Recently, a dark shadow has been cast over Greek communities since the death of Maxwell Gruver at Louisiana State University. Gruver died in a fraternity house on Sept.14 following a night of hazing. According to Louisiana-based newspaper “The Advocate, ” Gruver had been part of a fraternity hazing ...
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been over 300 mass shootings in America in 2017 alone. A mass shooting is classified as a shooting where four or more people are killed or injured. These aren’t instances of happenstance, they are intentional and damaging. There is obviously an issue ...
When has it been unacceptable to be white? The white population in America benefits from better education, higher income, lower unemployment rates, lighter criminal sentencing and many other privileges compared to those of blacks and Hispanics in America. In light of recent attempts to highlight these ...
As with all communities, the athletic world is a jumbled pool of personalities, ethnic identities, competing morals, races, ideologies and voices. This column does not aim to expose and scold the athletic community for its wrongdoings; the athletic community merely works as a vehicle to observe and ...
A dorm is a student’s work space, most visited hangout and home away from home. However, for students who are trans and nonbinary, the dorm can also be a difficult place to live. Personally, I know several people who identify as genders other than male or female and some who don’t identify as any ...
When people think of Girl Scouts, they think of cookies. Their stomach grumbles, thinking of the delicious mint-chocolate flavor of a Thin Mint on their tongue. A Samoas’ caramel coconut scent fills their nose, but they do not think of the girls and women empowered by those cookies. My mother forced ...
Last week, the news broke that the Biloxi Public School System in Mississippi had decided to remove the classic American Novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” from its eighth grade curriculum. This is only the most recent case of a classic novel being banned from a school system; last year, Maya Angelou’s ...
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy summarized the crisis in Catalonia with, “There is no possible mediation between democratic law and disobedience or illegality.” For the past forty years, Catalonians have been engineering a break with Spain. First they advocated for and were granted more ...
It has been a recent trend in the National Football League for players to kneel during the National Anthem as a form of silent protest against racial inequality, police brutality, and many other things. It was all kicked off by Colin Kaepernick when he was still a member of the San Francisco 49ers. ...
Like most universities, Mercer University requires students to take a religion course. However, the selection of courses at Mercer are miniscule and seem to be less diverse than most other course catalogs. Mercer offers six classes to fulfill the required religion section; English 225, Philosophy ...
Over the past year North Korea has rocketed through the headlines with reports of its growing missile and nuclear program. This situation has brought us closer to armed conflict in the Koreas since the end of the Korean war in 1953. In response to North Korea’s actions, nations of the world have ...
When I was applying to schools, my college counselor asked me how much Greek Life mattered to me in a potential university. I laughed and said it didn't matter to me at all. She smiled and replied, "Yeah, I can tell you aren't a sorority girl." Fast forward to Aug. 14, Opportunity Scholars move-in ...
In case you haven’t already heard, the Greek recruitment process is working a little differently this year than in year’s past. Instead of being the first week of classes, it has been pushed back to the fourth week of the academic year, September 10 -15 for the sororities in the National Panhellenic ...
Welcome Mercerians. For those of you who are new to Mercer, I think you will find that you have selected an exceptional institution of higher education, one that is rich in heritage and tradition. Surprisingly, though, many folks—including some who have been associated with Mercer for a long time—are ...
So much effort goes into promoting diversity across campus. Here at Mercer, we often discuss changing the world, making a difference in society and strengthening our ties to the international community. You see Facebook filters and hashtags that people use to promote that they are aware and supportive ...
Mercer’s Student Government Association elections have brought the topic of diversity back into discussion, so I feel it is important to talk about this ambiguous word. I have had the recent experience of being able to attend a community forum hosted by Mercer’s Center for Collaborative Journalism ...
Mercerians don’t live in a vacuum, and we can’t do research in one either. Six months ago, I loaded onto a bus with the rest of my Mercer on Mission team and drove down a highway in Cape Town, South Africa for the first time. South Africa is still suffering the effects of apartheid, the legal ...
Registering for classes is one of those things that causes me unreasonable stress; it’s just a reminder of the upcoming semester while I’m barely surviving the current semester. It’s a little more stressful if you’re some of the students that do not receive priority registration. Athletes ...
In this past issue, an opinion piece, “Star Struck,” was released discussing the normalization of celebrities through continued support. “If we continue to support them, it normalizes abuse and makes it seem like anyone can do it. You cannot separate a person’s career from who they are as ...
For Spring Break 2017, students involved with the Reformed University Fellowship went on a trip to Acapulco, Mexico with First Presbyterian Church of Macon. Fifteen Mercer students and four adult supervisors went to Casa Hogar del Niño de Alculpoca, an orphanage that is housed in Acapulco. This trip ...
Solutions by The State News