Darts & Laurels: Jan. 26, 2018

It’s the third week of Spring semester. The poor decisions you made during syllabus week have finally caught up to you and you’re now coming to terms with the fact that your classes are going to require a lot more effort than you initially anticipated.

Once you fail your first orgo quiz of the semester, you have a serious reality check that leads you back to the hallowed halls of Study Edge. After dishing out the $50 for your coveted gold membership, you feel a wave of relief come over you. Sure, you maybe don’t have enough money for groceries this week, but at least you’ll be passing your classes.

Bright blue packet in hand, you make your way to Library West and find yourself a perfectly secluded desk in the basement. You plug in your headphones, sip your coffee and prepare for what is sure to be a very long night of studying.

After some mental preparation, you finally crack open your packet. Oddly enough, when you open it up, there is no scientific wording to be found. No equations, no compounds and no experiments to study. Instead, the words inside read...

Darts & Laurels

After a marathon trial in Michigan, former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor, Larry Nassar, now faces a prison sentence of up to 175 years. He was on sentenced on Wednesday for criminal sexual misconduct after 156 people appeared in court to share their stories of sexual assault at the hands of the doctor.

The utter disgust we have for Nassar is challenging to articulate. As such, we award Nassar our first dart of the week.

The New York Times reported that more than 160 women have said Nassar sexually abused them. Their testimonies were both heart wrenching and disturbing, but most importantly, they were courageous. The women who stood in the courtroom and revealed some of their most traumatic experiences did so after many of them had already reported him to no avail. Nonetheless, they persisted. They persisted to get Nassar the damnation he so rightfully deserves.

We believe victim Kyle Stephens said it best in her testimony when she said, “Little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.” We would like to award a laurel to the strong and brave women who grew up and returned to destroy Nassar’s world.

On a similar note, we must also praise the newspaper that first reported Nassar’s crimes in August 2016. We shall grant a laurel to the Indianapolis Star, which carried out a five-month investigation on the topic. Without this paper’s efforts, Nassar might still be abusing kids today. In a time where the media is being highly criticized by many, we must take the time to recognize good journalism matters.

Closer to home, we were once again faced with disappointment at the hands of the Impact Party. On Thursday morning, the party announced their executive ticket on Facebook. For the second year in a row, no females will appear on the ticket.

The lack of female representation once again shed light on the lack of gender diversity within Student Government. It was clear the party was cognizant of a need for diversity, as there are candidates of several different ethnic backgrounds represented on the ticket. The effort was there. We recognize that, but, in our opinion, they still fell short. Thus, we award our last dart to Impact and their lack of female representation.