagan-era economist Arthur Laffer. For me, as a faculty member with an interest in policy and economics, it was a chance to hear a firsthand defense of “Trump, Tariffs, Trade Wars,” the talk’s central purpose and title. Let me be clear — I am strenuously opposed to tariffs and trade wars as economic policy, though I certainly recognize their value in international political policy. Yet, we live in a time of all three, and it seemed a worthy intellectual exercise to hear one of the chief architects of the current trade war defend his perspective. This is what an intellectual life is all about, and what the college experience affords the privileged few.

Instead, and I need not go into the details here as you can easily find them elsewhere, I was greeted upon my arrival by a boisterous crowd intent wholly on shutting down Laffer’s talk in the name of “free speech,” which demonstrators continually chanted. I’m not sure where the poisonous idea that free speech is the same thing as enforcing the silence of others’ speech came from, but for the first time in my seven years at Binghamton University, I have been forced to confront this idea head-on.

The U.S. Constitution was a paradox in its writing, one which simultaneously developed a revolutionary system of limited self-government and a particularly virulent system of institutionalized racism and slavery. As a society, we still have a long way to go to overcome the historical injustices that minority communities have suffered. Decades of policies at federal, state and local levels in the forms of redlining and eminent domain seizures, among a myriad of others, have deprived many communities of intergenerational wealth transfers and created today’s socioeconomic disparities. It is right for students to protest against racism; it is right for students to protest against the policies that perpetuate long-term inequities.

If the purpose of protesting Monday night was to highlight how the policies advocated by Laffer create economic inequalities, however, I didn’t personally hear it. I simply saw people intent on shutting down discussion and shutting down debate.

How do you protest against a policy if you don’t know what that policy’s defense is? How do you protest against racism if you don’t engage the nuance of people in government who craft the policies that you believe are racist? On the flip side, how do you create policies that help to bridge racial and socioeconomic divides if you shut yourself off to real-world economic policymakers? The list of unintended consequences from well-intentioned policies is long; frequently what seems like an “obvious” solution is really anything but, when put to the rigor of intellectual debate. This is why speech is so important.

I believe strongly in the BU community and I have never had a reason to doubt our respect for intellectualism and respect for the rights of all students, faculty and staff. I still have no reason to doubt it, because in the 24 hours since I tried to attend Laffer’s event, I have been engaged in truly wonderful and free discussions with people throughout campus. And that is what an intellectual community should do now — discuss openly and freely what happened, why it happened and how we as a community want to move forward. For me, the choice is obvious — more speech by more voices, attended and respected by more people.

Robert Holahan is an associate professor of environmental studies and political science.

Yesterday, the Israeli military ordered the assassination of Baha Abu al-Ata, a senior official in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the driving force behind most terror activities emanating from the Gaza Strip in the past year. His neutralization led to an onslaught of more than 250 rockets directed at the Jewish state, exposing civilians to a precarious and perilous reality. The PIJ rivals Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and so, Israeli Defense Force Spokesman Brig. Gen. Hidai Zilberman said the Israeli military is currently stopping attacks on Hamas, an effort to avoid retaliatory action from both the PIJ and Hamas. Although both groups differ in ideology, their ultimate objective is the same: the destruction of Israel and Islamic control over it.

Clashes between these radical Islamist groups and Israel might seem recurrent, especially with a barrage nearly triple the size coming from Hamas close to a year ago, but they are not what startled me on Tuesday morning. Rather, what shocked me most as I was poring over the news was the text I received from my father a few hours prior. My brother Daniel — a soldier in the Givati Brigade — is serving in Nablus, which is located within Area A of the West Bank, an area closed off to Israeli civilians. As he was patrolling the area, sympathizers of PIJ threw a type of incendiary device known as a Molotov cocktail at his unit. Luckily, no one was harmed.

Of course, all of these events are troubling. No civilian should ever fear for their lives, especially because of their Jewish identity. However, terrorism and hatred become extremely tangible when someone you love is threatened by them invariably. Every day, I think about what might happen to Daniel, my only sibling, and hope that the concoctions of my imagination never come to fruition. I think of my family and friends who live in Israel, especially those who live in the south, and pray for their safety too, but ultimately there are those who seek to override love with animosity.

By now, schools have been shut down and offices have been shuttered because of incoming missiles. Since 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning, 39 people in southern and central Israel have been treated for light wounds by Magen David Adom, an Israeli EMT service. An 8-year-old girl in Holon suffered from a heart attack and was given lifesaving treatment, but her condition remains severe. This is not normal. Having a day off because you must spend it in a bomb shelter is not normal. However, the world has come to see this as an inevitable part of Israeli life, shrugging off every rocket attack as if it is a mere case of larceny. We need to stop normalizing terrorism and jihad when it comes to Israel, especially as global terrorism becomes more prevalent. If ISIS began launching attacks on the United States after the targeted killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, there would be an international outcry.

It is time that we support the only democracy in the Middle East and hold groups like PIJ and Hamas accountable for their actions. As an ardent supporter of human rights, I adamantly oppose indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and so should anyone who claims to care about social justice and bettering the world, because no one, regardless of who they are, should live their lives under constant fire.

Denouncing these attacks is the morally responsible thing to do, and rather than justify it in the name of “freedom fighting,” it is our moral obligation to stop terrorism in its tracks.

But each one of these projects was started before the previous was completed, beginning construction between last spring semester and now, and are all in a varying degree of completion today. This makes campus appear to be constantly under heavy renovation, and has the unfortunate effect of an academia version of Professor Calamitous, a cartoon villain who iconically “could never finish anything.” It’s not a good look for the University, and even worse, it’s an inconvenience for students, faculty and staff.

Time and again I’ve had to take an alternate route on my way to class because of sudden and unexpected construction projects. The first time I really took notice of it was last school year, when buildings in College-in-the-Woods were being revamped. It was my third year as a Mountainview College resident, and I had gotten used to using the trail paths as an ultimate shortcut down to the University Union and Engineering Building area. But within the first few weeks of the fall 2018 semester, the trails were closed off by fences and I had to create an alternate daily route. Not only were my precious trails closed off, but so were much of the College-in-the-Woods walkways and staircases that so many other students used each day. Without a proper warning or even knowledge of these changes, students may face being late to class, lose their favorite spots on campus or feel displaced from what is supposed to feel like their home away from home.

Another unintentional detour happened a few weeks ago as I was walking back to my car parked in Parking Lot M4, where there was a fence closing off a sidewalk that I had walked along earlier that same morning. Granted, both of these situations were simple enough to solve. If I couldn’t go over it, and I couldn’t go through it, I had to go around it. But it cost time and caused annoyance.

It’s one thing to have the entirety of campus in ruin for those who only see this campus as a school and nothing more, but more often than not students find a part of themselves here. In my case, the campus I saw as a prospective student was a major factor in why I decided on BU and living on campus for three years has only strengthened my appreciation for it. I’m not alone in this either — there are tons of students here who love the look of the campus and its facilities. So I ask, why would the administration want to fix something if it isn’t broken?

I do understand the benefits of the school demonstrating that they’re always working on something, no matter how big or small. As a creative individual, I know that the concept of having a work in progress is alluring to your audience. It creates an aura of mystery that intrigues and encourages them to want more and become more involved.

But the problem is that BU is not yet a creativity-focused university. If you need proof on that, notice which of the buildings are currently being renovated. The Fine Arts Building has needed renovations for years, and it has taken until President Harvey Stenger’s last State of the University address to announce it will finally get the attention it deserves. Despite its necessity, it remains just another of the seemingly endless construction projects ongoing around campus, as if the University never got finished being built in the first place. The facade of progress the school puts up about this never-ending construction project is not sustainable, especially at this volume.

Daniel Eisenhower is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering.

Like the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, criminalizing these increasingly popular products will not curb their use. Instead, it will make them more expensive to obtain, more dangerous and less reliable to use. These products should be regulated so consumers know what they’re smoking, but the ban means that young people will not have reliable access to information about what they’re consuming when they inevitably turn to unregulated, black-market products.

As an economics student at Binghamton University, I’ve been learning about what the government must provide to ensure that safe and reliable trade can occur. When the exchange of legal goods occurs, the government establishes property rights, maintains law and order and enforces contracts. With an e-cigarette ban, the government will not be able to ensure a safe exchange of these unhealthy products and will likely incarcerate dealers and users. As we’ve seen from the thousands of minorities imprisoned for minor drug charges, these nonviolent crimes will put otherwise good people in prison for seeking out a product they want to use recreationally.

By contrast, when the use and sale of e-cigarettes is legal, the government will be able to protect consumers from bad suppliers and protect suppliers from unsafe consumers. If e-cigarettes are criminalized, young people will resort to getting their products in the same way they’ve resorted to obtaining other illegal drugs — from drug dealers with inflated prices and unreliable quality.

This will lead to more, not fewer, instances of hospitalization from tainted e-cigarette products and a new unnecessary drug crisis, all while solutions better than criminalization are available. This will greatly affect BU students who vape, as it will be harder for them to obtain quality products at reliable prices. This may result in a rise in the black-market sale of vaping products from dangerous suppliers who couldn’t care less about the product they’re selling. Legal distributors have much greater incentive to provide a safe product to buyers, as tainted products would lead to lawsuits, and payment issues would be resolved through legal means instead of through violence.

When more than 480,000 people die from smoking those original tobacco cigarettes per year and about 88,000 die from alcohol-related deaths annually, it seems absurd that we are so quick to criminalize a product that has led to just 35 deaths so far, most stemming from THC products tainted by the cutting agent vitamin E acetate. These few deaths and numerous hospitalizations can be reduced not with a ban, further distorting the contents of illegally purchased e-cigarette products, but with safer, better-regulated products and rehabilitation programs for those with addictions.

We should treat e-cigarettes less like heroin and more like alcohol or paper cigarettes. We should raise taxes on sales of the products and allow for a reliable and safe way of obtaining these vices for those who demand them. Criminalizing e-cigarettes won’t curb their demand, but it will ensure that they’re supplied exclusively by drug dealers and cartels, making it much harder for consumers to freely and safely vape.

Adam Malev is a freshman majoring in economics.