Surveying the semester with OMETs
By Bailey Frisco | Staff Writer
January 10, 2018
As each semester winds down and students begin to prepare for finals, they are burdened with one more task to complete — OMETs. OMET — Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching — is a department at Pitt that administers a survey of student opinion for professors. The main objective of the ...
Maduro vs the world: Venezuela’s hopeless crisis
By Saket Rajprohat | Senior Columnist
September 20, 2017
The streets are filled with protesters. The shelves at grocery stores are empty, and pockets are even emptier. Right now, Venezuela looks bleak — and Veronica, a Venezuelan immigrant living in Pittsburgh who requested that her last name be withheld for her family’s safety, said the country is f...
To understand injustice, listen to the lawyers
By Henry Glitz | Opinions Editor
September 7, 2017
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 memb...
Analysis: How a 1999 NATO operation turned Russia against the West
By Christian Snyder, Assistant Opinions Editor
September 7, 2017
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...
Column: Poetry now: why today’s world makes poetics shine
By Christian Snyder, Assistant Opinions Editor
August 29, 2017
I remember the first time a line of poetry caught me by surprise. I was sitting in the Cathedral of Learning mouthing the words of Ross Gay’s poem “catalog of unabashed gratitude” to myself. The poem turns when he addresses the reader, and says thank you, “for moving your lips just so as I s...
Young voters: Lead by example to fight nationalsim
By Christin Snyder / Opinions Editor
June 27, 2017
“I mean, I voted, but why does it matter? London will never listen.” When I asked my new Scottish friend about the United Kingdom’s recent election, he responded with pure ambivalence. He truly cares about the issues at hand, but he, like many other Scots, has long struggled with misrepresent...