Opinions Writer Shirin Khizzar is a sophmore studying Public Health. This is her first semster working on the Alligator staff. In her free time, she enjoys reading, listening to music, and watching movies.
Once we decide who we are, maintaining that identity can become surprisingly important. Maybe you‘re the academic one. The artistic one. The outgoing one. The future doctor. The one who hates parties. The one who loves them. Eventually, we start asking whether a choice fits that identity before asking what we want.
This isn't simply about whether Sheeran owes his audience a public stance on Israel and Palestine. It's about whether remaining "apolitical" is actually possible when political expression directly affects who’s allowed to remain onstage on your own tour. And that's where neutrality starts to fall apart.
It might be hard to imagine daily life without technology, but there was once a time when an embarrassing moment could simply fade away. There was no Instagram story documenting the night, no Snapchat memory resurfacing years later and no public profile for someone to analyze before they met you. Now, anyone can know anything about anyone — or at least anything they’ve chosen to preserve online.
Maybe it’s worth examining why we feel the need to separate Moon's delivery from the issues he advocates for. We like to think our political decisions come from carefully comparing policies, experience and qualifications. But we start deciding who looks competent before we know much about them at all.
Learning another language isn't just about expanding your vocabulary. It's about expanding the number of people, cultures and experiences you can understand without requiring someone to translate the world for you.
Tipping itself isn’t the problem. The real issue is that America has blurred the line between workers who depend on tips as part of their wages and workers who are simply presented alongside a tip screen. As tipping prompts spread from sit-down restaurants to coffee shops, smoothie counters and takeout orders, customers are being asked to subsidize wages without knowing when gratuity is actually necessary. That confusion contributes to tipping fatigue — risking the livelihood of workers who depend on tips.
Solutions by The State News
