BINGHAMTON REVIEW
Dear Readers,
From the Editor
Hello folks. Aiden here, reporting from my humble abode (my cluttered apartment). After a week of attending really really REALLY long history lectures, it’s nice to finally sit down and bring you all another issue of Binghamton Review. Recently I’ve been obsessed with staring at my golden pothos plant sitting on my mini fridge in my room. It brings me great joy to see new little leaves shoot out towards the sun. Being a new plant owner and seeing how much I enjoyed my greenery, I was very tempted to stop by Habitat for Humanity’s tent on the Spine and buy a plant for a good cause. Sadly, prior obligations (attending Italian class) prevented me from buying the whole table! I like plants.
You know what I don’t like: Presidential debate talk. I know I know, we’re the Binghamton Review and we publish a lot of political content. But when I’m standing in the line of Dunkin’ in the Union and I hear someone say “Man, what a great debate!” I lose all hope in the median voter. Then again, the median voter has the IQ of a box of rocks. That’s why I’ve coined the nickname Aiden “Median Voter” Miller. Enough of the politics talk. Let’s get down to business!
We cooked up a good issue for all you Reviewers out there! The main appetizer for our patrons is Editor Emeritus Arthur O’Sullivan’s article discussing the “meme-ification” of 9/11 on page 7. Truly a horrible tragedy. The entree for all you hungry readers is Angelo DiTocco’s article “A Comprehensive Review of My Inbox,” where he gives you a brief analysis of the horrors of having a @binghamton.edu email address. You can all feast on that article on page 8. For dessert, check out Binghamton Blake’s poem excoriating Binghamton slum lords and dorm life on page 10.
I got too excited and finished too fast. Anyways, I really hope you all enjoy the feast!
Sincerely,
Aiden Miller
Our Mission
Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run news magazine founded in 1987 at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives. The mark of true maturity is being able to engage with these perspectives rationally while maintaining one’s own convictions. In that spirit, we seek to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and offer alternative viewpoints not normally found on campus. We stand against dogma in all of its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the tenents of free expression and believe all sudents should have a voice on campus to convey their thoughts. Finally, we understand that mutual respect is a necessary component of any prosperous society. We strive to inform, engage with, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission.
Views expressed by writers do not necessarily represent the views of the publication as a whole.
Advice Column
I offered to give you all life advice. These were your questions.
How do I keep myself from feeling bad when I have a comically overstuffed bacon sandwich and the cashier is a nice Muslim lady?
If anything, she should be pitying you. After all, she’s not the one going to hell.
I’m a freshman living in Old Rafuse and my roommate literally NEVER leaves his room. Where the hell can I go to beat off?
Simple. Just start tenderizing your meat right in front of him. Not only will this assert your dominance, but it will also drive him away, giving you more time alone to shake hands with President Johnson. It’s a win-win!
What is the quietest place on campus to study?
Zeta Phi
I accidentally signed up for “Marxist Decolonialism in St. Vincent and the Grenadines” right before the Add/Drop deadline passed. Will anything bad happen if I withdraw from this class?
President Stenger will come to your room while you are sleeping and carve the letter W into your skin. It’s up to you to decide whether that’s worth it depending on your ability to succeed in the course.
My adderall is wearing off and I can’t get my work done anymore! What’s the best substitute?
Have you tried just locking the fuck in?
I got kicked out of Bartle while minding my own business playing HuniePop at max volume. Are there any other quiet places I can go to do this?
There’s this church right next to campus you can go to called Newman House. There, you can find God.
Where can I get “safer sex supplies” on campus? I tried looking in the bathrooms but the dispenser thingies were all empty.
Have you tried taking the casing off of a hot dog? They’re only $1.86 at the dining hall, and you can even add cheese for 50 cents.
I left my laptop open in the library to go to the bathroom and while I was gone, my friend looked up porn on it! Am I in trouble?
Written by our Staff
I looked through the WHOLE code of conduct and there was NO reference to gooning whatsoever. You are safe, my friend. Just close the brazzy books and get on with your day.
How come my friend could get into a frat but I couldn’t? I’m the dude here, shouldn’t they let me in????
She’s the reason they come, and the reason they cum
I wrote a story about the twin towers falling in love with each other for my creative writing class. Do you think this will get a good grade?
Mother of God…
What is the longest, most painful method of killing people who play music or eat loudly in the Fine Arts section of Bartle Library?
Spork
Is my lifetime enough to break the familial cycle of disordered eating and emotional instability? I don’t want my daughter to raise me.
Probably.
How do I get my psychiatrist to treat me like a human? They don’t even look at me, and when they do it’s a terrible mixture of pity, disgust, and indifference so extreme that I’d actually prefer they keep staring at their computer. Also, is it eugenics if they keep trying to prescribe me medication that has previously made me asexual?
A sexual what?
How do I get my mentally ill patients to stop expecting to be treated like humans? It’s normally not so hard to gaslight such a vulnerable population into believing they deserve whatever I decided to dish out that day.
A sexual what?
Can you tell I am beyond frustrated with mental health care? How do you propose we fix this system? Please formulate your answer in 50 words or less.
Two words: Freddy Fazbear
Need life advice? Email manager@binghamtonreview.com for more wacky, quirky, and zany responses.
Can You Find Your Way to Lab?
Generated by our Staff, based on the genius of Binghamton Construction Amalgamated Inc. LLC. & Co.
I Hate Editing
By Angelo DiTocco
It’s so annoying. It takes forever to do and it’s hard to get any satisfaction out of it. Writing is fun. Gaming is fun. Editing is not fun.
“Then why the hell did you become the Managing Editor?” Well, I apologize for any confusion I may have caused you. When I said, “editing is not fun,” I wasn’t talking about the kind of editing I do to Binghamton Review articles. I actually enjoy going through the articles other people write, seeing what they have to say, and figuring out how I can make them shine even more. What I’m ranting about is a different kind of editing: video editing.
I’ve already brought up my YouTube channel more times than I can count in this publication. Aside from these articles, it’s my only semblance of a personality. I think it’s super cool to make videos that I can share with the world (even if most of them are just slightly edited Minecraft recordings), and it’s hard to imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t make them. With that being said, the process isn’t always easy.
I’m currently working on what is easily my biggest project yet, not only in terms of YouTube but probably in my whole life as well. It’s 7 months in the making: 4 months for the in-game challenge itself and over 3 months spent editing so far. Yet I’m still only halfway done with the video. When I finally finish it, you can bet your ass there’s gonna be a full-page ad in the Review for it (if space allows).
The abundance of free time seems to create a vicious cycle of burnout. I’ll have a couple days where I do nothing but edit, but then I’ll get bored and spend the next week doing basically nothing.
You might be thinking that this video must be completely insane if it’s taking me this long to edit it. It’ll be my best video yet, sure, but the production value will be much closer to that of the average Minecraft YouTuber. You won’t be seeing any topof-the-line graphics or anything like that. So what’s taking me so long?
The first problem is motivation. You’d think that during the summer where I had double the free time, I’d be able to churn out the video at Mach speed. However, I have a bit of a skill issue. The abundance of free time seems to create a vicious cycle of burnout. I’ll have a couple days where I do nothing but edit, but then I’ll get bored and spend the next week doing basically nothing. Add on a couple trips and factor in my desire to actually get out and enjoy the good weather while I can, and you end up with only 29% of the video done in a whole 104 days of summer vacation. Luckily, my motivation is sorta coming back, so if all goes well, I’ll be done sometime in October (knocks on wood).
My summer schedule
The second problem is perfectionism. I’ve already said that I have high expectations for this video. I might have given up on implementing all the professional-looking graphics that are so commonly used by many of today’s big-time YouTubers (because the video would then take me years to finish), but I still want it to be the best thing I can reasonably produce. I have a team of early access reviewers to whom I send parts of the video as I create them. That way, I can get feedback as I go. My stuff is generally received well, but I do often end up having to rewrite sections of the script and remake bits and pieces of the video in order to more clearly explain something or cut out boring stuff. In fact, there was a whole 11-minute section of the video that I had to get rid of almost entirely because I just kept yapping too much.
Lastly, there’s the fact that editing itself just takes a fuck ton of time. It often takes over an hour of editing just to get a minute of the video done. Some of this is admittedly my fault for not taking the time to learn the full potential of my editor, but at the same time, DaVinci Resolve is such a complicated program that I’d be surprised if anyone knew all the things it could do.
It baffles me how many YouTubers (especially the ones who don’t hire editors) are able to pump out content so quickly. From getting all the footage to writing and reading the script to putting everything together, it’s hard to comprehend how a well-edited, long-form video can be made in a couple weeks or even days. I guess it helps if YouTube is one’s job, but if that were the case for me, then I would actually hate editing, and I wouldn’t just be exaggerating to make the article title more flashy.
“Did We Forget?” 9/11 and Bing Review Humor
Sit down, kids. It’s time for a zoomer who was born after 9/11 to yap about this national tragedy to an audience of other zoomers even further removed from 9/11. Has anybody noticed that it’s become safe to joke about now? Sure, jokes about the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people probably started by midnight September 12th. Yet at some point in the intervening 23 years, 9/11 jokes went from being too extreme for TV networks (such as Gilbert Gottfried’s “Empire State Building lay-over joke”), to an endless barrage of them being aired on Family Guy, to edgy memes posted on Vine and MLG edits on YouTube by teens born around 2002, before finally becoming what it is now: a subject more safe to joke about (at least among younger people) than chicken-road-crossing patterns.
Is this a bad thing? In me writing this article, is “Gen Z trying to cancel 9/11 memes”? Far from it. The working title for this article is “nining leven bitch,” in reference to the world-famous tweet that I can hardly look at without wheezing.
But still, isn’t it odd that Gen Z, infamous for being cautious and hypersensitive on the internet (i.e. Twitter), in large part finds 9/11 a completely safe subject? Basically any mild inconvenience will at some point be described by a zoomer as a “personal 9/11,” yet these same kids will go “EEEEEEYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIKES” whenever someone posts anything else from the pre-2018 “edgy” internet. Now you might go, “Arthur old man, are you really making sweeping generalizations without any evidence and based entirely on vibes?” To that I say: of course! I’m talking about petty meme culture on the internet. Basing my thesis on anything more than vibes would do it a disservice. There is no data on the internet. It’s all just the meaningless ramblings of the terminally-online-disconnected-from-reality-pale-Smeagols who cause 80% of Twitter engagement from a room that hasn’t seen sunlight since Bush was president.
This is, in an elliptical way, my explanation for the “9/11 safe-edgy phenomenon.” This is a moral inversion: things that are trivial or childish in real life, like one’s taste in video games or anime, are matters of indescribable importance—of fundamental identity—on Twitter and the internet; meanwhile things that are significant in real life become defanged, meme-ified, and generally unmoored from their moral roots. Back during the Barbenheimer craze last year, the internet drama around Barbie getting snubbed for an Oscar was intense enough that Hillary Clinton sent a tweet about it (probably from an old bathroom closet in a downtown Denver loft). Meanwhile, when some Japanese internet no-lifers tried to express grievance with the Barbenheimer meme, it was largely received with chortles and elaborations on the meme.
So what am I getting at? Am I trying to convey that 9/11 should be more taboo again? Am I just elaborately sneaking in 9/11 memes that I personally find funny? Am I rambling be-
By Arthur O’Sullivan
cause my thoughts are disorganized? It’s really a combination of the three.
As the Editor Emeritus of a paper that prides itself on free speech, I could never categorically declare something off-limits, no matter the context. This is especially true of humor, where taste is the only real judge and justification. The problem is not, in my view, that “kids these days” are too insensitive about 9/11; it’s that they’re too sensitive about everything else! They’re too wrapped up in trivialities, despite—or perhaps because of—how desensitized they are to major tragedies assaulting our feed all day.
That’s not to say that all edgy jokes are funny, and that nothing’s ever off-limits. I mentioned “taste” before, and while there’s no scientific formula for deciding whether something is in good taste, there are a few indicators which a discerning reader and editor could use:
[1] Intent—was the joke actually made in a good spirit, or is there some kind of bitterness or “shock for shock’s sake” underlying it?
[2] Skill—how much thought and effort was put into the joke or meme, its construction, its flow? In a meme, a good edit will always beat a lazy AI generation.
[3] The laugh/offense ratio—similar to point 2, how hard does the audience laugh compared to their discomfort at the edginess?
For 9/11, or any other massive tragedy, slacking on any of these three things should indicate that the joke isn’t good enough for publishing, on the internet or anywhere.
This is the standard to which I hope we adhere in Binghamton Review, now and in the future. As a collegiate “free speech” magazine, our jokes haven’t exactly been as clean and anodyne as say, Jim Gaffigan. But they also haven’t been the most skillful and tasteful either. This 9/11, we are reminded of the eternal tightrope on which the jester dances. And for all the freshmen who don’t even know what 9/11 is:
A Comprehensive Analysis of My Inbox
There once was a time when communication was simple. In order to communicate with those from distant lands, you had to either spin a little wheel around on your rotary phone, send them letters by mail, or visit them in person. But that all changed when James Email invented the email in 2013. Now people can send ridiculous requests or advertisements to you at any hour of the day, and in today’s attention economy, they are quite persistent in doing so.
A wise man by the name of Arthur O’Sullivan recently said, “it’s a lot easier to write agitated than comfortable,” and he was 100% right. As such, I will now proceed to categorize all the absurd and pointless messages that I receive via my school email account every single day, and hopefully, after reading it, you too will have a strong desire to live in the woods like Uncle Ted.
Clubs I Don’t Care About
I’ve been in this situation more times than I can count: I’m at UFest or one of its many spin-offs, when an e-board member of some random club I’ve never heard of is suddenly all up in my face begging me to join it. Perhaps this e-board member is my friend’s friend’s friend whom I’m trying to be nice to, or maybe she’s a perfect 10 who channels my inner SIMP. Whatever the case may be, I write my name and email address on the sign-up sheet for the Mixed-Race Interpretive Gooning Society, knowing full well I’m just gonna leave halfway through the GIM.
Although these clubs are no longer a part of my life, their ghosts still haunt me forever in the form of their newsletters. Their weekly-or-so notifications serve as a constant reminder of my lack of commitment, but at the same time, they’re just infrequent enough that I don’t bother unsubscribing from them.
Ads That Don’t Apply
to Me
I don’t know a lot about economics, but I do know about the saying, “the customer is always right in matters of taste.” So as a “customer” of the Watson School of Engineering, I ask the higher-ups: what makes you think I’ll change my mind the fourth time (I counted) you advertise the new summer class with gen-ed attributes I already have? No matter how interesting you make Intersectional TikTok Studies out to be, I’m not paying an extra $2000 just to do a bunch of worksheets and essays without ever seeing the professor in the flesh.
It doesn’t stop at classes either. I’ve also gotten these advertisements for various “Women in STEM™” clubs as well as a literal sorority. As much as I respect female scientists and engineers, I am simply not one of them. Maybe those people who put pronouns in their email signatures are up to something—I need to let these advertisers know that just because I go sitting down doesn’t mean I’m a woman.
By Angelo DiTocco
Jobs and Internships I Won’t
Get
Imagine you’re looking for a date. You could take the traditional, tried-and-true (though not by me) route of approaching people in real life and making connections, or you could swipe endlessly on one of the many degenerate dating apps with no success. Looking for jobs is not that much different, with the job market’s “dating apps” being platforms like Indeed, LinkedIn, and Handshake. These platforms continue to send me emails in the hopes that I’ll waste my valuable time chasing after the businesses they decide to shill for. By looking at the job postings themselves, I can see that these companies are out of my league anyway. For example, they might be looking for experience in every single programming language except the ones I learned in school. Even if I could get the job, it would be a painful long-distance commute from my home in the middle of nowhere, so I’ll probably just go my own way and work at the concession stand again.
That’s not to mention all the catfish who tempt you with promises of extremely easy remote jobs that pay $400 for 3 hours. You’d think that with BU’s Draconian requirement for everyone to have two-factor authentication, these scams wouldn’t be a thing, but nope, I guess even that’s not secure enough.
Classmates Bothering Me
Now, I might be a lifelong STEM enthusiast, but there is one art form I practice often—the art of procrastination. Unfortunately, this art form has become a lot harder in recent years with online communication becoming the norm. What used to be my time to relax and watch some fatal car crash compilations now gets constantly interrupted by messages like, “hey why haven’t you started your slide yet we’re supposed to present tomorrow,” to which I have to painstakingly reply, “fuck off i told you i was gonna get it done while the other group is presenting.” Even when the upcoming due date is not for a group project, I still get loads of simpletons in my inbox asking for “help” (answers). One guy just straight-up said “let’s cheat on the online test together” and sent me a Discord link.
Conclusion
There tends to be a long-standing joke about meetings that could have been an email, but they often forget how annoying emails themselves can be. Whether it be a fellow student pestering me at odd hours of the night, an advertisement for something I’ll never care about, or something I once subscribed to long ago, it seems that every new message I receive in my inbox has only a 1% chance of being useful. As cool as modern technology can be, this barrage of spam only leaves me wanting to return to the good old days of 2011 when the carrier pigeon was still around.
Parking Paranoia & Paver Problems
If you are a human being who attends Binghamton University you know all too well that to move from place to place you have to either use your legs or a vehicle with either two, three, or four wheels. If you’re one of these people, then this is the article for you! Traveling around campus can be a tough task. Students encounter many different situations, but inevitably everyone will encounter these two main issues: loose pavers and parking problems.
Parking Paranoia
If you’re a freshman you may want to skip over this section or stay if you want a sneak peak of what’s waiting for you in the future.
It’ll come as no surprise that owning a car and attending Binghamton University is like trying to mix water and oil: it just doesn’t work. Oftentimes, owning a car in Binghamton will make you question why you even got your driver’s license in the first place! Owning a car up in Binghamton is SO BAD, it’s hard to come up with a list of positives. This section is called “Parking Paranoia” for a reason, people!
But what’s there to be paranoid about? Well, everything.
The paranoia kicks in right after you’re done lugging inside all your dorm room decor (blankets, pillows, plants, Weezer’s 30th Anniversary Blue Box Set featuring 36 previously unreleased tracks, and things of that nature). Did you buy your parking pass? If not, your car’s already been ticketed for a parking violation despite being there for 25 minutes.
Once you sort that out and fork over the $150 plus for the Residential parking pass, it’s great to know that you’re limited to parking in less than half of the available parking lots. To make matters worse, students with Commuter parking passes can park in the residential parking lots, leaving you nowhere to park! Keep that in mind when you randomly park by the East Gym to get a run in, promptly forgetting that you parked in a commuter lot and have a fat $40 ticket sitting underneath your windshield wiper. Or when you feel like going to grab Chipotle at 1 pm on a Tuesday and come to find that your entire residential parking lot is filled to the brim, forcing you to do the walk of shame back to your dorm from Lot H.
God forbid you park in a Commuter lot or forget to put your flashers on when unloading groceries from your car, Binghamton’s Secret Police, Parking Services, will be there to swiftly hand you a ticket and move on to their next victim. Seeing a Parking Services car is the equivalent of seeing a cop car roll past a house party: If you’re breaking the rules you know what’s coming your way.
If Parking Services wasn’t bad enough, they even hate disabled people!
By Rob A. Karr
Paver Problems
Walking, as most humans do, can be tough. What’s even tougher than walking is walking on paving stones. You know, those little stones that aren’t bricks, but are brick-like, but also aren’t brick colored. For the sake of cutting corners, Binghamton University chose to use paving stones as the primary walkway for nearly all of campus. That means tens of masons had to endure the BRUTAL Binghamton weather, painstakingly laying tens of thousands of cheap paving stones for the intelligent and bright students of this university to use.
However, paving stones suck. They erode quite quickly, come loose from their mortar often, and consistently crack under the weight of the maintenance trucks that plow the pathways in the frigid Binghamton winter. The Paver Problem is a never-ending cycle.
Phase 1: Crack the Paver
Since pavers are so cheaply made, they crack easily. Prime examples of pavers cracking include but are not limited to snow plows, box trucks, fat people, and things of that nature.
Phase 2: Neglect
Once a paver is cracked, it goes neglected. In a perfect world the grounds crew would swiftly swoop in and mark the paver as cracked, replace it, and go on with their day. But unsurprisingly (it is Binghamton after all), that doesn’t happen. Usually, the paver has to be cracked or loose for about 3 months before it goes noticed by the grounds crew.
A rite of passage as a Binghamton student is walking on a normal rainy day and stepping on a loose paver, causing a splash mixture of dirt and rainwater to soil your trousers, ruining your outfit for the Lockheed Martin job fair. That’s a certified Binghamton classic!
Despite not fixing the pavers right away, you have to have some sympathy for the grounds crew. It’s not their fault that the walkways are made of pavers. That decision is way above their pay grade. And don’t forget about the one poor soul they send out onto the Spine to fix the 167 loose or cracked pavers in an attempt to prevent the Spine from looking like the Highway of Death.
As walkers and drivers, who’s to blame? Who do we as a student body struggling to navigate campus throw all out ill toward? Probably Baxter…
The Bearcat’s Cry
By Binghamton Blake
In my previous article, I lauded the Binghamton area for the relative cheapness of its rent. In the interest of space and keeping the article positive, I didn’t mention the downsides to this “discount.” First, as more students come to Binghamton—especially affluent ones— landlords will raise rates due to the limited supply; second, much of off-campus housing is in an atrocious condition, and will only get worse if trends continue. Hidden gems like my (mostly) functional four-bedroom house which I rented for $430 a month in undergrad are disappearing, and even the ostensibly “nice” places—with very interesting perspectives on fire safety—are becoming slums since demand can be met no matter what. But there I went, wandering into grievance in an article about the positives of Binghamton. This is not to mention how aggravating dorm room living can be, which causes people to flee to these terrible places.
However, instead of discussing my issues directly and exposing them in this article (I’ll save those for the courts, should we come to it), I’ve decided to embrace my Irish roots and repress my anger, expressing it only in a meandering poem that doesn’t go anywhere. This may only make sense to me, and resonate with my problems alone. If you’ve experienced Binghamton housing rip-offs, you’ll understand… Without further elaboration, I give you the Bearcat, by Binghamton Blake.
(Editor’s note: all verbs ending in “-ed” should have it pronounced as such. Normal pronunciation of words will end with “-’d” instead. For example, “preserved” is three syllables; “caus’d” is one.”)
Bearcat bearcat, burning bright, In preserved nature’s night, What collegiate hand or eye, Could frame thy equanimity?
In what shameful dorms or slums, Burned a fire caus’d by bums, Lofting smoke from weed afire, Or some spark from faulty wire.
And what clamor, and what start, Would shock the sinews of thy heart, When alarms began to bleat, What dread movement drove thy feet?
What the hammer?! What the chain?! In what furnace was their brain, To strew these items on the ground, ‘fore you moved in, and chaos found?!
When the landlord went to Sears, And water’d checkbooks with his tears: Did he smile his work to see?! Did he who led the tour make thee?!
Bearcat bearcat, burning bright, Shiv’ring now in winter’s night: Remember rent is due today. After all, you’re sure to pay.
The Confounding Career of Nicholas Galitzine
Having recently rewatched Challengers for the third time, I found myself admiring Josh O’Connor’s performance in comparison with what I first watched him in years ago: God’s Own Country. Both are racy but have significantly different levels of energy. Between the two films, he appears as two entirely different people, and it’s more than the time between they were filmed. He knows how to hold himself. He can appear smug or ashamed. He is weird and lovely, and his thighs captivate me.
While noting all this I was reminded of another actor who also happened to have humble beginnings in a fantastic indie film, one whose career I’ve watched closely for the sincere absurdity in it. Yes, Nick Galitzine, of that one weird Camila Cabello Cinderella movie and Anne Hathaway’s MILF Amazon film, was once in a little and truly well-done movie.
The year? 2016. The film? Handsome Devil. The soundtrack? My personal favorite. Handsome Devil takes place at an all-boys school in a place and time where different is bad and bad means outcast. Galitzine’s character becomes good friends with his new roommate, who embodies all that is different. Meanwhile, Galitzine juggles trying to keep his good standing on the school rugby team by covering up why he was kicked out of his old school. The movie is fantastic and I cannot recommend it enough (I quote “the ting, the ting!” probably daily). It’s a coming-of-age story with a great color palette, fantastic acting, and little praise.
But where Galitzine went from there has confounded me for years. Why had he not followed the path of Josh O’Connor? He too brought a unique character to life. First, it should be said that Handsome Devil was not his first film. That happened to be The Beat Beneath My Feet, a silly little movie about a rockstar. While avoiding tax fraud the musician pretends to be dead and teaches a kid to play rock music. Silly, but original.
Moving forward, in 2016 another movie comes out called High Strung – the first of many romances for our man Galitzine.
By AJW
Between 2016 and 2024 he will not miss a single year of projects.
2017 is a strange year as he is in his first two horror films, The Changeover and The Watcher in the Woods. This is a theme that will end quickly genre-wise, but if you’ve seen the 2021 Cinderella, anything could be argued. The Changeover is rated significantly better than the latter, though they both seem to really believe in their own sauce. I think the actors definitely know the kind of movie they’re in—one that appears low-budget and that the majority of the world won’t know about—but they pump some life into it nevertheless.
2018 is slow, with a sequel called High Strung Free Dance, though Galitzine does not reappear as a main character. The following year brings Chambers. This is the first TV show Galitzine is part of, and the genre is also horror. There is also Share, an internet-based thriller. In 2020 he is in The Craft: Legacy, a sequel to the 1996 movie The Craft
The next few years are when he really starts to make headway into the public’s eye. 2021 comes with Cinderella. 2022 has the utterly confounding Purple Hearts. 2023 is a well-known and classic year with a double feature of Bottoms and Red, White, and Royal Blue. Finally, just this year, comes The Idea of You. Amazon just cannot get enough of this guy.
All of these films are odd for their own reasons, and all had a moment in the spotlight. Cinderella got attention not only for being yet another rendition of the fairytale, but came with an insane star-studded cast including Idina Menzel, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, and more. Purple Hearts was another Netflix attempt at enemies-to-lovers fanfiction with the odd twist of being weirdly political. In a PR decision worthy of Johnny Depp, this is followed by a raunchy and silly coming-of-age movie, followed by literal foreign affairs fanfiction. Finally, in the most confusing turn of events, with The Idea of You, he’s in fake One Direction and dating the Devil Wearing Prada herself. Like, huh?
But why do I care? Why have I kept an eye on every project I know this man is in? Because I don’t get it. When I say I think he’s talented I don’t mean I think he’s hot and can memorize lines. I think he knows how to act. But how much more does Amazon pay him to make heart eyes at attractive costars than John Butler did to attempt to make some real statement? I bet it’s a lot more. And capitalizing on a symmetrical bone structure is probably a safer bet at some point. Isn’t that what Margot Robbie started a career on? My only hope is that he is able to make a real career out of it as she had done because I struggle to believe that someone who worked on something so lovely early on is willing to sell his likeness for any paycheck. Entertainment doesn’t have to be found in Harry Styles Wattpad stories, I promise.
If MrBeast were a Recruiter
By Angelo DiTocco
“I GATHERED 100 COLLEGE STUDENTS, AND WHOEVER IMPRESSES ME THE MOST GETS THIS $120,000 INTERNSHIP!”
The students all whispered to each other in excitement. They had no idea that by sending their applications to IBM, they were entering a contest hosted by the man himself, Jimmy Donaldson. What was he doing here? It wasn’t until one student looked MrBeast up on his phone that they learned what had happened: Jimmy had inexplicably quit his job as the world’s biggest YouTuber to become a hiring manager. As demonstrated by his videos, he was the perfect man for the job.
“THIS CONTEST HAS THREE DIFFERENT PHASES, AND IN EACH ONE, APPLICANTS WILL KEEP GETTING ELIMINATED! THE LAST ONE STANDING WINS!” said Jimmy, clearly having never heard the term “inside voice”.
“This is crazy!” said Karl Jacobs for no fucking reason.
“IN THE FIRST PHASE, WE’LL BE LOOKING YOU UP ON LINKEDIN!” The students quickly scrambled on their phones, making sure their LinkedIn profiles were as optimized as possible. Any mistakes and they were out of the race.
“Applicant number 3! Not enough technical skills listed! You are eliminated!” said Tyler, who had logged into LinkedIn on Jimmy’s account. The applicant stood up from her seat, disappointed. If only I had learned machine code, she thought to herself as she left the room.
“APPLICANT NUMBER 5! YOUR URL IS AUTO-GENERATED! GET OUT OF HERE!”
“Fuck!” the rejected student exclaimed. He had double-checked to make sure his profile itself was perfect, but he somehow forgot to change the link to include his name. We’ve all been there.
The MrBeast crew repeated this process until nearly half the contestants were out, leaving the remaining 56 applicants to move on to the next phase.
“NEXT, WE’LL BE LOOKING AT YOUR RÉSUMÉS!” roared Jimmy. A massive screen emerged behind him, showing every remaining contestant’s résumé simultaneously in a grid layout. “CHANDLER, I’LL LET YOU DO THE HONORS!”
Chandler looked at the screen for approximately three seconds before turning back to the crowd. “Applicants 1, 6, 10, 24, 40, 41, 54, 61, 71, and 75! You are eliminated!” He refused to explain his choices.
“WE STILL HAVE TOO MANY CONTESTANTS IN THIS ROUND, SO LET’S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK!” hollered Jimmy as he started pulling up each résumé individually. “APPLICANT NUMBER 7! THIS BULLET POINT IS WRITTEN IN THE PASSIVE VOICE! YOU’RE OUT! APPLICANT NUMBER 8! NO LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE! GET LOST! APPLICANT NUMBER 12…”
“You’re putting me on the edge!” moaned Kris Tyson, not to anyone in the room, but to a random 13-year-old in a Discord call.
“This is crazy!” said Karl, again, for no fucking reason.
“...YOU PUT A PERSONAL PRONOUN HERE! YOU ARE ELIMINATED!” finished Jimmy as applicant number 100 sighed and left the room. “AND THAT LEAVES ONLY 20 CONTESTANTS! IT’S TIME FOR THE FINAL PHASE: THE INTERVIEWS!”
Mark Rober entered the room from behind and got on stage. “We’ll be using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to assess your soft skills and your prior research of the company,” he said as Nolan handed out a tablet to each of the remaining applicants. “But be careful! If you get a question wrong, your device will explode!”
The screens started showing one interview question at a time, alongside a timer ticking down. Some students tried their best to answer the questions, but others panicked. One competitor threw his tablet across the room, but it was no use. The device grew propellers and flew towards him like a drone, exploding on impact. “BYE BYE, NUMBER 26!”
The questioning continued. Another student slipped up and used the word “middleman” instead of “middleperson.” Unfortunately for her, the AI model had been trained to follow the company’s DEI initiative. Applicant 56 was no more.
The other applicants mostly managed to answer the questions correctly, as they had done a lot of preparation. They were serious job hunters, after all. But after a few minutes, the impossible question showed up. Everyone’s screen read, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”
“Uh, making more money?” BOOM. Discussion of the salary was not allowed. 28 was down.
“At another company?” BOOM. Shoulda sucked up more, 84.
“Doin’ your wife?” BOOM. Goodbye, 69.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Only a few managed to survive by spouting some word salad about extra responsibilities and long-term career goals. “LET’S GO! NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE!” shouted Jimmy, his enthusiasm seemingly more genuine than before.
“I’M LOSING IT! OH!” yelped Kris, again to his underage Discord kitten. Now the shrapnel and blood weren’t the only substances covering the room.
The interview phase continued, with each wrong answer or even hesitation leading to a poor student’s explosive demise. The number of contestants steadily decreased through the single digits, with the chance of winning that coveted internship becoming more and more real for each survivor. “ONLY TWO APPLICANTS LEFT!” screamed Jimmy, now laughing maniacally.
“This is crazy!” repeated Karl. Could he shut the fuck up?
The last two no-lifers dedicated job hunters showed no signs of stopping, reflecting the hundreds of mock interviews they’d done to practice. They answered question after question as the minutes passed by. Would there ever be an end to it?
All of a sudden, the two contestants hit a weird question: “You’ve reached your free limit of GPT-4 usage. Subscribe now to get unlimited access!” The bombs were neutralized.
“GOD DAMMIT!” bellowed Jimmy, back in his normal voice. In an effort to maximize the profits of the company, he hadn’t thought to fork over the 20 bucks a month for the premium version of his generative AI program. “WHATEVER! IT’S TIME FOR SPLIT OR STEAL!”
Applicant 38 gulped. He had made it this far, and now the last thing standing between himself and the grand prize was the classic moral dilemma. If he chose to steal and 55 didn’t, he’d get the prize all to himself. But if they both stole, they’d get nothing.
Before he knew it, he was presented with the two buttons and began to think it through. $60K wouldn’t be great, but at least he’d have something for his first few years after graduation. He made his choice.
“ALRIGHT! THE RESULTS ARE IN! APPLICANT 38 CHOSE TO SPLIT, AND APPLICANT 55 CHOSE TO… STEAL! CONGRATULATIONS, NUMBER 55! YOU WON!”
“Thank you so much, Jimmy!” 55 exclaimed in shock and gratitude. “You’re the best cousin ever!”
The Meal Plan Scam
By Shane Rossi
Atthe fundamental level of human existence, eating is essential. Binghamton University is struggling to meet this basic need. The meal plan has failed to properly service the students, and instead has been used to benefit Sodexo and the University. Although their mission is education, in reality, they behave more like a corporation. Under the current system, students living in on-campus communities have to pay three thousand dollars for the meal plan. However, they are only given a measly 1000 dollars to spend. If you were to spend only 10 dollars a day (which no one does) you would still run out in 100 days, which is before the end of final exams. This means endlessly begging your parents or friends to help add to your balance, living off vending machines, or going to Walmart. Is this right?
How many students have gone hungry because they didn’t want to run out of balance? How many students have gone to the vending machine because their credit card would be charged double at the dining hall? One is too many.
should not have to carry the burden and costs of the dining services especially after it’s already paid for. But unfortunately, most do. Students are even taking out LOANS to get more food. This is out of control.
Binghamton University was founded as a place where people come to pursue a higher education and become productive members of society. At the fundamental level, the taxpayers have trusted our state government to support the SUNY system so we can build New York and the United States into both a prosperous state and nation. But right now, this is not happening. Binghamton University has instead become Binghamton Incorporated, a powerful machine that puts financial gain over the needs of its students.
But it gets worse. The reduction in food prices that they boast of is laughable. Sure, you can live off tomato soup and bring your own water bottle and only spend 93 cents. But who is actually doing that? If you buy the ready-made meals and a drink, it will cost around 6-8 dollars. And it’s even more if you purchase the commuter meal plan. So to sum up the costs, you pay 3000 dollars to get only 1000, the food is unaffordable with this balance, and you will likely run out halfway through the semester or even earlier in some cases. This is unacceptable. It doesn’t have to be this way. In SUNY Cortland, if you pay a flat price of 3500 dollars for their meal plan, you get unlimited swipes to a buffet-style food area and even get 450 dining dollars back. Now this is still not great, but compared to Binghamton, it’s night and day. And don’t even get me started about the quality. There is little to no variety, the food is boring and terrible, and nobody would pay for it if they did not live on campus.
Where does Binghamton University get its dining services? They contract a company called Sodexo which offers dining services for various public facilities such as hospitals and universities. Binghamton University upcharges students and then pays some of the money to this private company before pocketing the rest. It’s a pretty profitable business. While President Stenger has been collecting grants from the state and federal governments, students are begging their parents at three o’clock in the morning for just 100 more dollars in their balance so that they can make it another week. Binghamton’s dining services have especially failed the Jewish community with their meal plan options, with kosher items costing as much as 7-11 dollars per meal. That is simply not sustainable.
I have explained this issue to many people on campus, and every single person has agreed with me that this is a serious problem. How many students have gone hungry because they didn’t want to run out of balance? How many students have gone to the vending machine because their credit card would be charged double at the dining hall? One is too many. Parents
The bureaucracy in Binghamton runs very deep. Entrenched power and mediocrity have affected every aspect of the University.
Now, you may be asking yourself why any of this matters. Sure, the meal plan is terrible. But what can we do about it? We don’t set the costs to attend the university. Yes, this may be true. But without students, and without popular support, not one cart will move, not one teacher will teach, and not one dollar will be spent. That’s why I have decided to begin the formation of the Meal Plan Coalition. This will be a broad group of clubs, organizations, and students with the purpose of pressuring the university to change its policy. And I hope after reading this, you join me to stop this insanity. Here is the plan: First, we will form this organization with the support of many groups and students on campus. Once we have centralized that, we will hold a rally in the Union hall. There, we will discuss everything said here and more in front of a live audience. It will be very difficult to ignore. From there we can build a movement and implement change step by step until an agreement is reached. The test of a leader is not what he says but what he does. A leader must serve the people, not the other way around. The bureaucracy in Binghamton runs very deep. Entrenched power and mediocrity have affected every aspect of the University. While President Stenger has been driving around in a golf cart, students have had holds placed on their accounts, forced to either take out loans or drop out entirely. We can’t hope that Governor Hochul will do anything about it. The New York State government is even more entrenched in corruption than the ones that exist in SUNY schools. This is why we have to build a broad movement focused on making the university more affordable and liveable, relaxing the burdens of loans and credit card debt that many students, including those reading this, have had to deal with.
