Opinions

When Pitt’s football team faces off against Penn State tomorrow at Beaver Stadium, both teams will continue a tradition which began in the 19th century — but in a vastly different culture. At the teams’ first meeting in 1893, Pitt had yet to integrate, and Penn State had never admitted a black student. Women in […]

In most American courts of law, a raised voice or an opinion stated too aggressively will typically earn you the censure of the presiding judge. But that certainly wasn’t the case Tuesday night in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom, nestled deep within Pitt’s Law School. A panel of five members and close legal advocates of […]

The name Boris Yeltsin should ring a bell, whether it brings to mind images of him leaping upon a tank during a coup in 1991 Moscow or standing drunk in his underpants in Washington, D.C. in 1995. Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, may be remembered for his drinking habits, but he was […]

Imagine living in the United States your entire life — from your earliest memories, you’ve been here. And in 2014, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protected your status, keeping you safe from the ever-looming threat of deportation.   But as of Tuesday, because your parents immigrated illegally shortly after you were born, you could be […]

You could never accomplish today what John Mackey and Renee Lawson did in 1978 Austin, Texas. The college-dropout couple opened what would eventually become Whole Foods, which Amazon bought in August for $13.7 billion. Many criticized the natural food marketplace for “selling out” to Amazon, and feel that the company might ditch its morals in […]

With racial violence gripping Charlottesville, Virginia, last month, the nation’s moral conscience was transfixed. The full scale of hatred on display from white supremacists and neo-Nazis was enough to persuade communities across the country to reconsider the continuing public position of racially insensitive statues, which were at the center of the violence in Virginia. But […]

With Labor Day signalling the end of the summer season for many Pittsburghers, a number chose to take the day off to visit the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Most came to see the animals. But after the deaths of a three-month-old elephant calf and the zoo’s oldest male tiger in rapid succession last week, […]

As a Muslim, I feel like everyone thinks they have something to say about who I am. But because I’d rather not waste my time protesting in a world saturated with fiery opinions, I stopped on my path to becoming a boisterous activist about a year ago. Instead of being continuously outraged at the state […]

After months of relentless pressure from voters all across the state, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey finally attended a town hall meeting last night to hear his constituents’ grievances — sort of. In a PBS-organized special, Toomey appeared for an hour on stage in front of an audience of about 50 carefully selected Pennsylvanians, with an […]

As my car sped across the plains of northwestern Ohio — passing open fields, red barns blazing in the sunset and the distant impression of neon — the only thing my mind could focus on was that I wasn’t back in Pittsburgh yet. With summer coming to a close, I had decided to take a […]