Being Blue at PSU

By Christian Schamberger Fears loomed over this year’s election cycle as predictions pointed toward lower turnout rates relative to previous “off-year” elections. Even amid these fears, Democrats came out with tremendous victories last Tuesday in Centre County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of the country. The protection of abortion rights stood strong as voters cast their ballot for pro-choice candidates across the country. Three main victories include: 1. In Ohio, voters enshrined the right to abortion in the state constitution by voting 56.6% “yes” on their ballots for Issue 1 which would protect “abortions up to fetal viability.” 2. The Virginia state house was a key race on last Tuesday as Governor Youngkin (R.) was looking to pass limitations to abortion rights if Republicans controlled both chambers. Democrats continued to hold onto the state senate and flipped the state house blue. 3. Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky held his position in office even in the deep-red state of Mitch

By Evan Sutton Israel's bombardment of Gaza has been raging on for one month as of the time of writing this. As the Israeli government commits numerous crimes, Cori Bush currently leads a coalition of progressive Democrats in support of a ceasefire. However, I am appalled that most fellow Democratic congresspeople still unconditionally support the discriminatory and destructive policies Israel forces on innocent Palestinians. For example, President Joe Biden, along with his allies, have called for an increase in military aid to the Israeli Defense Forces while providing what is effectively lip service to Palestinian children killed by Israel. If we want to adhere to our values of liberty and justice for all, we must condemn Israel's 75-year-long subjugation of Palestinian people and demand their rights be respected. In every violent breakout in the region since the Nakba (the mass expulsion of 750 thousand Palestinians from their homes), the Israeli government has killed and wo

CW: talk of guns, shootings, suicide, and death. This is meant to be read as a satire in Carrie Bradshaw’s voice from Sex and the City. Once upon a time, the College Democrats and College Republicans debated on gun laws in America. My expectations going into tonight were on the low side – I didn’t want to be disappointed. But as the groups started speaking, I knew I would be in for a treat. The first topic was about having guns in schools and possibly arming teachers. The first debater on the Republican side opened with a quote from former president John F. Kennedy. Seems harmless at first. Then I realized. No one had told him that JFK had been killed from a gunshot to the head. That could be the only reason they would start with that quote. I mean, if there were stricter regulations on guns, that wouldn’t have happened right? Hopefully they didn’t notice my shocked expression as they tried to continue with their statement. I couldn’t help but wonder how they could start so confidently

By Hailey Crawford Working in the science field is hard, but being a woman in the science field is even harder. Higher education may prepare us for the concepts we need to understand in the lab, or how to convert nano liters to liters, however it fails to conduct the discussion of mistreatment and misunderstanding towards women in scientific settings. It wasn’t until I decided to head to a classroom one afternoon during the first week of 7 th grade that I understood how prominent of an issue this was. It was the first meeting of our school’s robotics team, more of an interest meeting than anything else. Immediately, I was intrigued. I’ve always enjoyed engaging in new challenges, and I soon discovered this would be much more of an obstacle than the coding and mechanics I’d have to adapt to. It was just me, a couple other girls, and a whole lot of men. I wasn’t able to screw parts together without being told “I can help with that!”, or “Why don’t you go and work on our poster design be

By Bianca Walder Why are Democrats Obsessed with alternative energy sources? Do they do more harm than good? Will they really save the world?  The idea is that if we were to stop using fossil fuels and slowly switch to an alternative “green” energy source, we can stop climate change and its negative consequences from happening. Sounds great right?  In reality, it sounds too good to be true. The society that we live in today is a capitalistic society running with the assumption of exponential growth in markets and production. Fundamentally, this system is unsustainable. The earth has a finite amount of resources to extract and manage. The world is not the industry’s oyster. We will realistically run out of resources relatively soon. It is appalling to me that this fact is being debated in a political arena. It is foolish, short-sighted, and greedy to not acknowledge that the world is changing in ways that will make human life incompatible with the planet. The reason that climate change

By Tim Klaum You may have noticed in the past few months that, rather suddenly, movie and television productions have been shutting down at a moment’s notice and not picking back up. And while some shows have continued, almost all others (aside from news talk shows) have not. While the big studios, with all of their money and power, will try to convince you that it’s not that bad, trust me. It’s that bad. Early this year, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began fighting for a fair deal of their contract, asking for a higher base wage (to match the cost of living in 2023) as well as residual payments for writers and more protections for them. The studios were unable to grant these very basic requests, and thus the WGA voted to go on strike. All writing for major productions, from studios such as Disney, Paramount, Universal, and others, immediately came to a halt, and those same studios tried to continue without their writers. Then, later in the summer, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFT