Traditional presents give holiday season stress
By Skylar Bouchard, Columnist
November 20, 2018
As snow is starting to cover campus and Starbucks begins to bring back advertisements for the peppermint mocha, we are reminded that Christmastime is approaching us once again. The excitement of seeing family and finally getting to eat a decent, home-cooked meal for the first time in months is unbeata...
Venture to quirky spots outside campus
By Samuel Kottoor, Columnist
November 18, 2018
Like Facebook, The Walking Dead and newspapers, the initial enjoyment of our incredible campus eventually dies out. We become complacent with the multitude of beautiful buildings, the grandeur of the four quads and the variety of events to attend. Complacency is an evil, but it is a reality, as much as...
Thank you to ‘thank you’
By Thomas Block, Columnist
November 18, 2018
The most important words you’ll ever know aren’t the ones you have to rummage through a thesaurus for. They aren’t intellectual jargon you’ll find in scholarly journals, nor are they perplexing dialogue from a Shakespearean play. They’re the ones you learned by the time you were 5 years ol...
California wildfires shouldn’t be politicized
By Kaitlyn McCann, Columnist
November 17, 2018
Much of the state of California is under destruction and citizens have been forced to evacuate because of raging forest fires that have taken over many communities. The Camp and Woolsey fires have burned over 170,000 acres of land, forcing 50,000+ people to evacuate. With the death toll currently at 56, hundreds of people st...
When reading news, don’t let apathy win
By Sandhya Sivakumar, Columnist
November 17, 2018
Every day when I wake up in the morning, I check Twitter for the headlines of the day. Updates on Ariana and Pete’s breakup show up right above the breaking news about a shooting at a yoga studio. The Kardashians are the top story of the day, and underneath that, news about a 31-car pileup in China th...
Democratic ‘Blue Wave’ falls short
By Ajay Dugar, Columnist
November 16, 2018
Filed under Columns, Opinions, Opinions Top Stories
If the 2018 midterms were a referendum on the Trump administration, policies and actions, then the democratic “Blue Wave” failed. While voter turnout increased by nearly 40 percent from last midterm election, democrats did not get the results they wanted. In recap of the Kavanaugh hearing fiasco...
Earth suffers as people look to flee to Mars
By Claire Joyce, Columnist
November 16, 2018
Last Friday, NASA tweeted asking the public to submit design ideas for possible astronaut living quarters as part of their Mechanical Maker Challenge. While the idea of humans living on Mars might seem difficult to imagine, scientists at NASA hope to send the first humans to Mars in 20 or 25 years. As our...
Nationalism should not be demonized
By Guzi He, Columnist
November 15, 2018
Filed under Columns, Opinions, Opinions Top Stories
Some critics could not stop bombarding Trump after he called himself a “nationalist”, and so a Pittsburgh man with anti-immigrant beliefs opening fire on a synagogue just gave critics a nuclear missile. Ever since Allied troops pried open the gates of Auschwitz, nationalism in the U.S. is seen as evil incarnate, ...
Editorial | Americans vote thanks to Trump
By The Daily Illini Editorial Board
November 15, 2018
The midterm election on Nov. 6 saw record voter turnout. People were flocking to the polls nationwide, some standing for hours in the pouring rain, to have the opportunity to cast their vote. Whether your political beliefs align left, right or somewhere in the middle, there is no denying the catalyst for th...
Lee’s death impacts Marvel fans
By Agastya Bhatia, Columnist
November 15, 2018
Filed under Columns, Opinions, Top Stories
Like any year in history, 2018 has seen a slew of wildly influential men and women pass away: Aretha Franklin, Anthony Bourdain, Stephen Hawking and countless others. On Monday morning, Stan Lee, a man who many credit with reshaping comic books as we know them, took his last breath. Comics, too-oft...
Illinois needs a graduated income tax
By Austin Stadelman, Columnist
November 14, 2018
It’s no secret Illinois has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation. In 2016, the Tax Foundation ranked Illinois the fifth in the nation for overall tax burden and in March, ninth for property tax burden. Since the 2016 report, the income tax rate has only increased from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent. However, ...
Free speech in the post-truth era
By Joseph Dillier, Columnist
November 14, 2018
Filed under Columns, Opinions, Top Stories
In the never-ending debate over free speech on college campuses, arguments against issues like deplatforming and safe spaces go along the lines of “instead of creating safe spaces, we should teach students how to debate” or “if their opinions are really true why can they not use the facts to p...
