Madison Rheam

This past week I decided to watch Tiger King because honestly I was just curious what all the hype was about. I remember the day it came on Netflix and it was listed as #1 in America for a couple days. I looked into it but it didn't really seem that interesting to me. It wasn't until my coworker, Seth, instigated me writing this opinion piece that I finally decided to watch it.

I know I've been extremely bored during our recent quarantine and focus on social distancing. Here are some movies on Netflix that can take your mind off the state of our world right now.

1. Selena Gomez was at least a better option than Taylor.

Over the past couple of years, binge drinking on residential college campuses has become an emerging problem. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcohol abuse seen in college students (ages 18-24) causes about 1,700 deaths, 599,000 injuries, and 97,000 cases of sexual assault every year. Binge drinking occurs widely throughout our society but mostly occurs within the college setting. The pattern however reverses itself when it comes to which students are drinking. Studies have shown that the students who typically weren’t drinking in high school are now the ones that can’t stop drinking in college. Much of the problem relates back to the hazing that occurs at college fraternities and sororities. The levels of binge drinking amongst college students seem to be much higher in college settings with Greek organizations.

Women’s rights have been a topic of discussion for years and some progress has been made. However, in today’s society, women still face inequality in the following categories: media, education, and the labor system. Men and women receive two different educations because of the way each gender is treated in the education system. Following the education they received, these men and women enter the workforce under the impression that they’re under equal standards. Yet, the gender pay gap still highly exists today. Finally, our media focuses on women in such a negative way, leading to mental health problems that we see in the women’s population today.

There are so many things I could address with the problems we currently see in today's society. While social class, gender, and race are their own category, I feel they all can be put under one word: discrimination. While this country may have moved three steps up during the 1960s, we have certainly moved two steps back. To me the main problems with society now is still that difference makes one unequal. Whether it be sexuality, the sex you identify yourself as, the pronouns we use, the cultures we see, and the colors that come with it, everyone is not equal. At least not in this country anymore. I want to focus on two main categories, race and transgender individuals.