By Hannah Lee The University of Puget Sound, like all private schools, is more expensive to attend than a state school. So how can students justify the cost of going to an expensive private university? One way to offset the cost is through scholarships. Joan Potter, the scholarship coordinator for Student Financial Services, provides insight into the financial aid the University provides. She explained the difference between a grant and a scholarship, stating that “they’re both free money,” but that they “come from different sources.” Scholarships can be awarded by...

By Emma Loenicker In the fall of 2014, the University of Puget Sound launched a new scholarship program for Tacoma Public School (TPS) students. This initiative is part of Puget Sound’s Access Programs which has offered enrichment opportunities in partnership with TPS for grades 7 to 12 since 1995. The Access Programs provide various opportunities for pre-college programming, including weekly tutoring, college-specific skill workshops, and the summer academic challenge program (SAC). Recipients of the Access Scholarship are typically students from low-income families, communities of color, or first-generation college students. Access...

By Albert Chang-Yoo The 424 full-time staff members employed at the University of Puget Sound are the lifeblood of the campus. Anytime you go to the bathroom, eat a meal, or connect to the Wi-Fi, it’s probably because of a staff member’s work. Yet, for the past decade, staff have experienced sparse increases in compensation, causing financial turbulence, stress, and high turnover rates. Recently, the Staff Senate Compensation Committee renewed their request for a 10% increase in the salary pool (the accumulation of all staff salaries). For the past six...

By Andrew Benoit If you’ve seen a movie recently, you’ve probably been confronted with the common complaint that movies are just getting so long these days. Whatever happened to movies being 90 minutes? Plenty of recent long haulers do come to mind, like Scorsese’s “The Irishman” or Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” both of which clock in at over three hours. Critics of these movies’ runtimes ask whether it’s reasonable for audiences to pay attention for such a long period of time. Yet these movies are the exception, not...

By Julian Finholm As a storyteller, the creative energy I put into writing my stories is at one hundred percent, and that is what makes them feel alive. But it is a difficult process with the amount of brain power, life management and other factors like creativity regulation I have to deal with. One alternative I’ve come across is ChatGPT, the latest in the growing phenomenon of AI in today’s modern world. It’s supposed to write for you with only a simple prompt, yet if I were asked if I’d...

By Ainsley Feeney On February 13, South Dakota became the sixth state to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, joining Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Tennessee, and Utah. According to the ACLU, 96 other bills in the United States seek to do the same. Now more than ever, trans youth are losing access to possibly life-saving treatment. But what is gender-affirming care, and why is it so important? Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term referring to medical procedures that allow the bodies of trans and nonbinary people to more closely...