Body cameras can’t provide indisputable evidence


The shooting of Walter Scott by officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina, this past week has brought last year’s outrage over Ferguson and Garner back to the front lines. Body cameras still seem to be America’s favorite solution to this problem. Mayor of South Charleston Keith Summey said that in response to the […]

To avoid tragedies, police forces need to apply body cameras


Earlier this month, a brutal cell phone video emerged in which a white police officer shot an unarmed black man. Michael Slager, the officer who has been charged with murder, fired his pistol eight times, striking the victim, Walter Scott, in the back. Scott collapsed and died from his wounds a short while after. Critics […]

To save oceans, resolve acidification problem


A 20th-century dictum on aquatic environmental protection proclaimed, “the solution to pollution is dilution.” The world’s oceans are so vast that it was believed that human output would ultimately yield a negligible effect on the global environment. Faced with unprecedented issues of planetary degradation resulting from a saturation of human byproducts, the foolishness of such an […]

At USC, get rid of Yik Yak completely


Has Yik Yak ever done anything good for anybody? I ask that question with no sense of sarcasm: I cannot think of a single app with as much downside as Yik Yak, an app that allows users to post anonymous, 200-character messages to a platform accessible to anyone within a mile-and-a-half radius. Not only does […]

USC ignores students with disabilities


There are over 1,200 USC students living with disabilities. A disability is defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities — including seeing, hearing, sleeping and more. Considering the difficulties that are an inherent part of life for a student with […]

Somali militant group poses danger


Last week, Al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamic militant group, carried out an attack on Garissa University College in Kenya, killing 147 students. It seems too commonplace in today’s global narrative that we hear news of a massacre or killing by an extremist group. The volume of attacks, however, doesn’t mitigate the impact they have on a […]