The holiday season is fast approaching and that has many thinking about the annual black friday sales! This year may be a bit different though; some business are withdrawing their annual sales, and refusing to open. One store proposing this idea is REI, who urges customers to spend the day outside, rather than shopping. This topic has cultivated much controversy because some believe they are missing out on a great financial opportunity, and others support the idea of spending the day outside with family and friends.

Recently, some stores have opened early, on Thanksgiving night. These stores although received an increase in profit, have drawn negative attention and shame. The reasoning for this is because some believe that opening on Thanksgiving, a holiday, isn’t right. Even some employees of Macy’s have protested not to open on Thanksgiving night, for they feel they have rightfully earned the day off to spend with their loved ones. This even has some customers boycotting these companies by refusing to shop there if they decide to open on Thanksgiving day.

In the past, Best Buy, Walmart, and Toys R Us have opened earlier and earlier every year on Thanksgiving. This year, they may be opening earlier than 6 P.M., possibly before Thanksgiving dinner has been held in many American households. Regardless, the time these stores open is their own decision, even though it may negatively impact their sales, reputation, or satisfaction of their workers.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety said that most accidents are caused by drivers being distracted, and using a phone is the most common way to be distracted while driving.

While it’s legal for most drivers to talk on the phone while driving (for example, drivers with a provisional license are barred from talking while driving), texting and driving, along with tweeting, instagramming, facebooking, and snapchatting, are illegal even at a stop light. Just in Minnesota last year, more than 3,200 citations were given for texting and driving. Of those citations, 70 result in accidents, and 350 serious injuries.

On August 1, a new law was put into place that raises the fine of texting and driving from $50 to $275. Law enforcement has also increased to try and control the number of fatal accidents. Brad Norland, a Minnesota State Patrol Officer, thinks that law enforcement alone won’t fix this problem, however, and that soon every generation will use phones.

Already, there is a downward trend in serious car accidents due to distracted driving because of the new laws put into place, but the problem isn’t solved yet. The Minnesotans for Safe Driving organization is encouraging drivers to break their addiction to phones, and to have another person in the car take control of their calls, texts, and anything else that would take their eyes off the road for even a second.

Twenty-three years ago, eleven year-old Jacob Wetterling, his brother and their friend were biking home from a movie rental store in St. Joseph, Minnesota. That night, on October 22, a masked gunman encountered the boys and told the three young boys to lie down on the ground. After asking the children their ages and seeing their faces he told Wetterling’s brother and his friend to run away and not look back otherwise he would shoot.

That statement is alarmingly similar to the statement the gunman had said January 13, 1989 to a different twelve-year-old boy, Jared. Jared was walking four blocks from an outdoor ice rink to his home in Cold Spring, Minnesota. It was a quarter to ten when a man pulled over and asked Jared for directions. While Jared was describing where to go, the man forced Jared into the backseat of his car where he proceeded to drive five miles to an isolated area. Once they reached a northern area of north Richmond, Minnesota the man sexually assaulted the twelve-year-old boy and dropped him off two miles from his home and “told him to run and not look back or he threatened to shoot” according to reports from Saint Autumn blog.

That night Jared went to the hospital and later described a man between the ages of forty and fifty years old, between 180-190 pounds, who stood at about five foot eight inches with large ears and a beer belly. Jared’s description matched that of Daniel Heinrich. Heinrich, however, was let go due to lack of evidence and Jareds inability to identify him in a line-up. Due to modern-day advancements such as DNA  recognition, Heinrich had been proved guilty in the Cold Spring case but could not be charged due to the Statute of Limitations.

Back to when Wetterling was lying on the ground on that October night, it is believed that Heinrich possibly took the young boy and put him in an abandoned car. His whereabouts are still unknown.

In May 2014, investigators confirmed that they were taking another look at a series of attempted and actual child molestation’s that occurred in the Paynesville, Minnesota, area in the two years leading up to the Wetterling abduction. Between the summer of 1986 and the spring of 1987, five teenage boys were attacked without any guilty party arrested.  Authorities re-interviewed some of the victims and are working with the internet blogger who brought information to light.

After months of research and interviews with some of the victims, it is believed that these attacks were not random and that the culprit could be connected to the abduction of Wetterling, just 40 minutes away.

Today, November 4, 2015, Daniel Heinrich is undergoing a trial for five charges of possessing and receiving child pornography.

“A chilling context and a gravity of danger for the community,” said Magistrate Judge Tony Leung, who ruled that there was enough probable cause against Heinrich to keep him in custody. Authorities are still investigating Heinrich’s alleged involvement of Jacob Wetterlings kidnapping.

Living in the United States, we have a gender binary culture. Meaning that the idea of only two genders (male and female) are constantly reinforced in our society. Non binary can mean a variety of different things: it can be used for someone who is a bit of both genders, someone who is strongly on one gender side but can identify as the opposite, or someone who has no gender.

In an interview with BBC news, Richard O’Brein, writer of The Rocky Horror Show, has spoken about his gender, and being “70% male, 30% female.” O’Brien still goes by the he/him pronouns, but has started taking the female hormone oestrogen.

Cambridge University professor, Melissa Hines, says “There is not a gender binary, that there’s a range of gender, and there are many dimensions of gender and an individual person can be in a different position in terms of how masculine or feminine they are on each of these dimensions.”

Laverne Cox, a transgender woman on the popular show Orange is the New Black, is a transgender activist and says, “We still live in a binary world in which the idea is imposed on us that there are only two genders; we need to change that perception.” Non binary people can be transgender, but male to female and female to male transgender people are not non binary. This distinction is important because transgender is an umbrella term used for people switching their genders, while people like Laverne Cox is strictly transgender because she is within the male/female binary.

Seph, a mathematician interviewed for Transmedia Watch, says, “I often feel like people like me are invisible.” Non binary people deserve to be respected and acknowledged. If you’re not sure what a person’s gender is, it’s recommended you use the pronoun they/them until you’re sure. Their gender should not be erased, and bullying and being hateful isn’t going to change their gender.

http://transmediawatch.org/Documents/non_binary.pdf

https://www.genderspectrum.org/quick-links/understanding-gender/

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21788238

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/laverne-cox-we-live-in-a-binary-world-it-can-change-9461564.html

http://www.hercampus.com/entertainment/laverne-cox-first-transgender-individual-get-wax-figure

If you are like me, or one of the many other young people who will be voting in next year’s presidential election, you may wondering who to cast your ballot for. You may be looking at prominent billionaire and republican candidate Donald Trump, or former first lady Hillary Clinton. But what if I were to tell you that there was an even better option, a candidate who would help out young people like me and you, and help pave the way for a more affordable and painless future.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders is campaigning to bring an affordable college plan that would make all public colleges and universities tuition-free. While other democratic candidates are also putting forth plans to make college more affordable, Sanders’ plan takes it a step further. This plan, known as the College For All Act, which was released last may, claims that it will eliminate federal profit from student debt and would make refinancing for students much more favorable. According to his website, Sanders’ program plans to get the funding for this endeavor from the place that he constantly harbors for sending our country into an economic crisis- Wall Street. With this arrangement the government would be covering 67% of the cost, while the states would be responsible for the remaining 33%, thus making college tuition free. For everyone.

Mr. Sanders’ college plan is an exciting proposition for young people around the country. It would ultimately eliminate not only college tuition, but years of stress and crippling debt. Plans like these have been successful in many other countries around the world, and it can be successful here as well, as long as we vote Bernie.