Shealeigh Voitl

Last year, Barbra Streisand mourned the loss of her 14-year-old Coton de Tulear Samantha. Before she passed, Streisand’s vet collected cells from the inside of the pup’s cheek and the soft skin of her belly. She sent them off to a lab in Texas, fingers crossed, and months later, Streisand brought home a clone of her beloved Sammie.

At first, I’m not sure I acknowledged my experience with chronic pain as a shift in identity. But I was brand new in a sort of soggy and exhausting way. My symptoms began in December. The back of my left knee ached constantly. I thought I might have pulled a muscle. Although, that didn’t sound much like me. I was pretty out of shape since my fall classes conflicted with twice-a-week Zumba. But I had just moved out of my dorm for winter break. Maybe I lifted something too heavy.

Over a dreamy candlelit dinner with Becca Kufrin on the fourteenth season of “The Bachelorette,” Colton Underwood told Kufrin, and consequently the rest of “Bachelor Nation,” that he’d never had sex. Ultimately, this seemed to be the relationship’s undoing. Underwood was tearfully eliminated at the next rose ceremony after taking Kufrin on a visit to his hometown. “I think part of living in a heterosexist, patriarchal culture is we value men for their experience,” said Visiting Professor Ann Dolinko.

(...) COVID-19 has highlighted our vulnerabilities as a nation and the many things we take for granted. Among them are election workers, 58% of whom were 61 years or older in 2018, an age group that is at greater risk of complications due to COVID-19.

In June 2020, during the primary elections, Georgia voters were forced to wait in line at their local polling places for hours. Election authorities cited technical difficulties and missing voting machines as the culprits, according to the New York Times, but the event underscored a broader pattern of racially discriminatory voter suppression in the United States. “Once Shelby County v. Holder, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that provided for preclearance— once that was basically invalidate

The 72nd Primetime Emmy’s premiered on Sept. 20 just in time to recognize our quarantine favorites. The cast of HBO’s “Succession” celebrated remotely and enjoyed four wins out of their 11 nominations. A couple of years ago, I became totally obsessed with this show and its fictional family of monsters. My mom and I sat on the couch through winter break like absolute fiends. We started a countdown weeks before the second season premiered the following summer. Ever since, I’ve wanted to recreate the feeling of watching the show for the very first time.

Alex Trebek was the rhythm of “Jeopardy.” His voice was calm and steady and comforting. The illusion was that he read every book, watched every film and knew every answer. Over the years, I wondered if it was an illusion at all. He was invariably amused by contestants’ fun facts that they shared after each episode’s first commercial. I imagine being teased by Trebek felt like winning a trophy. He had a magnetic and cool popular-kid energy.

Anyone can be a punisher. They’re sad and dreading something unidentifiable. On her sophomore album, Phoebe Bridgers floats above the tangled collections of feelings about twisted love, friendship, childhood and longing for home. In “Garden Song,” the first single off of “Punisher,” Bridgers navigates a familiar dream turned nightmare. A low voice (her tour manager, Jeroen Vrijhoef) softly growls underneath her own. In the final chorus, Bridgers sings, “No, I’m not afraid of hard work / I get everything I want."

There was a seismic shift a few years ago beneath the feet of influential people that wielded their power in shameful ways. The rumbling began in 2006 when Tarana Burke founded, what she then called, the MeToo movement, which advocated for those suffering from the trauma of sexual violence and harassment, according to the New York Times.

Since 2009, weapons manufacturer Raytheon has sponsored the MATHCOUNTS National Championship, a children’s competition for extraordinary young mathletes, according to a January 2020 article written by Grafton Tanner for The Nation. Unlike the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which often wins the country’s attention, MATHCOUNTS is comparatively less glamorous. Its most recent tournament, which hosted more than fifty sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders and their respective coaches, was held in Orlando, Florida in May of 2019. Daniel Mai, a thirteen-year-old whiz kid from Massachusetts, solved his final problem in under thirty seconds and was crowned that year’s champion.

When the beloved television show “Firefly” was canceled after a fleeting 14 episodes in 2003, fans quietly raged. For months after the abrupt ending, devotees wrote lengthy letters, pleading with executives to bring Malcolm Reynolds and the rest of his spaceship’s crew back to their television screens. The Sci-Fi/Western drama, created by Joss Whedon, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” aired on Fox for a brief season and was then unceremoniously scrapped by the network due to less than stellar ratings.

Netflix’s new limited series “The Queen’s Gambit” makes me feel like I know how to play chess. It’s Beth’s look of betrayal as she lays down her queen or her tight-lipped grin as she gingerly presses down on the analog chess clock. I do not, in fact, know anything about the game. I forget the names of the pieces and I don’t know which ones can move on the diagonal or progress forward. In fact, I grossly underestimated how complex chess really is. But the best part is you do not need to know a

I used to commute. A lot. I went to a community college about 20 minutes away before transferring to North Central. And on those early morning commutes, I burned through podcast episodes like it was my job. Through my Toyota Corolla’s old stereo, I listened to other people’s stories and felt better because of it. So, here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of great podcasts (and my favorite episodes) that you should (immediately) add to your queue.

“Music can be life-saving, to be honest,” said Kim Frost, co-founder of the teen open mic hosted at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn, Illinois and owner of Kim Frost Vocal Studios in Oak Park. “When I was in high school, I went through a really, really, very difficult and terrible time, and if I didn’t have music and theatre, I don’t know what would have happened to me. It kept me putting one foot in front of the other.”

I held my birthday party on Zoom this year. I turned 22 in the midst of a pandemic, so celebrating through webcams was the only responsible decision I could make. This sounds sadder than it actually was; I had the best time. March 29 fell on a Sunday this year. So, I was lucky to spend the day with my family, play board games, eat takeout at the kitchen table — I started the year surrounded by love (and chicken tikka masala.) I was incredibly thankful.

In 1993, The New Yorker published a cartoon of two mutts in front of a computer screen. They’re staring at each other, eager; the caption reads: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” The idea was that anyone could hop online and construct an identity entirely separate from the one they inhabit in the “real world.” “When we look at the internet, we (may) look at it as a safe haven for all people to be themselves,” said Assistant Professor of Communication Michael Blight. “But we also sim

Scorpio sun Banu Guler’s mission was clear when she first developed the astrology app Co-Star back in 2017, according to Vanity Fair. Along with co-founders Anna Kopp and Ben Weitzman, Guler wanted to create a platform that delivered the dreamy and pensive horoscopes from the magazines of their youth directly to the screens of fellow starry-eyed believers. “Everyone wants to believe in something,” said Sagittarius Claire Hartman, ’20.

- Placed 1st in "Feature Writing" category at Illinois Community College Journalism Association conference in 2020 - An aspiring professional ballerina, Mariel Weber’s childhood dreams turned into years of nightmares as she faced multiple hip surgeries and an unrelenting eating disorder. Now in recovery, she is thriving in ECC’s surgical tech program.

Olivia Smith, ’21, remembers a pretty good date she went on recently. The two were there for about three hours, laughing and learning about one another in ways that felt important. They found out they had a ton in common, and at the end of the afternoon, he kissed her. “And then he asked me, ‘Do you want to go see a movie this weekend?’” said Smith. “Like, he initiated a second date, right? I didn’t ask him. And then he ghosted me.”