By The Buchtelite Editorial Board

September 17, 2018

The Board of Trustees is not making decisions based on the interests of the students and faculty, but instead on trends that will ultimately destroy the credibility of The University of Akron. On Aug. 15, the board decided to phase out 80 “underperforming” academic programs, which were taken from recommendations of an academic program review. The APR was said to have been a faculty-led exercise used to improve UA’s ability to educate students for in-demand careers. However, the cuts made were undesirable and perceived as unwarranted by both students and faculty. Some of the departments that faced cuts were math, physics, sociology and history. Academic programs in these fields are staples at any other credible university. This leads many to question whether UA is a credible university or on its way to being an overpriced community college. Over the past year, the University has made numerous decisions, such as the implementation of Esports and Five-Star Fridays, that...

By Brooklyn Dennison, Editor-in-Chief

September 17, 2018

Happy Diversity Week at The University of Akron! This week is about celebrating and learning about minorities, so in the spirit of that, I am going to teach you about LGBTQIA+ terminology. As a queer person, I find that many people, especially non-queer people, do not know the meaning of words relating to the LGBTQIA+ community. If this applies to you, stick around and learn with your peers! Please Note: The author uses “queer” and “LGBTQIA+” interchangeably. The terms listed have fluid definitions, which makes it difficult to put a solid definition on them. The author used definitions that were current and generally accepted by the community during the time of publishing. This is not a complete list of queer identities. The flags depicted may not be the only flag from the community. Many communities have alternate flags and some flags are combined if a person identifies with several communities. Attraction Aromantic: A person who does not experience romantic attraction....

By The Buchtelite Staff

September 12, 2018

Brooklyn Dennison Editor-in-Chief editor-in-chief@buchtelite.com Personally, I am an avid advocate of a person’s right to an abortion. I believe that abortion is an inherent right of a person because it is their body. If you want to give the rights to a fetus, you are placing the rights a clump of cells before the rights of the parent who is usually a non-male person. It is misogynistic and controlling of the body, which is a patriarchal idea. That is my aspect, which is coming from the point of view of a feminist and women’s studies student. I understand that people will have views that diverge from mine. However, what Created Equal does is harmful to the community. Created Equal is not engaging in any kind of respectful debate. Instead, they are using fake images for shock value. Megan Parker Copy Editor copy-editor2@buchtelite.com Do I agree with the woman’s right to choose what she does with her body? Wholeheartedly, yes. Do I agree with a person's right to free...

By Brooklyn Dennison, Editor-in-Chief

September 12, 2018

After the fourth 12-hour day in a row, I make my way home from my University job and throw myself onto the couch, utterly exhausted and unable to do anything but stare at the bundle of school work I have piling up. Since The University of Akron implemented Five-Star Fridays, my work day has become long and incredibly tiring. This is not solely the fault of the new initiative, but instead a loaded class schedule that is crammed into four days and having two part-time jobs. This schedule can take a toll on my mental and physical health, which has been something that I have already struggled with greatly over the past year. A few months ago I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, which basically meant I showed many typical signs of long-term depression. I am also diagnosed with anxiety, which I have had ever since I can remember. One of the things that can trigger both of these conditions, especially for me, is high stress. Because of the high-stress environment that...

By Ben Sewell, Guest Writer

December 16, 2017

For many college students, one experience that is shared is the price of textbooks. The University of Akron senior Grant Holtzapple, recalling a particularly expensive semester,  said every single textbook he was required to get for the courses were the newest edition and after totaling them the bill came to over $500. According to Mark Perry writing for aei.org, the price of textbooks have increased by 90% between January 1998 and July 2016. These prices may seem overwhelming, however, with a few tips and tricks, it is possible to save money while shopping for your textbooks. An excellent way to start on the path to this goal is to wait until classes commence or email professors beforehand to ask about book usage in the class. This is helpful because some classes do not rely heavily on the textbook. Others may only require it for a certain portion of the class. Simply inquiring about this information can allow extra time to purchase textbooks. At times they may not even...

By Elena DellaValle, Guest Writer

December 5, 2017

How exciting would it be if universities paid students for their good grades? Think about it; college can be a challenging experience, so receiving money for hard-earned A’s would be a tangible incentive in addition to the feeling of accomplishment from getting a good grade. The University of Akron already has a similar concept in effect called the Akron Guarantee Scholarship, which ensures the yearly renewal of students’ scholarships if they maintain at least a 2.0 GPA. The guarantee will total $3,500 as they progress through their sophomore, junior and senior years. “This enhanced scholarship offers important advantages to prospective students. It rewards steady academic progress toward graduation with automatic scholarship increases along the way,” Matthew J. Wilson, the president of The University of Akron, said on the school’s website. The Akron Guarantee Scholarship rewards students for their success and so would the concept of paying students for their good grades. South...

By Adam Long and Amelia Dyck

October 2, 2017

An appropriate desk is arguably the most important item required in a classroom in order to facilitate learning. However, this basic need may not be met at The University of Akron. In a recent statistics class project, more than 200 students were sampled and approximately 16 percent were found to be left-handed. We, Adam Long and Amelia Dyck, counted nearly 3,000 desks in 13 different buildings on campus and only 5.5 percent of these were left-handed. In some buildings, such as in Kolbe, not a single left-handed desk was found among the hundreds of right-handed ones surveyed. This is not representative of the estimated 4,000 left-handed students at the University. In addition, we observed that older buildings have fewer left-handed desks than newer buildings. Putting this into a graph, we found that the year a given classroom building was built correlates with its left-handed friendliness. Many desks may feel like they are about the size of postage stamps, particularly...

By Jesse Harper, jlh286@zips.uakron.edu

December 5, 2016

In today’s day and age, it seems that certain groups, specifically those associated with the political right, are quick to demonize individuals and organizations for being “PC,” or politically correct. It seems that within the last couple of years or so, there has been a movement in the U.S. to bash those deemed as being PC, to say that being politically correct is ruining this country and turning everybody into, as Sarah Palin would put it, “weak-wristed liberals.” It seems like you cannot go through a comment section on YouTube or Facebook without seeing someone complain about “dirty, PC liberals” or some inane nonsense about how liberals are going to ruin this country with their evil, progressive thinking. I think the idea that being politically correct is going to ruin this country and turn all of us into thin-skinned, word-fearing sissies is absurd. If someone is thinking that taking somebody else’s gender identity into consideration or asking one what pronoun they...

By Sharon Marquart, B.A. in French, Minor in Studio Art The University of Akron, Class of 2000

September 17, 2018

Dear President Green, Provost Ramsier and Members of the Board of Trustees, I am writing in response to the recent cuts that have been made to 19% of degree programs at the University of Akron. I graduated from Akron in May 2000 with a B.A. in French and a Minor in Studio Art, and I am currently an Associate Professor of French and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. I attended Akron from 1997 to 2000 thanks to a Scholarship for Excellence that funded the entire cost of my undergraduate studies, and I went on to pursue a Ph.D. in French literature at the University of Michigan, which I completed in 2008. I would have been part of the 5% of students at Akron affected by these recent degree program eliminations. I am deeply troubled by how these cuts limit the opportunities of current students at my alma mater. The education I received at Akron has contributed in more and less obvious ways to the career I have chosen to pursue and to the...