Michael Stella, Collegian Columnist
• March 7, 2022
President Joe Biden's March 1 State of the Union address — his first in office — will be remembered as an impassioned speech that started off by condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin for attacking Ukraine while calling for common sense progress here in the United States.
This address came during a time of extreme international turmoil; Biden and the rest of the world came together in an act of solidarity to punish Putin and his enablers for their invasion of Ukraine.
On Feb. 24, the Russian militarily initiated an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Orders for this invasion were delivered by longtime Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin, an autocratic leader who’s known for ruling with an iron fist, is no stranger to orchestrating unprovoked attacks on neighboring territories. In fact, the Russian military has conducted a number of similar operations in recent years. Such operations include the country’s invasions of both Crimea in 2014 and the country of Georgia in 2008.
In late January, I had cold symptoms and found out a friend I’d been hanging out with had COVID-19, so I filled out the symptom reporter and received an automated email that told me someone would contact me for additional information.
In the meantime, I scheduled a saliva screening for the next day. When I showed up for the screening, I was told that because I had symptoms, I had to skip the screening and go straight to the nasal swab test. But no one followed up with me on my symptom reporter, and it was impossible to schedule a nasal swab test through the Colorado State University Health Network without the public health referral I hoped to get from the saliva screening.
As you know, the Winter Olympic games are an event where the world’s top winter sport athletes compete for the gold medal in their desired event. Every four years the National Olympic Committee decides which country and cities will host the Olympic games.
The issue is that, time and time again, the countries and cities chosen to host the Winter Olympic games have brought with them countless issues. Even as recent as this year in Beijing, the city presented quite a few problems of their own. While diving into all these pitfalls lightly, we are going to look at a few other bizarre Olympic location fails in history.
Dylan Tusinski, Collegian Columnist
• March 3, 2022
Since lockdowns started nearly two years ago, there has been a myriad of pandemic-induced internet obsessions. "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness," do it yourself sourdough starters and puzzles were some of the first ones to captivate the quarantined masses, but even as restrictions lift and life slowly creeps back to normal, there's a new addition to tack onto the list: Wordle.
For the uninitiated, Wordle is pretty simple. It's a game in which you try to guess a five-letter word in only six guesses. It was developed by a lone software developer named Josh Wardle and was meant to be a fun daily game for his family and friends.
Michael Stella, Collegian Columnist
• March 2, 2022
After the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, where artificial snow was used for every event that requires snow, the winter games need to be hosted in a true winter destination that is renowned for their winter sports. Thus, Denver, "Ski Country USA," should host the 2034 Winter Olympics.
Denver was awarded the Winter Olympic Games, to happen in 1976, but a ballot initiative by voters struck it down due to the high price tag associated with hosting the games. The Olympics have faced criticism for these extreme costs, and the games often leave behind infrastructure that does not get used again once the less than three-week event is over.
Brendan Henry, Collegian Columnist
• March 1, 2022
At the beginning of last year, COVID-19 vaccines were released with the intent that the world would soon return to normalcy after a year of enduring the pandemic. A year has passed and little has changed by means of mask mandates and restrictions, yet many people in Larimer County are vaccinated and have a much lower infection rate than folks that are not. With students at Colorado State University being required to have both the vaccination and a booster, it should be just fine to no longer have to wear a mask.
College diversity statistics often play an important role in how students decide where they want to spend the next chapter of their life, as well as where they feel the most comfortable.
As a student of color, this is something I searched for when it came to finding a college to attend. Colorado State University doesn’t have a very high racial diversity rate, with only 30% of the University's population reported as nonwhite; however, I still chose the school, feeling that I had found a place where I belonged.
The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China, brought us an array of events full of exemplary athletic prowess. As millions of people tuned in to watch, a clear shift emerged in how we all consume Olympic content — with TV ratings at an all-time low and significantly more people watching on different streaming services and devices.
If you were active on social media, you would have seen the surplus of commentary and reactions to the events, but one group of athletes took center stage — unfortunately, it had little to do with their incredible athleticism.
Michael Stella, Collegian Columnist
• February 24, 2022
Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines announced Feb. 7 that they will be merging to form the fifth-largest airline. Frontier and Spirit are both low-fare airlines, and part of their plan to merge was so they could offer even better fare rates for their customers. It is hard to trust the word of major corporations, especially when they merge and eliminate competition — a contributing force of lower prices.
Having one less airline to employ workers means that there are fewer competing airlines to provide the best wages and benefits to attract workers to their companies.
Brendan Henry, Collegian Columnist
• February 23, 2022
All right Vladimir Putin, how about we cool it for a bit? This whole invading and annexing sovereign nations thing is a little outdated. Do you really want your future war crimes to be livestreamed to the entire world?
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed at the end of 1991, resulting in the USSR losing its economically important satellite nations and the gained independence of Ukraine, among others. Now the only thing exported by Russia on a major scale is oil and petrol, and this, coupled with the desire to regain previously held land, seems to lead their president, Putin, to want to annex Ukraine.
When the world began to reopen following the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020, there was a need in many industries and sectors for support systems — both in the aspects of finance and general operations — to help these industries reemerge from the worldwide closures amid the pandemic.
Many industries, like business, entertainment and service, received ample support plans from the government and other industry-specific associations to help jump-start their individual economies. However, one industry in America has been woefully under-supported during the past two years of restimulation: the education sector.
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Have a strong opinion about something happening on campus or in Fort Collins? Want to respond to an article written on The Collegian? Write a Letter to the Editor by following the guidelines here.
