Emily West: Politics as (un)usual
By Prachi Patel & Christian Snyder
March 31, 2018
Filed under Silhouettes 2018, Top Stories
Two years ago, Maureen West often found herself settled in her home office, hooked on watching CBS news on her computer. Every now and then, she’d spot someone on her screen and take a snapshot. When she saw her friends, West would whip out her phone and flaunt her pictures. “Look at this ...
Erika Strassburger wins District 8 special election
By Christian Snyder | Contributing Editor
March 7, 2018
Filed under 2. Featured, City, News
Independent candidate Erika Strassburger will succeed Dan Gilman on Pittsburgh City Council after District 8 voters handed her a decisive victory Tuesday. Strassburger finished with 64 percent of the vote, more than double her closest opponent, Democratic nominee and East Liberty restaurant owner Sonja Finn, who finished with 28 percent. ...
Panelists discuss being a woman in politics
By Briana Canady | Staff Writer
February 26, 2018
Filed under 2. Featured, Campus, News
Aryanna Berringer grew up the youngest of 10 children in a family that had to rely on food stamps and free school lunches to get by. She remembers how her mother would wash the three different uniforms for her jobs at three different restaurants in their kitchen sink. All of this motivated Berringer to run for l...
Progressives, libertarians debate wealth redistribution
By Madeline Gavatorta / Staff Writer
February 22, 2018
Filed under Campus, News, Top Stories
The Pitt Progressives and the Students for Liberty met Wednesday night in the William Pitt Union Kurtzman Room to debate their views on the government and distribution of wealth. The Bully PulPitt and Pitt Political Science Student Association hosted “Government and the Redistribution of Wealth”...
Pitt scholars debate future of European Union
By Hannah Schneider | Staff Writer
January 26, 2018
The European Union may seem stable, but according to Rachel Epstein, professor of international relations and European Politics at the University of Denver, this stability could be temporary. “Right now, it doesn’t look like there’s a problem because we’re in a period of economic growth,”...
‘Black Mirror’ reflects cruel U.S. crime system
By Will Schulman | Columnist
January 25, 2018
Growing up was difficult enough with two living parents — I can’t imagine reaching adulthood with only one of them. What’s truly unimaginable, though, is growing up with your parent’s consciousness trapped inside a stuffed monkey. If this sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, you’re cl...
Talking politics at Thanksgiving shouldn’t be taboo
By Anne Marie Yurik | For The Pitt News
November 20, 2017
What do you do when someone close to you says something about a topic in the news you find simply reprehensible? Oftentimes, the instinct is to shut up and pretend it didn’t happen — something that’s especially true over the holidays. If your Thanksgiving expectations are similar to mine, y...
Protestors silently disagree with media mogul
By Sid Lingala | Staff Writer
November 9, 2017
Less than a few minutes into Christopher Ruddy’s presentation at the Pittsburgh Playhouse Wednesday night, about 30 Point Park University students stood up silently with their fists in the air, showing off shirts emblazoned with colorful messages such as “People not Profit” and “Love not Hate....
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but memes should never hurt us
By Neena Hagen | For The Pitt News
November 9, 2017
The Senate is used to strange occurrences, but Nov. 1, our legislators discussed a group of memes which are purportedly evidence for Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community thinks the memes were part of a sophisticated network of propaganda used to suppo...
Gubernatorial candidate gives take on economy, health care at Pitt
By Rose Luder | Staff Writer
November 7, 2017
Filed under Campus, News, Top Stories
When Paul Mango was at U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he had calculus six days a week. “I hope sitting here and listening to me is less painful than calculus at West Point on a Saturday morning,” the Republican primary candidate for governor joked before a crowd of Pitt students Monday ni...
Rejecting his legacy, Flake boldly speaks out
By Ana Altchek | For The Pitt News
November 2, 2017
Growing up in a town between Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey, I was exposed to a diverse population — both racially and economically. And while I am grateful I grew up in a place that encouraged a progressive mind-set, this naturally precluded conservative views. A lot of people in my town thought this was ...
Event explores conflict over climate change
By Madeline Gavatorta | Staff Writer
October 30, 2017
Filed under Campus, News, Top Stories
Highlighting the existing political lines at Pitt was not what Samuel Ressin had in mind while planning his Polarization vs. the Planet event. Ressin — the president of the Climate Stewardship Society — said the event was supposed to showcase climate change and ways to show bipartisan support on the ...
Editorial: Commemorating a slain journalist
By The Pitt News Editorial Board
October 18, 2017
Filed under Editorials, Opinions
It was a sunny afternoon yesterday in the island nation of Malta, between North Africa and Sicily. Daphne Caruana Galizia was driving her Peuguot near her home when a car bomb exploded, killing her and tossing the wreckage of the car into a nearby field. When The Guardian broke the news last night,...
Trump’s NFL comments ignore players’ real concerns
By Will Schulman | For The Pitt News
October 6, 2017
After taking the gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos shocked the world — the two Olympians held up black gloved fists for the entire anthem. When Colin Kaepernick, then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback, decided last year to kneel for th...
Climate change should hit close to home
By Brian Gentry | For The Pitt News
September 19, 2017
The apple core I had just tossed had no sooner hit the bottom of the bin when I heard the familiar scolding from my mom. Once again, I had forgotten to put it in the compost bin. As a kid, I didn’t really know why I needed to be environmentally conscious, whether it was recycling water bottles, ...
Editorial: House revenue plan threatens Pennsylvania
By The Pitt News Editorial Board
September 13, 2017
Filed under Editorials, Opinions
In an email sent to the student body Friday, Chancellor Patrick Gallagher warned Pitt students that if the state fails to pass appropriation bills that fund state-related universities, our school will face serious consequences. But this merely demonstrates the broader issue at hand. The state has y...
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...
Peduto discusses local, national politics on campus
By Kirsten Wong | Staff Writer
September 6, 2017
Filed under City, News, Top Stories
With the news cycle, the Trump administration is capturing most of the public’s attention, and Mayor Bill Peduto sees a path for cities to bring about change. “We are living in interesting times right now,” he said Tuesday night. “Changes that are happening in this world will happen at the ...
When representatives don’t represent, don’t reelect
By Saket Rajprohat | Senior Columnist
August 28, 2017
How does something extremely unpopular become law in our democracy? Congress. Over the past few months I have attempted to keep up with fast-paced news like the GOP’s health care bill’s rapid push through Congress by Mitch McConnell or the votes on the Restoring Internet Freedom Act — two b...
Greek life promotes dangerous, elitist culture
By Christian Snyder | Opinions Editor
July 4, 2017
At Penn State’s fraternity Beta Theta Pi’s Bid Night, on a cold February night in State College, Timothy Piazza fractured his skull and ruptured his spleen when he fell down a flight of stairs. His fraternity brothers called an ambulance nearly 12 hours later after slapping him, sitting on him ...
Pitt’s political clubs: left, right and in between
By Grant Burgman and Henry Glitz | The Pitt News Staff
May 30, 2017
As political protests and marches rocked campus last fall, Pitt’s campus political organizations reacted and changed with the rapidly shifting political landscape in Pittsburgh and around the country. Politically-minded students of all ideological allegiances became more involved and, in some cases, formed completely new groups. The Pitt ...
Q&A: Mayoral candidate John Welch talks affordable housing, water and putting “this Pittsburgh” first
By John Hamilton / Editor-in-Chief
May 11, 2017
Filed under 2. Featured, City, News
Reverend, doctor, professor, dean of students. John Welch is hoping to add Mayor of Pittsburgh to that résumé as he campaigns to unseat the incumbent, Mayor Bill Peduto, in Tuesday's Democratic primary . We sat down with Welch in his Garfield campaign office to ask about some of his policies and ...
College libraries ditch books for study space
By Teresa Watanabe | Los Angeles Times (TNS)
April 23, 2017
Filed under National News
BERKELEY, Calif. — The remodeled undergraduate library at the University of California, Berkeley, is modern and sleek. Its top two floors have low-slung couches, a nap pod, and meeting spaces with glass walls made to be written on and colorful furniture meant to be moved. The library has even drop...
Pitt Progressives aims to fill gap in the left
By Amanda Reed / Contributing Editor
April 12, 2017
Filed under 2. Featured, Campus, News
Becca Tasker, a junior majoring in anthropology, first started researching civil rights in middle school. She had learned about the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy who was lynched in 1955 after being falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. “I was always into histor...
Pittsburghers talk gerrymandering
By Stephen Caruso / Contributing Editor
April 7, 2017
Filed under 2. Featured, City, News
Sue Broughton likes squiggles. And as a speaker for Fair Districts PA, she gets to show concerned voters a lot of them. Fair Districts PA, is a non-partisan activist group against gerrymandering — when a political group moves the boundaries of electoral districts to help their own election odds...
Best Illustrations of 2016
By Pitt News Staff Illustrators
January 4, 2017
Filed under Uncategorized, Visual
From politics to hamburgers, we're highlighting some of the best work by our staff illustrators from the past year. ...
It’s time to separate the click bait from the news
By Timothy Nerozzi / For The Pitt News
November 5, 2015
“Jeb Bush Continues ‘Death Spiral’ at GOP Debate” “Could Hillary Clinton Be a Sociopath?” “Thanks, Republicans! Your insane war on Planned Parenthood keeps making reproductive rights more popular” What is the most troubling aspect of the headlines? Is it the unprofessional wording? Is it the overhyped vocabulary that misrepresents situations? Is it the clear bias that...
Editorial: Candidates need to answer questions, not make excuses
By The Pitt News Editorial Board
November 2, 2015
Filed under Editorials, Opinions
Dr. Ben Carson on his 10-year relationship with the controversial medical supplement company, Mannatech, “That is total propaganda, and this is what happens in our society. Total propaganda.” Donald Trump on his website’s attack on Mark Zuckerberg for his stance on immigration, “I don’t...
Editorial: GOP inconsistent with Pope, Christian ideals
By The Pitt News Editorial Board
September 1, 2015
Filed under Editorials, Opinions
The pope has accepted the U.S. Congress’ cordial invitation to speak to the legislature on Sept. 24. Many of the politicians Pope Francis will address — particularly the Republicans — claim to be devout Christians. They’ve gone as far as to formulate their positions on certain political issues ...
