Opinion

The Elementary Education Major is harder than you might think. These future teachers take on the emotional burden of teaching young children while shouldering a full major’s worth of coursework.

If we truly desire an America where success is the rule and not the exception, then we have to address the futures of impoverished children and their families. Equality of opportunity is not a phrase that we can take lightly, and should operate as a central goal of political policy.

I buried a man this summer. Not a friend, not a relative, but a man convicted of rape and murder and executed by the state of Georgia. I never met him, but somehow in the sweat that drenched my shirt, the ache of my back, and the blisters on my hands I knew we were closer kin than I had thought.

We ought to take Convocation seriously as a way to build community and tradition at Furman.

Laws to suppress voter fraud actually have a lot more to do with suppressing some voters than they do eliminating a minor problem.

Voter fraud has become a major issue in the upcoming elections. But statistically speaking, it’s hardly an issue at all.

There’s a lot of noise being made about how we ought to change voter laws to call for photo ID: that noise isn’t just noise, it’s wisdom, too.

Though we recognize that our enemies in the Middle East are adherents of some form of Islam, our democratic sense of tolerance restrains us from demonizing the entire faith.

By now, I hope everybody’s heard about the Poinsett Project. If those new Office365 emails have not been sorted out for you yet, here’s a basic introduction: headed up by the Poinsett Corridor Revitalization Coalition (PCRC), Furman is sponsoring a day of service on April 11 with an ambitious goal of involving 1,000 students.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will be visiting the Furman campus on Friday, March 23rd. I write to encourage the entire Furman community to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to see one of the great Americans of our time.

The dehumanization and demonization of an entire religious tradition, the perpetuation of stereotypes, and the hateful rhetoric employed against Muslims in this statement is appalling – yet Mrs. Darwish, who has also described the Qur’an as “violent, incendiary, and disrespectful,” was hosted by CSBT on March 1 to speak on “Cruel and Unusual: Islamic Law, Women, and Minority Rights”.

Many of us have been raised with the mentality that we need to stand up for what we believe, support free speech, and utilize our talents to further ourselves in society. It is our duty to protect and serve the world, topple dictators, aid victims of natural disasters and defend individual freedoms.

The headmaster of CCES will select a few students to receive a $10,000 scholarship once those students have been accepted at Furman. In turn, Furman faculty will be able to send their children to CCES at reduced tuition. This deal has been a controversial issue for two months. From where we sit,the issue at hand is the overall direction of Furman expansion.

In response to the current campus dialogue regarding Islam, I would first like to point out that much of what I hear is spoken from an openly unfamiliar perspective on the religion or its followers. There is no fault in misunderstanding or not knowing, but to proudly and heartily denounce that which is misunderstood can be harmful to the credibility of the dialogue.

The Cultural Life Program needs to be changed. That’s not a new idea, no matter who you’re asking. You can hear people wondering about CLP status in the DH and club meetings alike. This section has made a habit of critiquing CLPs over the years. At the start of this school year, the administration changed the way that CLPs are handled and submitted.

It’s that optimistic time of year when the pitchers and catchers report for spring training. Baseball season is returning quickly, and with it comes high expectations, a love of the pastoral, and well-deserved nostalgia.

On many counts, Furman strives to be a conscientious consumer. Through the Shi Center, efforts by individual academic departments, and other such sustainability initiatives, Furman is one of the most “green” campuses in the south. However, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to Greenville. FUSAB felt that students would enjoy reduced-cost tickets to the circus, and organized an event to facilitate a small group of students to attend.

Even if this puts me in the minority, I’ll go ahead and say it: I love Furman University. I wouldn’t say that I love everything about this university. There are still some growing edges I would love to see in terms of civil discourse and diversity.

The newspaper industry is dying. The print newspaper industry, to be precise. The New York Times is circulating fewer than a million copies for the first time since the 1980s; overall sales have toppled by 10% within just the past few years. They were already sliding before that.

It wasn’t too long ago now that the Stop Online Piracy Act was brought to national attention. The bill’s ostensible purpose was to criminalize the pirating of copyrighted material, especially film and musical property. However, SOPA was widely interpreted as giving too much power to the government to shut down or remove content from the Internet.

Through the Teach for America program, a college graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in any discipline commits to teach for two years in an impoverished school after just five weeks of training. If you don’t see a problem with this, then indulge me again by imagining that instead of happening at some unknown “poor school”, this happened at your own high school.

Every senior feels like he or she has the right and/or responsibility to dispense the wisdom gained through four years. I’m no different.

Ten days have passed since Election Day 2011: 353 more will do so until we reach Election Day 2012. It may feel like a long time now, but trust me. When the races heat up, it’ll be absolutely interminable. You’ll forgive me if I don’t vote on that day.

In my three years at Furman, I have taken a lot of humanities courses and tacked on a Poverty Studies concentration with my major. However, it seems like every time I step into a humanities course, people stare at me like a zoo animal. The reason? My psychology major.