The recent and complex scandal involving Cambridge Analytica’s use of 50 million Facebook users’ ill-gotten data has, understandably, left many with concerns about the privacy of the information they provide to social media platforms and the ability of third-party platforms to collect that data without the users’ knowledge. The aftermath of the revelation about Cambridge Analytica retaining the data...
R’Gear, when it began in February of 2015, was penned as an initiative to raise school spirit by distributing supposedly “free” UCR sweatshirts and crewnecks (pre-paid for, naturally, by a portion of student fees), primarily to incoming freshmen. Though fostering a sense of community and pride in one’s university is an admirable goal, the R’Gear distributions seem more like...
The question of whether student athletes ought to be paid (and if so, how much) is a continuous source of debate, one which the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently exacerbated (yet again) by its handling of a recent lawsuit regarding paying their athletes. Last year, Lawrence “Poppy” Livers, a former NCAA athlete, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA...
Americans are still reeling from the trauma brought forth by the school shooting that took place on Wednesday, Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. A conversation that is all too familiar to many is once again returning to the limelight, that of gun violence in the US and the extent to which new gun...
Perhaps free speech isn’t in a crisis but it is certainly in limbo — especially at California’s public universities. In the past year we have witnessed student and community-led uproar around the respective appearances of conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley, a school that was home to the free speech movement...
On Wednesday, Jan. 31, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon announced that the city would revisit marijuana-related convictions dating as far back as 1975, due to Proposition 64 legalizing marijuana usage when it was passed in 2016. A little over 3,000 misdemeanor convictions will be simply dismissed, whereas just over 4,900 felony convictions will undergo a review process to...
Senate Bill 320 (SB-320), introduced by Senator Connie Leyva in February last year, would mandate that California public universities’ health centers provide medication abortion, which would supplement the contraceptives that many already offer for reproductive health. SB-320 is the result of students at UC Berkeley advocating since 2016 for university health centers to provide better resources for reproductive health...
After a few agonizing days of wondering if they would be squeezed to the tune of $342 in yet another tuition increase, UC students were free to breathe a momentary sigh of relief: On Wednesday, Jan. 24, the UC regents, faced with vehement student protests, decided to delay the vote on the proposed tuition increase for all students until...
We have heard the horror stories: Students attend their local community college, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and planning to bolt after two years. Then, five years later, they’re still around, struggling to get into classes they need to graduate. It is part of the trade-off of attending a two-year community college — sure, the ease of admission and financial cost are...
On Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, ASUCR’s final meeting of the fall quarter saw an outpouring of vocal opposition against the use of political parties in the coming ASUCR elections. Some in attendance cited concerns about the potential corruption and “unethical leadership” that a political party can fall into, as well as the unfair advantages that some parties will inevitably...