Rachael Palinkas

I didn’t watch the Video Music Awards this year, and I can’t remember the last time I did. Regardless, I heard all about the scandal of the Jonas Brothers and their promise rings.

I thought it was ridiculous when the host, Russell Brand, was criticized for making jokes about the fact that the group wears promise rings, promising to abstain from sex until marriage.

More bizarre was that others who were given awards or presented them, such as Jordin Sparks, spoke out on behalf of the Jonas Brothers and others who wear promise rings,
including herself.

I think they must have forgotten that Brand is a comedian and it is his job to make people laugh, and I am sure that plenty of people were laughing. You see the same thing on any awards show: People are made fun of for their differences and unique quirks and that is just the way it goes.

I couldn’t believe that Brand had to give a public apology for the things he said about the Jonas Brothers and their rings. For example, he held up a similar ring and remarked about how he had stolen their virginities. Perhaps people are so upset about this because they think it is admirable that these young kids decided to make this promise.

Let’s face it, the idea of waiting to have sex until you’re married is pretty outdated. Look at the new ABC Family hit show, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” where a young girl has sex for the first time and ends up pregnant. It just goes to show that sex is a part of life for many teenagers, and we shouldn’t go on pretending that it’s not.

I think that their personal decision to wear promise rings is no different than someone’s personal decision to be a
Scientologist or to be Republican, and plenty of people publicly make fun of others for these decisions, yet I have never seen someone made to give a
public apology for such jokes,
so why now?

Jeff Primozich

With this year’s freshman class being one of the largest in Linfield history, there is bound to be a greater number of incoming freshmen involved in long-distance relationships. You know, the kind where you chose Linfield and she or he chose another school or has yet to graduate from high school. As someone who managed to maintain a relationship for three-and-a-half years under these circumstances only to see that relationship end with a text message, take my advice: now is not the time in your life to struggle and sacrifice to keep that love alive.

This may be hard to swallow for those of you who get swept up in the unadulterated pleasures of young love. It is important to remember that this has no bearing on the feelings you and your significant other share. However,  the power of college to challenge and change all of your current values, beliefs and feelings is unprecedented and irrefutable. This has to do with the reality of the situation.

You need to ask yourself: What would you do when you plan a trip to visit your girlfriend or boyfriend and at the last minute your friends decide to take a road trip to California for the weekend? What are you going to do when you’ve planned to spend Christmas break with the one you love and your roommate invites you to Mexico, all expenses paid? What are you going to do when you are supposed to spend summer vacation at home so you and the person you are with can spend time together and you get accepted to the summer internship that you’ve been dreaming of? What are you going to sacrifice? When you need to plan time to spend with the person you love because the distance between you is longer than a walk from one dorm to another, those visits are going to become a burden on you, especially when you are missing out on the fun things your friends on campus are doing, even if it’s a spur-of-the-moment Winco run at one in the morning.

Don’t neglect the power of regret. Let me preface this by saying that regret has a very pejorative connotation, one that I would like to ignore. Instead, I choose to use the word to describe the realization that the costs of one action (spending time with your girlfriend or boyfriend) are higher than the benefits received from that action—that is to say, that there was still pleasure had.

One of the biggest problems of a long-distance relationship is the added pressure to make the absolute best of every moment you spend together. When you seldomly see each other, you treasure those planned weekly visits. But as time wears on and you start to realize that you are missing out on other activities, those visits start feeling more mandatory and less voluntary. What I mean by this is that you convince yourself that you need to see each other as regularly and as frequently as possible. When you realize that you are missing out on things you would like to do, you start feeling a constant and insatiable desire to make every moment you spend together the best it can be—as if making up for what you are forgoing. When you don’t have a good day together or fight or one of you is just in a funk, you start to regret giving up time with your friends for time with them. The worst thing you can do to yourself and the one you love is let that regret grow into resentment, and the best way to avoid this from happening is to never sacrifice the things you want to do in the first place.

The relationships you have, whether they are with friends and family or your boyfriend or girlfriend, will always be an important part of your life. And while I may be more cynical of long-distance relationships than I once I was, it is still important to remember that right now is a time in your life where you need to take advantage of all the freedom and opportunities you have. You must be selfish with your college experience and get the absolute most out of it. Although you may love someone, you can’t let that love be a barricade to the opportunities you will have as a student here. People always say you must sacrifice for love but what is more true is that if you share true love with someone, those feelings will stay strong even if that love is what you must sacrifice.

Brianne Ries

Teenagers get pregnant all the time, it’s not just Bristol Palin and Jamie Lynn Spears. Shocking, I know.

So why is it that when high-profile teenagers are expecting more than a high school diploma the media latches on and refuses to let go?

Thanks to the media coverage of these high-profile teenage pregnancies, misconceptions are created about how “easy” it is to be a teenage mom.

In the case of Palin and Spears, an odd fairytale is portrayed, showing that with pregnancy comes marriage and a happy family.

Don’t get me wrong; that can happen. But in reality, it is rare. The media doesn’t ever focus on teenage moms who are doing it on their own, barely making ends meet to provide a loving and stable environment for their baby.

Not to say that Palin and Spears haven’t had their share of difficulties, but at the end of the day their high-profile lifestyles make them pretty well off.

The whole fiasco surrounding Bristol is, quite frankly, ridiculous. As far as the hype in the media realm, she is not the one that is going to be governing the country, so let her be at peace and plan her wedding.

I seriously doubt that this will have that detrimental of an effect on Sarah Palin’s role if she is elected vice president. Maybe the fact that she has her own clan of kids makes it seem challenging, but parents balance career and family all the time.

I believe that questioning the parenting skills of young Palin’s or Spears’ wayward parents is not fair. You can’t have a leash on your teens 24 hours a day (maybe a tracking device, but that is a completely different story). You remember what it was like to be a teen: moody, angst-filled, waiting for every opportunity to defy your parents. That is what teenagers do.

What I do question is if in light of all of this, Sarah Palin’s views on abstinence-only education have shifted. Chances are probably not, and that is very distressing.

Sarah Palin has advocated abstinence-only programs and look how well that went. Her own daughter is the epitome of what happens when teens aren’t taught the basics of real sex education. Somewhat ironic, don’t you think?

Teens have sex. Teens get pregnant. A shotgun wedding is not going to cover up the fact that, gasp, kids have sex before marriage. That is just reality. If politicians could stop being so naïve and step up to the plate, our teens and our country as a whole would be a lot better off.

Dominic Baez

Last week, I was introduced to the fantastic Web site Pandora.com. I cannot express how amazing this site is.

Let me explain: Pandora.com is a site that compiles playlists that attune to your personal musical tastes. You enter an artist you are particularly fond of, such as Rihanna or Ne-Yo, and the search engine puts together a playlist featuring artists who are similar in musical style.

I am stunned at how amazing the system is at figuring out what songs and artists suit me best. When I first put in Rihanna, the computer played “Disturbia,” which I love. It then followed it up with Ne-Yo’s “So Sick.” While I love the song too, I was a little confused as to why it was being played, considering how different it is from the previous song. But, to my amazement, there is a feature on the site that explains why each song was chosen, citing reasons such as the similarities between the ability to dance to it, whether it has the same rhythm or if it is the same musical genre. This combination of attributes greatly helps in making my personal playlist, well, personal.

To top it off, the service is free, as it is heavily sponsored by a multitude of companies trying to get your business. To be honest, though, I can totally deal with a ridiculous amount of advertisements as long as they do not pop up everywhere, which they don’t.

Another awesome feature of the Web site is that one is able to make many different playlists or stations each focusing on a different artist, genre or style. Right now, I have close to 15 playlists, featuring every genre from techno to rhythm and blues. No, I am not addicted.

There are some negative attributes to the site, though. One is that you cannot repeat a song. Once you play the song, you must wait until the system replays it on its own accord before you can hear it again, or you have to create a new station dedicated to that particular artist. Although you have the ability to give a song a “thumbs down,” which results in the song never begin played on that station again, Pandora’s licensing laws only allows you to skip so many song before you are forced to potentially listen to songs you do not want to
listen to.

I guess you can only have so much of a good thing, right? Despite the petty annoyances, I highly recommend everyone to at least try the site out. You might hate it or you might just fall in love with it. Trust me: Hearing is believing.

Editor in chief

Dominic Baez

Managing editor

Welcome to your greatest school year thus far. It would not be untrue to say many of us Linfield students anticipate the return to campus, like a kid on (insert your preferred holiday here).

You may need one book or five or 10, and each comes with its own substantial price tag. So why are textbooks so expensive? Over at Barnes and Noble, I can get the latest 900-page New York Times bestseller for $19.99. What makes textbooks so different? The answer is everything.

According to Maketextbooksaffordable.com, a campaign to reduce textbook costs, the textbook market is a broken one. There is a lack of competition with the textbook industry, as opposed to the mainstream book market.

Students also have little market power because professors decide which books pupils will purchase,

maketextbooksaffordable.com writes. It is highly unusual that professors think about the cost of a textbook before they assign it in their course.

These essential books are printed on glossy paper, with many graphs and images in color ink, none of which are cheaply produced.

It is a co-ed custom to sell used textbook to peers; however, with a new edition of each book coming out annually, old editions are quickly devalued and no longer recommend by professors.

A Congress-mandated study by the U.S. Department of Education on the affordability of college textbooks came out last year. It suggested ways to improve the situation, including increasing library resources, implementing textbook rental programs, improving financial aid policies and utilizing technologies such as electronic textbooks.

Textbook rental is definitely the secret of
the year. Chegg.com and
bookrenter.com are just a few of the sites where students can rent their textbook for a term at a fraction of the price it costs to
buy new.

Predictably, the next wave to save money and resources on textbooks will be with sites like etext.com, which publishes electronic textbooks and course material on its private site.

Until textbooks start coming cheaply, we recommend saving the old-fashioned way: share with a friend, borrow from the library or take out a loan and pay for your text in 10 years. Study hard Linfield.

Being away from the friends you are with constantly during the school year is hard and it always feels great to be back among them. However, when classes start back up the reality of the situation sets in: You are back to learn and with that comes certain responsibilities. One of the least favorites of these is buying books. 

Amber McKenna

Editor in chief

Dominic Baez

Managing editor

On June 1, the parents of you graduating seniors will be snapping pictures from every angle, relatives you barely know will send you cards and presents and you will be challenged with the task of uncovering what “next” means for you.

The college-grad experience is now surrounding Linfield seniors. It may seem as if the whole ordeal is a hassle and you are ready to leave the college life behind, but don’t take it for granted—many students do not make it to graduation day.

The Education Trust is an online database, www.collegeresults.org, featuring graduation rates, broken down by demographics, of practically every institution in the country. According to the Web site, Linfield, based off its compiled statistics up to 2006, has a 72.8 percent graduation rate.

Everyone notices when students don’t return to campus in the spring or the fall. Reasons include financial diffuculties, low grades, transferring schools, new pursuits or a mental breakdown. Whatever the reason, nearly 30 percent of students who start out at Linfield do not graduate.

It is a shame to see this occur in a society where education is so important. Our world today does not match the one our parents grew up in.

It is well-known that college graduates make twice as much money as those who only complete high school. It is also sad to think that many are not fortunate enough to have the college experience at all. Having all of your friends living within a 10-minute walk of you does not generally happen in the real world, though shows like “Friends” deceive us. Other perks you might miss from the college experience include free concerts and entertainment, free or cheap food and knowing you can track anyone down through Facebook.

The 72.8 percent of students who do graduate and walk across the stage in the Oak Grove should be proud of themselves. Be proud for sticking it out through hard semesters and living to see the end result after four or five years.

Although the majority of seniors may be leaving Linfield without a job or any sort of plan, know this: Linfield has done its best to prepare you for life after college. Through internships, leadership roles in clubs and organizations and the experiences of college, you are ready to make Linfield, your family and yourself proud.