Oct. 1 Board Ed upsets California Catholic Daily

Nearly two weeks after our Board Ed titled "Education above Dogma" printed, justifying Fr. Lawton's (as well as LMU as a whole) ability to reach out for the betterment of the education of the students, this article was printed in California Catholic Daily.

Give the article a read and take a look at the comments/their authors

I won't lead you too much, form your own opinions and comment here or there.

Oct. 11 Issue's Devil's Avocado: Sprayin' Em Down

The first Devil's Avocado Award* goes to Tyler Rigger's article "No Spray, no thank you"

Tyler's first submission went well (besides his snowboarding head shot). He introduces an interesting anti-organic perspective to our overly organicized shopping tendencies. I think whether we want to believe it or not, Organic tags catch our eyes and make us feel better about our purchases regardless of taste. I commend Tyler's commitment to assume an unpopular stance about groceries (not for the first time this year, see this smoking gun piece which is in the same vein). Tyler's pondering lead us to wonder about how natural resources and more specifically crops, are being under-utilized by organic farming. He asserts that we can actually produce more food with less land if we use pesticides and other scientific "technologically cutting edge" farming techniques.

Here I have to play Devil's Avocado...

While we may be more efficient farmers if we use pesticides, overall health could (and does) suffer from pesticide use. If the effects of the nightmare pesticide DDT are still under your radar, check this article in Science Daily linking the chemical to breast cancer that was published two days ago. Just because we could make more tomatoes, doesn't mean those tomatoes are still as good for us (in fact they might end up killing us).

So couldn't the question really be, would we rather have less starving people but more famished or diseased people?

Are we willing to trade "world hunger" for "world cancer"?

Roll this one around next time you're pushing your filling your grocery carts.

Good article Tyler. Congratulations on being the first recipient of the Devil's Avocado Award*

I hope you don't mind that it was organically grown.

Loy-Op & The Devil's Avocado Award*

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First, what is the Devil's Avocado Award*?

Well, for starters, its an award with an asterisk after it. Every issue that comes out (or most), I'm going to try to pick a story of particular strength to the section.

For the sake of argument, I'm also going to play Devil's Avocado, or basically, be the sweet refuter of the writers argument, that also goes well with Sushi and almost defines California crafty/savvyness in physical form.

The purpose of this is not only to always have the last word in my section (that's right), but also to continue on going discussion about issues that my writers bring up. I want to show that there is endlessly, another side(s) to the argument(s) and to make students wary of rhetoric in this/all media, even if it is operating in my own section (or through my own words).

So, I hope everyone enjoys, embraces and craves the Devil's Avocado Award* as it appears exclusively at the Loyolan Opinion Blog.

-Writers, remember, you're winning an award (with an Asterisk). Would you rather not get an award or be the Barry Bonds of the week? That's what I thought.

So just what is it about those students in the back?

Hey everyone, this is your favorite cartoonist speaking. So, while I am definitely not a writer on par with some of the Loyolan staff, I do like to get my opinions out every now and then. My editors and myself thought that me posting on this blog would prove to be somewhat interesting to the rest of you.

First, a bit about myself. I am a senior animation major (yes, we exist) at LMU and aside from slaving away at toons for my thesis and the Loyolan, I am also an active member in Laser Squad Bravo. Speaking of my thesis, I have another blog that I'll be updating throughout the year that will serve as a production diary to my thesis. I urge all of you to go check it out!

Now, onto Loyolan stuff. Today I only had one picture in the Loyolan so this'll be pretty short. The article itself was about the kids who sit quietly in the back of the classroom. The author basically argues that she (a self proclaimed quiet student) is just as sociable as the other students in class.

Bullshit. Now, I understand that some people do need a little push to get going, but what this article says to me is "I am not going to attempt to talk to you, but you should talk to me. If I come off as quiet and standoffish, then its partly your fault."

Now I know that I'm coming off harsh right now. I have no personal malice on the author. The article is well written, I just happen to disagree with it a bit.

That's the trouble with being a cartoonist for the Opinion section. I do not always agree with the stances of the articles I'm assigned, and sometimes when I do agree with the final opinion, I do not support the argument. Take the "Greek Weak" pro/con feature that we had a few weeks back. I am Greek myself, so I obviously lean more toward the pro side. But the "pro" Greek side was a terribly written opinion piece. I'd hate to be harsh like that, but it really did nothing but reinforce why some people hate the Greek community. And while James' "con" piece brought nothing new I really don't think it needed to. The Pro side had a greater responsibility to uphold and it did not get that creative in it's argument (ABC's GREEK? Really? REALLY?).

So in the end for both articles, this week's and "Greek Weak", my cartoon questions the entire topic a bit. The toon this week shows a bunch of students all speaking their minds from varying classes and then we have the quiet student. Now, most comments said in class tend to be completely un-thought (is that even a word?) provoking anyway. There are some people that you just wish would stop raising their hand because they are wasting our time as students. So perhaps it really is OK to be a quiet student.

I think I just defeated my own argument. You will have to excuse me, being an animation major I average about 3 hours of sleep a night. Hopefully my next entry will be a bit more coherent.

Video RE: "Don't tase me, bro"

In the Sept. 24 edition, I wrote an article referring to a tasing incident at the university of Florida. Peep the vid below and read the article following.



"Don't tase me, bro"
by Alex Dwyer

I'm a proud fence hopper. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. My crib borders the school-I'm not walking around. For me that means fence hurdling.

Thankfully, I think that my sneak entrance is in a rare nook on campus where there isn't a camera. Still, I've spotted my share of lurking P-safe guardians protecting LMU's border. The other day, I was off my game. I was tired and I approached the leaping point aloof. Luckily, half way across I noticed a P-safe officer.

"Hey," he called, rapidly approaching, "wait right there!" Of course I didn't stay. I squirmed back to free land before the officer could tase me into a coma.

Read the rest here.

The birth of Loy-Op-Bloggin'

Welcome to The Loyolan's Opinion Blog. This is the place for Opinion section related tangents, thoughts, comments, continuations, etc. that didn't make it into the regular inked pages of Loyola Marymount's newspaper.

The opinion section is poised to become something that can take the entire Loyolan to another level. It is THE place to speak out for our entire campus and I want it to be as broad and strongly written as humanly possible. I'm looking for serious, funny, ironic, down to earth, college student, young adult, nostalgic, academic, poetic, breakthrough, avant-garde, articles and I know you can all deliver on a number of those fronts.

With 5,000 print copies distributed every issue and around 1,500 online views, you're writing will reach a few thousand readers. I want my writers to dig deeper, allowing for solutions, government sanction stances, personal narratives, etc. to enhance the columns readability as well as its ability to spark dialogue around campus. Controversial articles WILL be printed as long as the argument is sound and the free speech doesn't become hate speech. All voices should be heard and I am going to try my best to have them all heard—so long as they are well written!

Aside from Editors posts, we hope to incorporate contributors and staff writers to share their everything blog worthy. In addition to text, we will have videos, photos and other multimedia.

Utilizing the Web 2.0 can take the Loyolan Opinions beyond the pages, literally.

Happy blogging.