World Mental Health Awareness Day was held last Saturday and I celebrated by being mentally ill. That’s a bad joke, sorry. I’m mentally ill every day of the year, but I felt just a little bit more bitter about it on that day because simple “awareness” of mental illness isn’t a problem in our country. Our major news outlets and our politicians have no problem … Continue reading Mental Illness Doesn’t Carry a Gun

Columbus Day: no parades, no parties, and depending on where you live, you may or may not get a day off of school. It doesn’t really seem like a big deal, just another event reminder on your Google Calendar. So who was Christopher Columbus? Children in the public school system all learn, “in fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” and that he is … Continue reading Columbus Day Shouldn’t Be a Holiday

As I read through my social media feeds I tend to see very happy individuals out doing things they love. Activities such as apple picking, hanging out with friends, eating lots of Domino’s, and for some reason even more apple picking dominate my news feeds. However, when I pick up Yik Yak and scroll through I tend to read a lot of sadness, confusion, frustration, … Continue reading Got Grace?

The Gustavus bubble is real. Without buses, subways, or any other way of public transportation, carless Gusties are trapped on campus. Part of this problem is that 83 percent of the student population comes from within the state, and so the Campus Services are designed to cater to the majority of the students, in this case, Minnesotans. That being said, as campus safety states, 1029  … Continue reading Living in the Gustavus Bubble

You’re sitting in a coffee shop, reading the latest issue of the GUSTAVIAN WEEKLY, when you get a message on your smartphone. You pull out your phone and check it out, and while you have it out you also check Facebook, Twitter, and your bank account. What you don’t know is that twenty feet away from you is sitting a hacker using the router in … Continue reading Ghost in the Machine: Vulnerability in an Age of Technology

For the first time in his life Jorge Mario Bergoglio, more commonly known as Pope Francis, traveled to the United States of America. Millions traveled far and wide to come see Pope Francis’s arrival to the United States in September of 2015. In just one city, over 50,000 people waited for hours outside of the Capitol to see His Holiness. Magazines everywhere had covers and … Continue reading The Pope Visits America; What Gusties Aren’t Talking About

Groucho Marx once said, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Two hundred and twenty six years ago, we had our very first president, George Washington. Our very first party was the Democratic Republican system, which worked well under Washington’s reign. Then, Thomas Jefferson took office and made his system more Democratic, meaning … Continue reading The Farce That Is Politics

Coming out of the Nobel Conference there are a variety of topics that need discussing but one stands out more than any other; alcohol. Alcohol is a dangerous substance, but by treating it as  taboo we are doing more harm to ourselves than by learning to drink responsibly. A Calvinistic rejection of alcohol as evil sets up people in society for failure when they come … Continue reading The Problem with Drinking at Gustavus

Since the Ronald Regan era, it seems like emphasis has been placed on the individual over the collective. A collective can be one’s local organizations or even the United States as a whole; the individual can be the self or, since Citizens United, a corporation. Every day many people function chaotically, running around aimlessly completing tasks that might benefit others but most likely only themselves. … Continue reading The Necessity of the Collective

I hope that title grabbed your attention, and if it did grab your attention you’re probably not sexually liberated. You read that correctly. If you read that title, and immediately decided this article would be worth your time you are enslaved by sex, even if you won’t admit it. I would like to contend that true sexual liberation isn’t freedom from heterosexual and monogamous norms … Continue reading Are You Sexually Liberated?