A new season is stirring here at Colorado State University. Is it from college students back on campus, learning the ins and outs of their classes? Or is it the autumnal pumpkin spice starting to brew in the air as it gets cooler? Nope. It’s piercing season.

The first few weeks at college are exciting, especially for first-year students. Meeting new friends, attending the first of many lectures and learning the ins and outs of Fort Collins are a few of many things new Colorado State University students can look forward to. However, with the first few weeks come the first few weekends, when the expectation is seemingly to party like Monday is never coming.

It’s almost the end of the semester for Colorado State University students. Plans for summer are underway, and the trees are starting to get green again, which also means finals are looming eerily in the distance. This point in the semester is rough for many students. Each Friday comes with a defeated sigh and a determined attitude that next week will be better.

While many people are familiar with "drag" as a general term, not as many understand what drag really means and why it’s important for those who participate.  Drag is defined as "a type of entertainment where people dress up and perform, often in highly stylized ways." Typically, performers are known as "drag queens," meaning people, often men, that perform in feminine clothing, but "drag kings"— those who perform drag in masculine clothing — are also included in the scene. 

So much of our lives are measured by our years in school. There’s always the next step for students currently in the school system. It goes from elementary school to middle school to high school and then, possibly, to college. For at least 12 years, there’s a clearly defined next step we can rely on. Within each grade, there’s a very set routine students follow: Get up every day, go to school, talk to friends, do an extracurricular activity, go home and do homework, then sleep. Rinse and repeat. 

Social media sites used to be, and still are, platforms for sharing media with people you know. We've all heard social media can be toxic, but we use it anyway. We try to make the most out of a problematic app because it is supposedly fun, and our brains are conditioned to it at this point. It is second nature to check social media when there’s a lull in the day. We already know it’s addictive, but what about what we’re actually posting on social media?

When it comes to the climate, there are numerous tipping points that human society is nearing or even already passed. A tipping point is defined as a threshold that, when passed, results in irreversible changes. When applying this concept to the environment, it's easy to see why understanding the impact of these climate tipping points and how we can avoid passing them is of utmost importance because, after all, this is irreversible damage we are now dealing with.

It’s been almost two years since the pandemic hit America and changed modern life. Nothing has been the same since those fateful days in early March. And I, for one, am sick of it.  It would be one thing if progress were happening — Maybe I could understand if cases were going down. But they’re not. Cases are higher now than they’ve ever been.

Words are powerful; they always have been. Revolutionary texts like Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” are integral to the founding of the United States. There’s a reason that freedom of speech is the very first amendment to the Constitution. In a day of prevalent social movements and political events, it is expected that everyone has an opinion on everything. And, of course, differing opinions are good and beneficial for democracy. With anyone able to get a Twitter account and say whatever they want, the internet is constantly flooded with more words than anyone could ever read. The constant expectation for people to speak up about everything, however, is harmful. 

Here’s a joke to start off your spring semester: How do you start a conversation with a freshman? By complaining about the dining hall food. It’s OK if you don’t get the joke or don’t find it funny. It’s because it’s not really that funny. It’s unfortunate that the lack of quality in the dining hall food has become a joke to Colorado State University students, but it’s the truth. The pandemic-affected food currently being served in the dining halls is disappointing at best and can be borderline inedible at times. 

We're entering our third year of the pandemic and people are still refusing to properly wear their masks. Stop being selfish, do what's right and protect yourself and your community.

In the last few months, the internet has fallen under the spell of an old, sleepy dog and his psychic bones. It’s called having a bones or a no bones day, and it’s something some people take very seriously.