Welcome to Letters to the Editor
All letters to the editor are welcome and will be considered for posting online. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. Please email letters to cisternyardnews@cofc.edu. Letters must be signed and contain accurate contact information. CisternYard News cannot guarantee the accuracy of all information represented in the letters. Letters are edited and/or trimmed...
Letter to the Editor: Alison Weir Response
CisternYard News cannot guarantee the accuracy of information presented in the letter below, which was printed as submitted. Alison Weir: Setting the record straight Op-ed for CisternYard On April 19th I spoke at the College of Charleston at an event sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a local organization called Charleston Peace...
Improving CofC’s Food: A Green Perspective
The relationship between students on campus and our food provider, Aramark, has greatly improved over the past few years. Personal experiences from a few years ago described the difficulty working with Aramark as guarded and unwilling to collaborate with students to create change within the College of Charleston community. This semester, we have had the...
Student Perspective: Obama visits Israel
On March 20, President Barack Obama travelled to Israel and was welcomed with open arms by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres. Obama also met with the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah and King Hussein of Jordan. This is Obama’s first trip to Israel as president. It...
The Consequences of Law and Order
Americans are diverse. Our main commonality is our dissention. When the Christopher Dorner story broke reactions ranged from outrage to sympathy. One theme that unites us all together is our desire for safety. We all wish to live in a world that promotes law and order. From the end of WWII, the Civil Rights Movement...
From a Black Greek’s View: A Note on Greek (Dis)unity
The air is electric. A distinctly African-American crowd forms in Cougar Mall while indistinct hollering and calling fills the night. Four guys stand in the middle of it all; they match each other, all wearing bright blue and white clothing with very distinct Greek lettering adorning their attire. They stomp, they yell, they dance. The...
Make the Switch: Befriend a Sustainable Bottle Today
What do diamonds, Betty White and BPA-free water bottles have in common? They all last forever. As a human being and avid water drinker, I fill up my stainless steel bottle about four times a day, using nothing but tap water from whatever bathroom sink or water fountain is nearby. If I’m lucky, I even...
Ten signs of a social media attention whore
Attention whore (n.): an individual that solicits attention to an excessive degree. The use of social networks, specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have reached record numbers with Facebook reaching 1 billion users in 2012, and Instagram creating b-team photographers out of everyday people. The main objective of social networks is for people to connect with...
View from the Sidelines: Snapping closed
When the CisternYard Media crew was checking into our hotel in Asheville on Friday afternoon, 24 hours before the Cougar women were to take the court for their quarterfinal game against Appalachian State, the Western Carolina women were already checking out. As we were walking to our rooms, we passed purple-clad women, some still red-eyed...
You might be a feminist if…
Debates about human rights have always been popular topics in the media and all throughout our history, but today we still struggle with people’s rights- deciding who should have them and in what context. During the last election, we heard arguments determining who should be able to get married, women’s reproductive rights, and the shocking...
Valentine’s Day Your Way
Valentine’s Day always comes too soon. If you’re single, you’re wishing you weren’t and if you’re taken you’re probably stressed planning. But Valentine’s Day doesn’t need to be dreadful. Maybe the day itself will be, with classes and daily to-do’s, but embrace this Valentine’s Weekend. If you strip the holiday of its cupids, candy and...
View from the Sidelines: It’s time to be heard
One of the curses of having lived in Charleston since Kresse is remembering how basketball used to sound. In the days before the currently named TD Arena, the College of Charleston played in a high school-sized fortress with concrete walls and pull-out bleachers. The seating capacity of John Kresse Arena was listed as 3,500, but...