All Posts Tagged With: "Mitt Romney"
What students are talking about today (November 30th edition)
Romney’s free hamburgers, gay-friendly mosque & Palestine
Romney in McDonald's (TheUglySleeper/Reddit)
1. Mitt Romney stopped by a McDonald’s on Thursday before his lunch with Barack Obama. (I guess he doesn’t like turkey chili.) National Post points out that Romney’s father often lent him a card that entitled him to free hamburgers for life. You read that correctly. America’s most famous rich family got free hamburgers… for life.
2. Speaking of hamburgers, The New York Times reports that Thursday saw the most job action among fast-food workers on a single day in U.S. history. A union drive called Fast Food Forward wants wages raised to $15 an hour. “How can we survive on seven twenty-five?” was the chant outside a Burger King in New York. The U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.75.
2. On the last day of Movember, Stephen Clare of McMaster’s Silhouette is reminding his mo bros (and ladies) about the real meaning of the season. “Be honest. How many people do you know enjoying a lip-warmer this month? Many. Now how many of those have donated to the cause?” He says raising awareness isn’t good enough and that people should donate to men’s cancer research.
3. The search for a student missing from Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. has been scaled back. Christopher Metallic, 20, has been missing since a house party on early Sunday morning.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (November 30th edition)
What students are talking about today (November 7th edition)
Trump is mad, pot is legal & U. Manitoba’s “racialized rep.”
Donald Trump is one of the angriest men in America today (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
1. Barack Obama got a second chance, winning the presidency for another four years with 50 per cent of the popular vote to Mitt Romney’s 48 per cent plus victory in battleground states like Ohio. From Obama’s victory speech: “Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come.” Full text here.
2. Upon hearing the election results, Donald Trump threw a tantrum on Twitter and threatened to “March on Washington,” the site of this democratic “travesty.”
3. Washington and Colorado passed ballot initiatives during Tuesday’s election that legalize marijuana for recreational use. But pot-heads shouldn’t pack their bags for Denver or Seattle just yet. Legalization may lead to a Supreme Court challenge from the federal government.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (November 7th edition)
What students are talking about today (November 6th edition)
Obama’s odds, no-money-down tuition, Halo 4 & a drug bust
The student pick is Obama (feelsgoodlost/Flickr)
1. It’s election day in America and things are looking good for President Barack Obama. Statistician Nate Silver, one of the most trusted seers of election results in America, Tweeted Monday that the latest polling suggests a very close election, but that Obama has a 91 per cent chance of winning the electoral college, which would give him another four years in office.
2. If it were up to student newspaper editors, Obama would win. The Daily Campus at Southern Methodist University is the only high-profile student paper to give Romney its endorsement.
3. More details are out from Ontario Liberal leadership candidate Glen Murray on his no-money-down post-secondary plan. Here it is. In partnership with private lenders, university students would be allowed to borrow up to $7,000 per year, roughly the cost of tuition and fees. Repayment and interest would start after graduation based on income. Loans would be interest free in the first 12 months after grad. The Canadian Federation of Students is opposed, naturally, saying it would “saddle youth with a lifetime of debt.”
Continue reading What students are talking about today (November 6th edition)
What students are talking about today (October 16th edition)
A fake medical student, a fake gun & Dalton McGuinty
McGill U. medical students (Andrew Tolson)
1. After nine years as premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty stepped down last night and prorogued the legislature. By 9 p.m., the newspapers had stories suggesting he’ll run for the federal Liberals against Justin Trudeau. Paul Wells writes that he would be astonished by that. “But then, McGuinty has already astonished me once tonight,” he adds. Wells explores the Teflon Premier’s legacy and examines a (possibly) telling recent speech.
2. A man rejected from medical school at New Zealand’s Auckland University decided to go anyway. He spent two years attending classes, labs, and hospital placements and was only caught when a classmate put his name on a group assignment.
3. A 28-year-old woman who was walking to the University of Windsor Monday was told by a man carrying a fake gun to hand over a computer bag. The woman described the gun as “two sticks taped together.” The University of Windsor Campus Police arrested and charged a 21-year-old.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 16th edition)
What students are talking about today (October 10th edition)
An actress attacked, a student shot dead & a capella
Stacey Dash in Republican red REALStaceyDash/Twitter
1. Actress Stacey Dash, known best for her role in the 1990s TV show Clueless, has been attacked on Twitter for endorsing Republican Mitt Romney. As an African American woman, apparently she is supposed to support Barack Obama like the rest of Hollywood. Referencing Martin Luther King Jr., she told CNN that she chose Romney “not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.” She also cites economic reasons. Is she talking about how all this publicity will affect her personal economics? Either way, people should lay off.
2. A University of South Alabama student who was fatally shot by a campus police officer after being seen nude on campus had taken the drug LSD. Police also allege Gil Collar, 18, had assaulted two people and attempted to bite a woman.
3. The Nobel Prizes are announced this week. One winner was told by a teacher in 1949 that his dreams of science were “ridiculous.” John Gurdon’s instructor wrote the following on his report card: “If he can’t learn simple biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be sheer waste of time, both on his part, and of those who have to teach him.”
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 10th edition)
What students are talking about today (Oct. 4 edition)
Big Bird, full buses in B.C., hackers & Lena Dunham
B.C. Transit bus (scazon/Flickr)
1. In a poll, two-thirds of CNN viewers concurred that Romney came out on top. Romney didn’t win with the under-12 demographic, however, as he said he’d cut funding to PBS, home of Big Bird, because public television is not worth borrowing money from China to fund. Luckily for him, children can’t vote.
2. Transit users in Victoria, B.C. are being passed up by full buses more than twice often as predicted by B.C. Transit before they implemented “real-time tracking.” The agency suggests post-secondary schools should stagger class start times to reduce the problem. I have a feeling this isn’t just a frustration for B.C. students. Am I right?
3. Hackers called Team GhostShell have claimed responsibility for breaking into more than 120,000 computer accounts at dozens of universities to protest what they see as high-cost and low-quality higher education. Sites at the University of British Columbia and McMaster University were on the list of what’s called “ProjectWestWind.” Identity Finder, a data-protection company, found that more than 35,000 e-mail addresses and thousands of usernames were compromised. Most of the sites were the type made by professors themselves, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Oct. 4 edition)
What students are talking about today (Sept. 18 edition)
Freshman 15, politics in the classroom & anger at OCAD U.
yurilong/Flickr
1. Yesterday there was a flash sale from Chartwells at the University of Prince Edward Island during which poutine was 50 per cent off for a few hours. Cadre reporter Josh Coles took on the breaking news assignment: “This poutine was weighty. Heavy. Thick. I would compare its weight to that of a litre of chocolate milk,” he wrote.
2. The poutine and chocolate milk diet seems like evidence for that legendary Freshman 15 weight gain, but another study suggests the weight gain isn’t really 15 pounds. Researchers from Auburn University in Alabama showed that the Freshman 15 is really more like the Four-Year 12. After four years at the college, students in the study had gained an average of 11.7 pounds.
3. Homecoming will likely make a homecoming next year at Queen’s University after students finally behaved in public with just 12 arrests over the weekend compared to 124 in 2008. In an email sent Monday to the Queen’s community, Principal Daniel Woolf wrote that he’s working with “various members of our community, including alumni, to plan for the potential safe return of fall reunions in 2013.” The University Council asked Woolf to reinstate the tradition, which was barred after many years of alcohol-related arrests. See The Perils of Drinking on Canadian Campuses for more.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Sept. 18 edition)
What students are talking about today (Sept. 17 edition)
Occupy, a campus caffeine ban, campus radio and the NHL
j.dubb/Flickr
1. Ryerson lost its radio station CKLN for good last week after the CRTC denied an application to bring it back. “There were feminist programs, LGBT shows, even a series on prisoners’ rights. There was a lot of lefty politics and a lot of loopy politics. Not all of it was good, but you would struggle to hear it anywhere else,” recalls The Ryersonian. The station was shut down after years of fighting between the students’ union and non-students on the board, partly over the question how much airtime students got.
2. It’s officially one year since the Occupy Wall Street movement began. See Twitter for the latest action under #OWS, #OCCUPY and #S17.
3. One of the enduring scenes from Occupy was when University of California Davis students and alumni were violently pepper-sprayed by campus police at a peaceful protest following an eviction in November. The university just announced a settlement with 21 victims. UC spokesperson Jonathan Stein told the L.A. Times, “we did an injustice to our students that day at Davis.” Yes they did.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Sept. 17 edition)
What students are talking about today (Aug. 28 edition)
Hockey, marijuana v. IQ, sex drive, sea ice and Sarah Palin
Vancouver Canucks' Ryan Kesler (Loxy!!/Flickr)
1. University sports writers are being driven crazy by all this talk of another NHL lockout. Karen Aney of UFV’s The Cascade blames both the players and commissioner Gary “Buttman” Bettman. “Last time there was a lockout, we saw the emergence of poker. Seriously? That was the best that sports networks could do?,” she laments.
2. Teens who smoke marijuana regularly may suffer long-term brain damage according to a study that observed how IQ changed between the ages of 13 and 38 for more than 1,000 New Zealanders. Those who smoked heavily and early are most at risk. IQ dropped among those who were dependent on marijuana before the age of 18 by eight points on average. That’s a big drop.
3. Autumn is here and that means not just falling leaves but falling sex drives. A study that looked at five years of Google searches showed “strong and consistent” seasonal spikes in searches for pornography, online dating and prostitution in spring and early winter, with lulls this time of year.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Aug. 28 edition)
