News

On Oct. 7, Wetlands Magazine posted an editorial online highlighting the failures of the Finance Committee and the Associated Students of Puget Sound (ASUPS) to properly allocate money to programs that attempt to prevent violence and assault on our campus. This program is specifically, but not limited to, Sexuality Issues, Relationships and Gender Education (SIRGE). ASUPS Senate addressed the issue at their Senate meeting on Oct. 8 by engaging in discourse around the funding issue, ultimately providing SIRGE and Deconstructing Masculinity (De-Masc) with a $700 allocation, but questions surrounding the...

Associated Students of the University of Puget Sound (ASUPS) Senate fall elections concluded on Friday, Oct. 16  and hopes are high among senators that the elections will help give ASUPS a larger presence on the University’s campus. “Senate meets every Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Murray Boardroom to approve legislation, distribute your student government fee, and represent your voice in campus matters,” ASUPS President Nakisha Renee Jones said in an email about the elections. Half of the Senate positions were up for election, including two Senator at-Large...

In his first state visit to the United States, Chinese President Xi Jinping stopped in Tacoma on Wednesday, Sept. 23, to exchange gifts and speak with students at Lincoln High School. This is President Xi’s second visit to the city of Tacoma; his first was in 1993, when he was a local government official in Fuzhou, Tacoma’s sister city. President Xi’s decision to visit Washington State before traveling to Washington D.C. and New York to meet with President Obama and the United Nations, respectively, highlights the significance of Washington State’s...

In my three years working for The Trail, I have had the privilege of watching this newspaper in its struggle to grow into a platform for critical change and conversations. I acknowledge that The Trail has struggled with misrepresentation in past issues and plan to implement a variety of solutions to this problem. With the creation of the managing content editor position, consultation of a professional adviser, thorough copy editing and fact checking, we hope to eliminate incidents of misrepresentation in future articles. Looking forward, I encourage the community to...

The Center for Intercultural and Civic Engagement, pictured here, is seeking to hire a new Director of Intercultural Engagement.   In the coming year, the University will not only be looking for a new President, but also a new Director for Intercultural Engagement. Czarina Ramsay, the now former Director for Intercultural Engagement, has left her position at the University. The school posted a position description and vacancy announcement on the website Higher Ed Jobs along with other outlets on Sept. 22. The last official day of Ramsay’s service as the...

On Tuesday September 22, the internet’s leading source on all purpose cynicism and mob justice, Gawker, published a story regarding a recent controversy at Wesleyan University. According to Gawker, students at the Connecticut university are seeking to defund their campus newspaper, The Argus, after the paper published an op-ed piece entitled “Black Lives Matter Isn’t What You Think”. The Argus piece claimed that the Black Lives Matter movement is inconsistent, contradictory and fraudulent. The piece strongly defended police forces around the country. There are at least 150 signatures for a...

Whether it’s The Big Siblings Program, Habitat for Humanity, Food Salvage or tutoring, the University of Puget Sound’s Center for Intercultural and Civic Engagement (CICE) provides many options to volunteer in our Tacoma community. The Pathways Program aims to provide direction with all of these opportunities, as well as in-depth personal advising and programming to help students develop their own unique niche within the world of Civic Engagement and social justice. Skylar Bihl, coordinator of the CICE, and student Mark Gilbert developed the program after the two attended a conference in Washington DC, along with several other students on staff at the...

University of Puget Sound announced their partnership this week with the Posse foundation, a national organization dedicated to providing full-ride scholarships  to students from diverse backgrounds with excellent academic and leadership potential. The foundation has partnered with over 52 colleges and universities that partner with a specific geographical area to recruit students involved with the Posse foundation with the offer of a full-tuition scholarship. University of Puget Sound is set to recruit from the Bay Area of San Francisco. The University will commit to providing full-tuition scholarships to 10 students...

Does the ASUPS Vice President just hire their friends to executive staff positions? Year after year, the perception is that ASUPS elections are popularity contests, and that the ASUPS VP, who makes the hiring decisions in consultation with the President, hires from their friend group. “It always comes into question when execs hire individuals they’ve had pre-existing relationshps with. No matter how strenuous the application process is, there’s never information released about why those individuals where hired or what qualifications they have,” Senate Chair Kaitlyn Vallance said. ASUPS President Nakisha...

This past Tuesday there was an informal ASUPS senate meeting that discussed the state of elections and whether ASUPS was within its authority to call for them. At the previous formal meeting on April 23, Ryan Del Rosario had raised concerns about whether the senate overstepped in some of the elections decisions they had made. In the statement they gave to the members of ASUPS and also posted on social media, Rosario said “even if we ignore the mishandlings of the elections from fall semester, I do not understand why...