Opinions

To the University of Puget Sound’s Vice President for Finance & Administration: Dear Ms. Mondou, I am a concerned senior at the University of Puget Sound. In the past months, I have become increasingly aware of a trend across the nation urging educational institutions to stop investing their financial endowment in environmentally destructive industries, particularly the fossil fuel industries of oil, coal, and natural gas. As a young person, I believe that reducing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuel based energy, whether domestic or international, is an imperative condition to...

To the Trail: The mission statement of the University of Puget Sound reads as follows: “University of Puget Sound is an independent predominantly residential undergraduate liberal arts college with selected graduate programs building effectively on a liberal arts foundation. The university, as a community of learning, maintains a strong commitment to teaching excellence, scholarly engagement, and fruitful student-faculty interaction. The mission of the university is to develop in its students capacities for critical analysis, aesthetic appreciation, sound judgment, and apt expression that will sustain a lifetime of intellectual curiosity, active...

In the past few years, one advertising technique has become increasingly popular, standing out from the rest: commercials geared toward women and girls. “Femvertising,” a phase coined in October at N.Y.’s AdWeek 2014 conference, describes a type of mostly video advertising aimed at women that contains positive and forward-thinking messages, rather than the shallow, unrealistic themes that other brands have used for decades. It is now common knowledge that many brands have stooped to photoshopping, use of models and downright pressure to convince women to buy their products. Despite the...

Halloween has, lamentably, come and gone.  Consequently, the week that ensues after the anticipation of a holiday always savors of anticlimax.  However, the image of the costumes witnessed around campus will continue to burn in the retina of every student for months to come. Of course I’m referring to the spooky, or perhaps gory, nature of the costume, which I think is fair to regarded them as memorable.   However, there have been many who have voiced criticisms online over other adult-themes represented in Halloween attire.   These complaints concern...

by MELANIE SCHAFFER The hot topic on campus at the beginning of the semester was the new Student Union Building (S.U.B.) being built and people are still talking about it.  Unfortunately, many of the remarks are less than positive. Many Puget Sound students are disgruntled with its poor design which leads to less maneuverability, especially during busy hours.  Others are frustrated by the amount of time it takes to get a sandwich, regardless of which side of the Deli station they choose. However, the most salient complaint has to do...

by MELANIE SCHAFFER Chances are high that if you attend this school, or really any institution of higher education, you’ve heard about and/or participated in some form of discussion about various forms of assault on campus. In fact, earlier this semester, The Trail issued an article on the very subject.  The article discussed Puget Sound’s most recent steps toward ending sexual misconduct on campus. These include the addition of a consent workshop during orientation, led by Assistant Dean of Students Sara Shives, as well as the creation of a support...

by CLARA BROWN Last fall, a student was talking with his RA in the hallway, and invited the RA into his room to continue the conversation and hang out for a bit. At some point during their conversation, the RA spotted an empty case of Rainier next to his fridge, and she wrote him up. It was the first week of school, and she felt she had to establish herself as an authority figure in order to instill the message that drinking in a residence hall is not acceptable behavior....

Each year, on the second Monday of October, our nation celebrates Columbus Day, the man often highly regarded for his journeys across the Atlantic ocean. However, America has recently become severely divided on the idea of admiring the explorer and celebrating Columbus Day. The first part of the controversy regards the actual historical facts associated with the holiday, such as the belief that he was the man who discovered America. He wasn’t. Leif Erikson, a Viking born in 1st century Norway, and has been historically named as the first European...

The University of Puget Sound Philosophy Department has a major issues with diversity and inclusion. In my experience as a philosophy major at this University, I have been silenced in class by professors, belittled by my peers and erased in our curricula. Why do the white, straight, cisgender, propertied, tenured male professors in our philosophy department refuse to include the work of queers, the work of trans philosophers, the work of marginalized people in general? Why is it that there is only one tenured woman in our philosophy department? Why...

Ever since the Heartbleed bug, a reinstated rule-of-thumb for the online community has been, “Change your passwords regularly.” It’s become proverbial for anyone who follows cyber policy; for decades, security guidelines have recommended frequent password changes, commonly between 30 and 180 days. However, in recent months, it’s become highly questionable if frequently updating your password actually does increase security. A Microsoft study found that compulsory password changes do little to improve student security, yet do much to increase frustration. The library is brimming with the cacophony of angry keyboard typing,...