Opinion – Page 5 – The Transcript

Love is a battlefield: Which side are you on?

By Evan Walsh and Sara Hollabaugh

By Evan Walsh, Chief Copy Editor

Boxes of chocolates, roses, dinners your college budget can’t afford—Valentine’s Day just came and went. I want to leave you bachelorettes and bachelors with some survival tips for Valentine’s Day 2018.

Now, while it may seem like everyone is making preparations for this holiday (is it actually that?), you shouldn’t get discouraged if you spent Tuesday alone.

Being single in college has its perks, so let’s look at the proverbial (wine) glass half-full.

For starters, you avoided having to prepare.

Making the perfect plans is stressful, and among couples there is an unwritten rule that each couple has to outdo the other couples they know. Valentine’s Day should not be about you winning and everyone else losing. But if that’s how you choose to celebrate, that is your decision.

Just remember, you’ll have to anticipate what that lucky lady or man in your life wants and then go way past their expectations. That, to me at least, sounds really hard.

In doing so, you run the risk of failure and the unfortunate feeling that you have failed your better half.

Valentine’s Day is not the only holiday to have this effect. New Year’s Eve often ends poorly when friends make plans so unrealistic that they might actually need a New Year’s Miracle.

Second, as a single man or woman, you can fly under the radar.

If you aren’t doing anything special in the first place, then you will never feel the need to let everyone know how awesome your evening was.

You have spared your friends and social network from having to endure hearing about it, and that deserves a big thanks.

Also, please do your best not to misconstrue what seems like cynicism for honest skepticism.

My parents have been married for 38 years and I’d be surprised if they even realized Valentine’s Day happened. Why do they, or any other couple, need a special day to validate their love for each other?

Last, when you’re single you can give yourself the gift of Valentine’s Day.

Maybe, instead of booking a trip to a bourgeois restaurant, you’ve freed some time to read that book you started, polish off a Netflix series, prepare for tests and papers, or get drunk and try your luck at Clancey’s. The choice is yours.

So that is what you, my failed fellow Casanovas and Casanovettes, are not missing. I hope all you single college students will consider this Hallmark advice.

By Sara Hollabaugh, Online Editor

Look, I’ll be the first one to say it’s stupid to celebrate your better half only one day out of the 365 days a year gives you.

I get it.

If you love someone, show them every day. But honestly, I do that with the guy in my life, as he does with me.

So let me play devil’s advocate to Evan’s well-intentioned “tips for Valentine’s Day success,” which in summary tells everyone to stop trying to validate their love.

I don’t get excited for Valentine’s Day because I need the attention or want everyone else to be miserable by sharing my excitement over plans, gifts and obligatory social media posts.

I just want people to know that genuine love is out there.

If I were to ignore Valentine’s Day and tell my significant other I wanted him to basically delete it from his calendar, he’d say no. He’d say no because he likes celebrating me. And you know what, I’d never even suggest it because I like celebrating him, too.

I found someone I like to go out to dinner with and spoil with my college budget on a thoughtful gift.

I know I can do this any other day, but I mean come on—Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparents Day, birthdays and every other holiday exists.

Let one that applies to me at 22 years old, other than my day of birth, get celebrated. I’m not a mother or a father, and by cause and effect, I’m not a grandparent, either.

So I get this one day to be outwardly mushy with the one I love.

If you have a problem with that, I’m sorry. Like I said, I don’t do it for attention or to one-up my boyfriend. I do it, in part, because it’s America’s tradition that I’ve grown up loving.

I know many of you will find flaws in that sentence, but trust me, I have the best intentions when it comes to celebrating this Hallmark holiday.

So here’s my overarching tip: enjoy the day and don’t let those who want to bring you down feel insecure about celebrating love.

After all, it’s love we’re celebrating. Not hatred. And I think that’s the most important part of it all.

Lessons in raspberry puff pastries and journalism

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

Alongside an Everest of newspapers sits a magenta booklet on my parents’ coffee table back home. The booklet is a compilation of articles my dad wrote for his weekly column “Puff Pastry” when he was a 30-something, mustache-sporting journalist with a Walkman.

The booklet emerges only when my parents are in the middle of a spring cleaning extravaganza. Perhaps to abate my cleaning-induced griping, my mom would hand me the collection of articles when I was younger, often accompanied by the words, “Your father writes about you in many of his stories.”

Either I was too young to understand my dad’s words or too trapped in a solipsistic teenage bubble to appreciate it, because I don’t remember the stories having an impact on me until recently.

As my mom was heading to bed a little after midnight on New Year’s, she found the booklet in a box she’d unpacked. “You can get inspired,” she said this time.

Indeed, poring over my dad’s words as a listless 20-year-old at 3 a.m. sparked something that wasn’t just inspiration but also a renewed fervor for journalism.

The Transcript staff expends a considerable amount of energy and time on this publication, even though we, frankly, miss the mark sometimes (actually, according to Paul Kostyu’s critiques of our print editions, we miss the mark a lot).

So, it’s pretty easy to feel drained.

Ask any editor who was a part of The Transcript in 2016 and they’ll probably tell you this paper has been their greatest source of frustration. But maybe, they’ll also tell you it’s been a great source of joy.

We’ve designed pages until 5 a.m., written stories long after our brains had turned into mush, neglected schoolwork, fallen asleep in The Transcript office and we continued to do it all over again every other week.

I’m not going to pretend our commitment to the paper was born solely out of our passion for journalism; we’ve all thought about quitting at one point or another and sometimes, the only thing that kept us in The Transcript office until the wee hours of the morning was our obligations.

But ultimately, all those sleepless nights spent working in The Transcript office proved to be rewarding. The field of journalism isn’t a platform for self-indulgent writers (barring op-eds and columns), and that’s exactly why I respect it.

We, as editors, can (and do often) grumble about the hours we spend designing pages and writing stories only to yield mediocre results in the end. But journalism supersedes us and our petty complaints. We don’t matter; what we do is about everyone else.

The Transcript, in particular, has been memorializing the Ohio Wesleyan community since 1867 through news articles that pertains to the campus.

Over the years, we’ve covered theatre and dance productions, lectures sponsored by various departments, club events, notable achievements, the student government and faculty meetings to bridge any gap that might be created by lack of transparency. We continue to devote our energy to exactly that.

The Transcript will celebrate its 150th anniversary Oct. 1, 2017. Before then, my aim is to improve the overall quality of The Transcript. I’m prepared for the all-nighters ahead of me and the gray hairs I’m inevitably going to find by the end of my term as editor-in-chief. I’m prepared for the highs of working with and learning from the new editorial staff and the lows of egregious typos we won’t catch. I’m prepared for failures and successes and more failures. I’m prepared for everything that might come The Transcript’s way because as much as this paper has been the greatest source of frustration in my life, it’s also given me the most joy.

Press-ing Trump on the truth

By Evan Walsh, Chief Copy Editor

I’ve been called a lot of bad things, but it seems now, in this “post-truth” era, that the thing I should most want to avoid being called is a “journalist.”

While reporters such as Bob Woodward and Ida Tarbell were once celebrated for defending our democratic standards of transparency, the press is now suddenly an inconvenience.

That is a problem.

No individual or institution is as responsible for this as President Donald J. Trump and his new administration. From the beginning of his unlikely run for the presidency, Trump initiated the antagonistic relationship with the press that he has worked hard to maintain even now as sitting president.

Nobody expects the press and government to have a particularly cozy relationship, but that does not excuse the treatment reporters have been given. It also doesn’t excuse the gag rules which have been imposed on senior members of his cabinet—First Amendment be damned.

Relegated to White House basements where they are asked to make sense of 140 character tweets (about who knows what), reporters are feeling their president’s scorn. And they’re not taking it well.

The Columbia Journalism Review issued a statement on Jan. 12 that rather than compete with each other, the media are ready to work with each other to cover Trump’s administration and to hold it accountable.

Pete Vernon, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, put forth that statement, saying, “Journalism is a competitive business, but it’s not a zero sum game.” That cohesiveness—grounded in a commitment to truth telling—is refreshing.

But with this particular administration there appears to be no limits … and the back and forth continues. In the words of Steve Bannon, senior adviser to Trump, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while … The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

It’s not entirely unreasonable to understand his criticisms when we consider the internal bleeding of credibility that has taken place as a consequence of publishing “fake news.”

Fake news delegitimizes the credibility of real news and makes Tomi Lahren, a pundit for TheBlaze, look informed. If, however, Trump continues to send news teams to their graves, then that’s who we’ll be left with.

In another telling example of the fight Trump has picked with the media, this time over “fake news,” Trump shot down CNN’s Jim Acosta as he was preparing to ask a question related to claims of Russian interference in last fall’s election. That question deserves a serious answer, but because BuzzFeed followed up the story that CNN had originally published with unsubstantiated reports of their own, Acosta never got the serious answer he deserved.

The Trump Administration and fake news are doing their best to sabotage truth. So if being a “journalist” is what it takes to get the truth, then everyone from Fox to MSNBC should want to be called that nasty name.

Self-care for the poor college-goer

By Areena Arora, Managing Editor

It is no surprise that stress levels globally are at an all-time high, especially in industrialized, fast-paced, developed countries like the United States. Even more so on college campuses like ours where almost all of us are involved in activities we’re passionate about and being full-time students.

And here’s a fun fact about the situation – being a poor college student doesn’t just increase stress level, but also more difficult to deal with where expense is concerned.

Every so often I find a Buzzfeed or Odyssey article circulating on social media about 13 products that promise to instantly bring my stress levels down including coffee mugs with explicit graphic content or tea leaves. Sometimes, for $49.99, I am offered a pillow that will make sleeping easier, despite my Kate Spade (because, you know, self-care) planner over owing with words and commitments for the next day.

“The Stress in America survey results show that adults continue to report high levels of stress and many report that their stress has increased over the past year,” according to the American Psychological Association.

As much as I’m tempted to try out the magic cooling pillow, my bank account advises otherwise, and legitimately so. Must good sleep be bought?

Fighting stress has been turned into an industry – obviously there is demand, but isn’t this merely a clever tactic at exploiting white-collared, desperate customers who earn enough but cannot sleep enough?

Instead, here’s something you could do – take a free walk in the park, watch the sunset while snacking on $4.99 munchies, or check out a book from the library or jam to your favorite music.

In the capitalist world we live in, it is obvious (sadly so) that everything would be turned into a money making outlet. However, balancing hippie tea leaves and a walk outside makes me conclude that free self-care indeed does exist.

It is dif cult not to get pulled into the tempting words and images that the ever-so educated, equally stressed designers put together in their advertisements.

But self-care is free, or at least, can be. As we approach nals in less than a week, remember this more so – the industry of self-care is only trying to make money off of your stress levels and not your desire to hold a white coffee mug with a semi-clever caption in black ink.

You could always, instead, take a walk in the park, appreciate the weather and talk to friends, for $0.

What are Sanctuary Cities?

By Tom Wolber, Transcript Correspondent

Sanctuary cities and campuses are in the news these days.

During his campaign, Donald Trump routinely stated that he would deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

After his election, he reaffirmed that the immediate deportation of 2 to 3 million immigrants with criminal records
(a gross exaggeration) remains a top priority. And he has threatened to block federal funding for sanctuary cities, viewed by conservatives as “renegade localities” that disregard the law and order and harbor hordes of illegals, felons and rapists.

Trump has also routinely associated and even equated, in blatantly racist terms, Mexicans with lawbreakers and Muslims with terrorists.

Just a few days ago, he stated that flag-burning (a constitutionally protected form of free speech) should be punished by loss of citizenship. In Trump’s dystopian world, no one is safe and the need for sanctuary cities and campuses is great.

As a response, mayors in over 200 American cities have announced that in their municipalities police officers will decline full cooperation with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

They quoted many different reasons for refusing to cooperate, some of which have nothing to do with politics.

Some mayors worry that assigning additional tasks to police of cers would harm their ability to perform their regular duties of solving crimes, responding to crashes and keeping the community safe.

They also worry that fear of detainment and deportation would create distrust and discourage victims and witnesses from talking to and working with police.

Others have quoted federal judges, who ruled it would be an unconstitutional to hold someone in jail without an arrest warrant and probable cause, solely at the request of federal agents. And, let’s hope, there are also a number of decent people among the mayors who don’t see the need to disrupt the lives of hard-working residents who have families, jobs and contribute to the tax base of their cities.

Religious leaders have expressed their view that sheltering and protecting new Americans is part of their right to free exercise of religion that must not be abrogated. For example, the Catholic Church, the largest denomination in the nation, is committed to resettling refugees and keeping immigrant families together.

Colleges and universities, even more so than towns and cities, have lofty vision and mission statements that prohibit any and all forms of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, origin, etc.

Many consider discrimination against undocumented immigrants a similarly grievous violation of natural law and human rights.

Countless colleges and university presidents have emerged in recent days and weeks to emphasize their commitment to the safety of all students, regardless of their immigration status. Even if they don’t use the “sanctuary” term (e.g., the University of California system), they will not cooperate with any new federal policies that target immigrant students unless a court order is produced as a result of an actual or suspected crime.

Only when undocumented immigrants do commit serious crimes and a valid warrant is produced will sanctuary cities and campuses cooperate with ICE.

Even Trump’s own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, has renewed its pledge to block federal agents without a warrant from removing students. President Amy Gutmann has issued a statement that reads in part: “We are and remain resolute in our commitment to Penn’s undocumented students and will do all we can to ensure their continued safety and success here at Penn.”

What are some of the concrete things institutions of higher learning can do? In addition to providing need-based and merit-based financial aid for tuition, room and board, schools should immediately make available designated resources and personnel for those in need.

A free legal-aid and court-assistance program ensures due process and helps students stay in the country and pursue residency and citizenship status if desired. If money is tight, then perhaps a sympathetic donor can step in.

Schools and universities should also reevaluate what kind of data they collect and archive. Like any tool or weapon, knowledge is dialectical. It can either help or harm.

If a registry of foreign-born students falls into the wrong hands (e.g., by becoming ”evidence” through a court-ordered subpoena), it could in some cases lead to the detainment, internment and deportation of “dreamers” and other groups.

California is currently working on sweeping legislation to protect undocu- mented immigrants from deportation. The state already offers in-state tuition and driver’s licenses to undocumented residents.

It will now set up a public fund to help train public defenders in immigra- tion law and to protect the vulnerable.

All people are born equal, with basic natural rights, including those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the face of injustice, resistance becomes a moral imperative.

Just like California has resolved to shield its most vulnerable residents from governmental overreach, colleges and universities exist to serve the public, for the benefit of all.

In these challenging times, they have an ethical obligation to remain sanctuaries for the free pursuit of truth and the human spirit. They also must ful ll the practical task of ensuring the safety of the communities of students and teachers in search of knowledge, skills and character.

Before college: forever alone, after college: forever a loan

By Areena Arora, Managing Editor

Congratulations! You just graduated with an average student debt more than it has ever been in the history of college education, even when adjusted for inflation.

The debate is not new. For more than two decades now, students and scholars have wondered if a college degree really is worth it. College debt is not just a burden to the student, but is essentially family debt and one that makes you question your choices every day, every minute.

In my case, as an international student, I am paying a higher amount than my American classmates (and under- standably so). On top of that, the exchange rate makes the cost nearly 65 times more, and with an interest rate of 14 percent, I will graduate college with double majors in economics and journalism and a debt of $126,748 – sounds exciting, I know.

In 1993, the average student loan debt per borrower was a little under $10,000, and just 12 years later, by 2005 it was crossing $20,000, nally reaching anywhere between $30,000-35,000 that it is today.

There’s another catch here. While some majors are more promising from a career stance, some are not as lucrative. The disparity is such that a petroleum engineering major is likely to earn a median wage of $93,000 more than that of an elementary school teacher.

As much as we hate to admit it, there really isn’t enough money in some of our favourite creative elds.

As a journalism major with a bachelor’s degree, the median annual salary I am destined to is $56,000, which does sound reasonably sustainable enough. But if it were not for my scholarship and aid, this is also exactly the amount I would have been paying annually to get my degree.

Average debt of a 2014 Ohio Wesleyan graduate was $28,500, compared to the national average of $33,000. Sound relieving?

Student debt has forced many of my friends to drop out or transfer to a community college. It requires emotional and nancial strength to survive in this crippling time, where available jobs on campus offer only minimum wage and even the future average prospective earnings are statistically not high numbers.

Solutions are simple, but socialist; perhaps not the most desirable term for this country. However, like Brazil and Germany, in the ideal world, all countries should have free higher education, at least in public universities. Granted, the amount of taxes we pay, this could be one use of our tax money every citizen would actually be appreciative of.

Tuition freeze is also an effective solution. Idea is to pay the same amount that you agree to pay as a freshman. So in your subsequent years at college, even if tuition rises, you will be paying the same amount that you paid your first year.

If not anything else, this will prevent unexpected (but really, expected) frustrations and sessions of serious reconsideration of your very decision to get educated.

All of us begin college with goals of traveling the world, or buying that expensive car or just saving up to retire early, but most of us end up paying our college debt for much of our career.

So saddening the condition is that USA Today called student debt America’s next big crisis.

Ideally, education is so noble a goal we should not be measuring it against material/evil money.

Reality however is captured in this YikYak post from Weber State University, “Before College: Forever alone. After College: Forever a Loan.”

How to get away with not doing homework

By Gopika Nair, Chief Copy Editor

Sometimes students catch a cold and have to miss class. Sometimes they don’t hand in assignments because of a spontaneous printer malfunction. And sometimes, students just can’t attend required events because they’re behind bars.

Bonnie Gardner, former professor of theatre at Ohio Wesleyan University, said a student told her he couldn’t attend a performance because he was serving time in jail all weekend.

Though surprising, the excuse was true. The student received a traffic ticket and was required to serve jail time. Since he was an OWU student, the judge let him do his time during the weekends so his grades wouldn’t suffer.

“He was a decent student,” Gardner said. “He was very straight with me and gave me all the details, so I had no reason not to believe him.”

Other outlandish excuses have also proven legitimate. Carol Neuman de Vegvar, a ne arts professor, said a student approached her holding a damp, damaged paper with tooth marks.

“The dog really did eat it,” the student said, sounding sad, according to Neuman de Vegvar.

She said she believed the story because she trusted the student.

Some professors received excuses that were more vivid than needed. John Stone-Mediatore, a lecturer in the department of comparative literature, said one student told him he couldn’t make it to class because he had a bad case of explosive diarrhea.

“I just couldn’t believe that a student was giving me that information,” Stone said. “But on the other hand, assuming that it was honestwhich I don’t always assumeI appreciated the student’s honesty.”

Another student told Stone he had to miss class because he had been arrested for underage drinking in public and had to go to court.

Conversely, Erin Flynn, associate philosophy professor, said he once sent a drunk student home from a morning class. One of the oddest excuses Flynn received involved a student who went home, which was out-of-state, because her dog had died, he said.

“This was like a mixture of ‘my grandmother died’ and ‘my dog ate my homework,’” Flynn said.

Technology seems to be a culprit for many missed classes and assignments.

Joe Musser, professor emeritus of English, said he has not been skeptical of such excuses, given his own problems with technology.

But Elane Denny-Todd, a theatre professor, said most of her students tend to rely on technological-related excuses, such as an inkless printer or crashed computer.

“It’s as if students know that there is a set vocabulary for selling excuses,” she said in an email.

Some students are more creative than others and have provided outrageous excuses to earn a better grade. Bob Gitter, an economics professor, said a student from Libya had received a C plus in one of his classes.

He told Gitter that if he didn’t get a B minus, he would lose his scholarship and get deported to Libya, where the followers of Muammar Gadda , former “Revolutionary Chairman and Brotherly Leader” of Libya, would kill him.

“It was the only time in 40 years at OWU I changed a grade that was not due to a clerical error,” Gitter said.

Students make excuses that are believable, shocking and unoriginal. But after many years teaching, the excuses are often professors’ favorite stories to tell.

These are not the clowns you see in the circus

By Courtney Dunne, Editor-in-Chief

As an employee in the admissions office, I get the question, “Is your campus safe?”

In my three and a half years here, my answer has always been “yes,” but recently, if I am honest to prospective students and their families, I would say I no longer feel safe.

What probably started as an innocent joke has turned into something that has brought a sense of fear over students as well as people in town.

I first heard about the “clowns” in Delaware when I was at Big Brothers, Big Sisters meat Willis Elementary School where they were talking about a clown who had chased them in the park.

When I heard that, I was concerned, but I thought, “Oh, it’s just kids being kids around Halloween.”

A few weeks later, I heard that a 13-year-old girl had been chased down Spring Street and the report said the man tried to grab her, but the girl ultimately freed herself. The girl never should have been chased in the first place.

This was just the beginning.

After, it was reported that someone broke into the Delta Delta Delta sorority house on Winter Street and multiple students have seen people in clown masks lurking around campus.

As many sororities head over to Winter Street for chapter on Sunday nights, there was a report that one woman was chased on her way to chapter, which sent a red flag to all the women walking back to campus from that street.

The fact that these commonly used areas are not well lit and not well populated creates a danger for all students on campus.

According to Facebook, I am not the only student who has opinions on this issue.

Sophomore Faith Best posted on her Facebook, “I have always felt safe in this town. I grew up here. I go to college here. I practice caution.

“Yet, I have always felt safe walking from the library to my dorm at 10 p.m. on any given day. I always felt safe walking the block between my sorority house and dorm after chapter.

“That was until yesterday. Last week, we heard reports of a man in a clown mask chasing a 13- year-old girl near campus. Followed close after were reports of attempted break-ins at a sorority house.

“Yesterday, students were chased by masked men. Another was followed by a hooded man on a bike.

“Two men in clown masks were reported being seen outside my residence hall. A group of men came running toward another student outside a sorority house last night. Suddenly, caution doesn’t feel like enough.

“Why do I have to feel terrified to walk a half a block by myself? Why does my mom have to worry that I might get attacked?

“Why do my roommates have to prepare to call the police if one of us isn’t back to the room when they say they will be? Why does everyone have to hold their keys between their knuckles when they walk from their cars to the doors?

“Is this supposed to be funny? Is that really the world we live in where it isn’t a practical Halloween joke to chase women and girls with knives?”

I am hoping that these incidents are isolated and are people just trying to pull some horrible Halloween pranks. I have also noticed how dark parts of campus are at night as I have been hyper aware on my walks home.

Seasonal affective disorder is a real thing

By Tom Wolber, Transcript Corespondent

The dark days of winter are approaching.

Shorter days, lack of sunlight and cold temperatures trigger powerful biological reactions in plants, animals and humans. Many animals shut down and hibernate or fall into a state of torpor.

In people, too, winter can trigger an episodic physiological response called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

The level of melatonin (a sleep hormone) goes up, and folks become tired, inactive, disinterested, lethargic and even depressed. We crave warmth and comfort, including comfort foods such as cookies and chocolate. This is a natural, biologically-based survival strategy, not a psychosomatic “disorder.”

In times when the temperatures fall and food becomes scarce, conserving energy is a logical adoptive behavior. A more general feeling of winter blues is experienced by up to 20 percent of the population.

Depending on the exact definition of the word, about 5 percent of Americans suffer from the more debilitating effects of SAD. The farther north you go, the more pronounced SAD becomes.

In sun-rich southern states such as Florida, SAD prevalence is as low as 1-2 percent, but in northern states such as New Hampshire or Alaska it can be as high as 10 percent. The same is true for Europe where SAD is highest in Scandinavia and Russia and lowest in the Mediterranean countries.

For Ohio residents, SAD is nothing new. However, for new Ohio Wesleyan students from southern states or other countries the experience can be confusing and nerve-racking at first. By the way, the scientist who first explored SAD in a systematic manner was Norman E. Rosenthal. His book “Winter Blues” (first published in 1983) remains the standard introduction on SAD.

The good news is there are multiple strategies and therapies that allow you to cope with SAD.

Experts such as Rosenthal advise staying active during the winter months. If you bundle up, you can still go outside and catch some fresh air, sunshine and vitamin D. Taking regular walks will boost your mood and morale.

It is well-established that exercise has an antidepressant effect. Another strategy is “talking therapy” by staying socially involved with family members, relatives, friends or a counselor. You may want to join a club or start a new hobby.

Many people already practice SAD therapy, without realizing it, when they go to the mall and shop or visit family over the holidays. It is not a coincidence that the biggest shopping season of the year coincides with the time the days are shortest.

“Light therapy” is another natural stratagem to fight the winter blues. Specifically equipped SAD “light boxes” ensure you receive a daily dose of bright light. White fluorescent light seems to work best. For optimal treatment, 10,000 lux is recommended. There are no known side effects, but please use the boxes only as directed.

The counseling centers of multiple colleges and universities offer such light boxes and OWU is among them. The boxes are also commercially available.

A healthy, balanced diet can also help people stay alert and functional during the winter season. Studies have shown, for example, that fish-eating nations such as Iceland and Japan have significantly lower SAD rates compared to other countries in the northern hemisphere.

If you have the time and means, a ski trip to sunny mountain slopes or a trip to the Caribbean can also do wonders for you. Some folks have permanently relocated to more southern climates, with good results as far as SAD is concerned.

In the overwhelming majority of SAD cases, prescribed antidepressants and medical intervention is not required. Only in extraordinary circumstances may episodic SAD lead to a more serious chronic depression.

This would be the time when professional medical help is called for and when antidepressants can be used as a last resort.

If you exercise, stay socially connected, seek out natural or artificial light and eat well, you should be able to survive the annual winter funk without great difficulties.

Trump: he loves me, he loves me not

By Areena Arora, Managing Editor

Little did we know what scarce Onesidential candidate Donald Trump declared at a rally in Edison, New Jersey that he “is a big fan of Hindu, and a big fan of India.”

Flash back to April 2016, he mocked Indians for our accent when discussing call centers and outsourcing at a rally in Harrington, Delaware.

Thank you, sir. Your transformation has been unreal; impressive even.

As a Hindu Indian, I should feel relieved now. But I do not. Maybe because I am a woman, too, and in 2013 he tweeted sexual assault in the military is to be expected “when they put men and women together.” Or, maybe because more recently, Trump claimed that ‘grabbing a woman by the p***y is only locker room talk.’ But I get it. As his wife Melania Trump said in an interview to News 18 on Oct. 18, he was “led on,” and “it was only boy talk.”

Maybe I should look past that. But as a foreigner here to study, this presidential election has been an especially peculiar experience. I had been looking forward to when I came here two years ago, but little about this election has lived up to my expectations.

With candidates’ emails being leaked, personal taxes being discussed and policies being sidelined, I’m not sure if this is really what I was looking forward to.

I grew up in a democratic country, the largest one by seats in fact, I understand politics can be a mad jungle, and baseless allegations about opponents is not new. However, Trump’s transformative approach toward Indians is unreal.

As an outsider, I was hoping to hear about actual working policies and not how high the wall will be, or who will pay for it. As an economics major, I thought Trump would talk about the labor force, employment and you know, other smart-sounding things, but instead he chose to spew hate on immigrant labor-force.

Two weeks ago, my parents feared for my safety if he is elected – you know, he seems to dislike women, and immigrants. But they’re at peace now. For 48 hours, as of writing this, he has declared us to be best friends, and you might wonder why the sudden change?

According to a 2014 Pew study, 65 percent of Indian Americans were democrats or leaned toward voting democratic. Since there’s about 3.5 million Indian Americans, it seems that Trump’s transformation is merely a product of vote mongering.

I wonder, though, if this 240-year-old democracy is barely dependent on vote and popularity hunger.