WEDNESDAY | 3.29.2017 | MACEANDCROWN.COM | Vol. 60, Issue 21
The Struggle is Real
Hannah Kristan Contributing Writer
While splitting her time between staying up all night to maintain her 4.0 GPA for her bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, winning races for her NCAA Division I swimming team, speaking three languages and updating her popular Instagram page, it’s difficult to understand why Julia Vido would not be welcome to stay in the U.S. Though she seems to embody the American dream, the Brazilian student and varsity athlete may not be able to stay in the country after her graduation this spring, given the ex-
tremely difficult path to citizenship. With such an impressive resume, her situation begs an answer to the question: Who is eligible to earn citizenship in the U.S.? When Vido was recruited to join a swimming team in the U.S., she knew that citizenship was her longterm goal. This was especially true considering that her field of study, engineering, was not a lucrative or plausible career in Brazil. “I’m not a refugee. I can definitely go home, but with the way the economy is in Brazil I will never be able to work there as an engineer. Everyone I know in Brazil who is an engineer
has been laid off and every student I know who studied engineering is unemployed or had to reconsider their careers. There’s just no option for it because of the way the current economy is,” Vido said. Vido, as well as her two sisters who also have hopes of living in the U.S., have known that they wanted a life in America ever since they were young. The three sisters all share Division I athletic titles and dreams of being able to call themselves American citizens. “My big sister, Clara, and little sister, Fernanda, played volleyball when they were young for the same
club team that I swam on in Brazil. Clara used to come play a tournament in the United States when she was a teenager and she fell in love with the country. Once Fernanda and I later visited her at Louisiana Tech where she played for their Volleyball team, we knew that we would also pursue NCAA athletics so that we could go to school here, too. In America, you work hard and are rewarded. My sisters and I all wanted that. In America, you can earn the life you want,” Vido said. see STRUGGLE, page A4
try and fishing industry, presumably because it makes the place feel more “real.” The eponymous Rangers are no longer afterschool special teens, and instead are all mopey teenage degenerates primarily defined by everyone having a uniquely sad background. Zordon is a fallen former Ranger, and the Rangers definitely do kill their enemies. Fun! Perhaps it was foolish to assume that the modern movie version of the Power Rangers would be an exact rendition of its children’s show counterpart (especially since that
failed miserably back in 1995 with the original movie). This version seems completely ashamed of its source material, yet is still bound to making something that is recognizably the Power Rangers. The world is dark, gritty and gloomy; but people are still saying things like “Zeo Crystal,” “Morphing Grid” and “Rita Repulsa” with poe-faced sincerity. It creates a weird dissonance where it’s impossible to take any of it seriously, much less generate any kind of emotional involvement or interest. see RANGERS, page B1
Is Morphin' Time Over? Ross Reelachart Technology Editor There’s a scene in “Power Rangers” where the original theme song from the ‘90s television show played, and I momentarily got into the movie. The moment lasted barely ten seconds before the classic theme faded out, only to be replaced by the same old generic orchestral bombast and Kanye’s “POWER.” This best summarizes the feeling of watching franchise creator Haim Saban try to update this famous piece of media for the modern world of blockbuster cinema. “Power
Rangers” tries so hard to be modern and serious that it almost completely forgets that it’s based on a silly children’s cartoon, which started as an American repurposing of a Japanese television show. In an ill-advised attempt to modernize the over-20-year-old franchise into a superhero-esque movie, “Power Rangers” strips all the camp and color from its setting and characters. Angel Grove is no longer some kind of Californian sunny town. Instead, it’s now some downtrodden Midwestern(?) town that has both a mining indus-
PAX On PAX Off Brooke Nicole Contributing Writer One of gaming’s biggest and innovative technology conventions in the nation was recently held in Boston over the weekend of March 10-12. The convention, which is an east coast offshoot of the Seattle-based convention PAX West, covered everything from upcoming video game releases to the newest gaming technology on the market. Thousands of gamers from all over the world crowded the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in droves. They waited in lines a mile long, with snow falling on their meticulously crafted cosplay, just to be the first ones inside. PAX East had come to town, and it was calling to them. Aside from the multitude of panels and live streams running continuously throughout the convention all three days, every big-name gaming brand you can think of was present at PAX, such as Blizzard, Nintendo, Bethesda and more. A couple of major announcements and updates from a few triple-A gaming companies were finally revealed. TellTale Games announced that the next episode in the third season of "The Walking Dead: A TellTale Series" would be released by the end of March. THQ Nordic had quite a few new announcements to share, such as bringing some of their popular games, like "de Blob," and "Sine Mora Ex," back to players in remastered editions, while simultaneously giving updated release dates for both. Adult Swim surprised gamers by announcing its huge lineup of upcoming games such as "ToeJam & Earl," "Kingsley," and "Steven Universe: Save the Light." see PAX, page D1
HELTPED WAN
see page A2