Spartan Daily Vol. 160 No. 4

Mahan outlines mayoral plans

By Jillian Darnell STAFF WRITER

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan had his official inauguration on Wednesday at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts, where he discussed his goals for his term in office.

In the press conference, Mahan said he wanted to focus on bringing back the basics of managing the city, working to address issues such as houselessness, crime, public safety, community clean-ups and to promote residence engagement.

During the heavy rainfall that happened in early January, Mahan took action to support the houseless community by evacuating the streets and supplying them with emergency shelter.

Mahan also said he wants to extend

new programs and projects to continue supporting the houseless community through providing quick-build shelters that will offer the “basics.”

“We can’t wait for the next crisis,” he said. “We need basic safe spaces and services.”

Mahan discussed allocating funds for individuals who are houseless, including families.

“It’s common sense to spend a few thousand dollars to keep someone stably housed, they look for a job or support from a family member,” Mahan said.

During the press conference, he said taxpayers pay an estimated $65,000 per unhoused person every year.

Mahan said many residents of San Jose have complained about the unhealthy environment the city lives in. To solve this problem, he wants to promote more residence engagement with clean-up

programs that would uplift community beautification.

“We plan to get hundreds of residents out to directly play a role in cleaning up and beautifying their neighborhoods,” Mahan said. “We’ll be working to expand programs like San Jose Bridge and Cash for Trash which employs homeless residents and citywide cleanup efforts, giving them dignity of work and income and the opportunity to gain better skills and employment and housing along the way.”

San Jose resident Carl McRorie said the mayor made a lot of good points in his speech but that there’s nothing concrete about the houselessness situation.

“The homeless problem is going to get worse, the trash is going to get worse unless there’s some kind of hard resolution to solve it, it won’t be solved,” said McRorie.

In discussing the housing problem in San Jose, Mahan preferred to talk about residents who may potentially leave the city because of complaints given on the campaign trail.

When the mayor was pressed regarding what he meant about residents potentially leaving San Jose, Mahan said he was worried about the perception of the city and what the city can do to keep residents.

“You know, what I was referring to was really more about the sentiment of our community,” Mahan said. “We have not seen a mass exodus of people or businesses. We’ve seen some folks leave some businesses but that’s been at the margins.”

Mahan did not answer on plans to mitigate the cost of living in San Jose.

Coach Brennan talks new signees

By Oscar Frias-Rivera STAFF WRITER

In honor of National Signing day, San Jose State head football coach Brent Brennan held a press conference on Wednesday morning to talk about the Spartans’ new signees.

With the new National Collegiate Athletic Association rules regarding name, image and likeness and the transfer portal, the Spartans looked to get ahead by signing a mix of high school players and college transfers.

The new transfer rules state that a student-athlete can transfer to another school and not have to sit out a whole academic year. The rules also state that student-athletes can profit off of their name, image and likeness, something that was outlawed just two years ago. For the longest time, athletes in college were not able to be sponsored by anyone or anything due to the rule.

“I think people are paying attention to our process of improvement here,” Brennan said. I think people are aware [of our success] which is exciting to give us a chance to widen that scope a little bit.”

The players who are coming to SJSU are from all around California, from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. Of the top signees, sophomore transfer quarterback Jay Butterfield was one of the key commits for SJSU.

ALESSIO CAVALCA | SPARTAN DAILY

SJSU head football coach Brent Brennan holds a news conference to discuss the seven new football signees in the Gold Room at SJSU South Campus on Wednesday morning. Of the seven signees, five are incoming freshmen.

ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY

San Jose city mayor Matt Mahan speaks to members of the media before his inauguration, Wednesday afternoon at the San Jose Cent er for Performing Arts.

MAYOR

Continued from page 1

When questioned, he circled back to his original plan about the basics of improving the quality of life.

To focus on public safety, Mahan said he wants to invest in more recruitment for the police department to solve the low staffing issue and prioritize diversity in the hiring process.

“Talking about low staffing levels in our police department and while our city council committed to increasing staffing by 15 officers per year,” Mahan said. “In the next five years, I’ll be calling on us to double the rate at which we’re hiring police officers so that we can improve our response times.”

The mayor also discussed prioritizing expanding the 311 city service’s hotline and decreasing response time.

“Today our priority is on response time,” Mahan said. “Seven minutes, 23 minutes more than double

our performance.”

The mayor said he wants to invest in educating youth within San Jose by putting more funding into after-school programs, tutoring and creating more job opportunities.

deliver results. So I’m ready to work with all of my colleagues and I’m confident that the new appointees in addition to all my colleagues are ready to get to work.”

Mahan talked about

mental illness,” Mahan said. “We need to enable family and law enforcement and bystanders concerned by standards and to give them the ability to help people get the care that they need.”

with the rights of individuals with disabilities.

The CARE Court system is one of the institutions that potentially enable discriminatory policies against disabled people.

Overall, Mahan emphasized on prioritizing the quality of life for San Jose by engaging in his “back to the basics” plan.

Mahan said all of these issues will be a collaborative effort with the members of the city council. He mentioned working with experts on these several issues respectively and will regard each issue as a priority.

“We have incredible frustration out in the community on issues like public safety play calls for us to be highly collaborative,” Mahan said.

“Highly focused to get back to basics and to work together to

reforming state laws by investing in affordable housing, quick-build housing for the houseless and mental health.

The mayor spoke about mental health reform to aid those who are suffering from mental illness and addiction, but he hasn’t made any proposals as to what specific services will be conducted to engage in the reform.

“For those who are suffering from severe addiction and

Matt Mahan San Jose city mayor

He said he wants to implement a CARE court system as a part of his mental health reform.

CARE Court is a “coerced, court-ordered treatment system that strips people with mental health disabilities of their right to make their own decisions about their lives,” according to the Disability Rights California.

Disability Rights California is an organization dedicated to preventing policies and laws that limit or interfere

“If we focus on these basics, I’m confident the San Jose candidate will be a place where every resident newly immigrated or fifth generation blue collar tech founder, sort of a mailman or daughter of the mayor will find a brighter future and endless opportunity,” Mahan said.

Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @SpartanDaily

VTA 2050 plan: transit sustainability

By Matthew Gonzalez STAFF WRITER

The Valley Transportation Authority has developed the Valley Transportation Plan 2050, a proposal aiming to improve upon four main transportation categories: transit, highways and expressways, complete streets, and land use.

Each category has its own specific goals, sustainability in land use, efficiency with highways and expressways, safety for complete streets and transit will look to set the tone for what transportation will look like in Santa Clara County for the next 30 years.

Transit

The VTA has also created the Visionary Network for transit, a sub-plan it intends to adopt in December, 2023.

VTA senior transportation planner Janice SorianoRamos said at the forefront of the Visionary Network is the feedback the VTA gets from the public so proper adjustments can be made in regards to transportation infrastructures.

“We really want to make sure that we can incorporate some feedback that you may all have about what sort of amenities that [we] can provide,” Soriano-Ramos said. “Whether it be new benches, more shelters, more lighting so that you feel safer at night in those locations.”

VTA transportation planner John Sighamony said this secondary plan will greatly impact executing the transit aspect of Valley Transportation Plan 2050.

“We included the VTA Visionary Network for transit, that piece is actually going to play a major role in the Valley Transportation Plan 2050 process that is going to be our focus for transit for this plan.” Sighamony said. “It’s going to actually direct how we implement service in the upcoming years.”

Highways & Expressways

Sighamony said the overarching goal of the highways and expressways vision is efficiency.

“For our highways and expressways program, we do want to identify efficiency-based design practices for our projects,” he said. “We realized that we cannot build our way out of congestion,”

A secondary goal is to

decrease vehicle traveled miles, which directly correlates with congestion on the road, according to a sac.org report.

“We do want to decrease (vehicle miles traveled), but we’re still trying to figure out how to do that by what percentage,” Sighamony said.

Complete Streets

The Complete Streets Program aims to make the streets of Santa Clara County safer.

Sighamony said emphasizing the safety of non-drivers can help create more cohesive transportation overall.

“While we understand that a lot of people in this county drive . . . we have to understand that we have to make it safe for those that don’t drive,” Sighamony said. “There’s people that ride bikes, there are pedestrians and obviously the kinds of service we have to make them all of them kind of work in harmony.”

Similar to the Visionary Network for transit, the VTA wants to incorporate a similar plan named Vision Zero that could potentially save lives.

Vision Zero is an initiative that looks to reduce the amount of traffic deaths through

“quick-build data-driven safety improvements” such as paints and signs according to the City of San Jose “What is Vision Zero?” webpage.

“For our complete streets program, we do want to develop a Vision Zero program,” Sighamony said. “We want to really look at reducing incidents between pedestrians and bicycles and cars.”

Land Use

Sighamony said they recognized the VTA’s lack of authority in terms of land use outside of its existing stations.

He said partnering with

member agencies can help counteract difficulties with making their transit network a catalyst for homeness.

“We want to promote a jobs/housing balance and we really want to create a sense of place,” Sighamony said. “And a lot of this can only be done when we partner with our member agencies as they have a lot of land use authority.”

The main point of success the VTA would like to achieve with their land use is to become more environmentally-friendly.

Sighamony said an approach to achieving this is lowering driving time.

“The focus of this land use is

really to minimize the need to drive and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Sighamony said. Gretchen Baisa, VTA community outreach supervisor, said plans to continue listening and taking into consideration what the public has to say are in effect.

“We really appreciated the feedback and the conversations that we had with the community on these two efforts and we decided to hold these on a regular basis,” Baisa said.

Follow Matthew Gonzalez on Twitter @MattG2001

Crime Blotter

PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

It’s common sense to spend a few thousand dollars to keep someone stably housed, they look for a job or support from a family member.

SJSU students volunteer at non-profit

By Mat Bejarano

Curtis Asplund, physics and astronomy assistant professor at San Jose State, turned to an alternative teaching method by having students help the Santa Clara County community.

Asplund’s students volunteered at Sacred Heart, a San Jose-based nonprofit volunteer organization that offers programs such as food banks to utility assistance.

The students helped with outreach for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a federally funded program aimed at assisting low-income households, according to a ca.gov website.

“In physics, it’s not as common to talk about policy questions or how the subject really relates to you know society,” Asplund said. “My idea of creating the course in the first place was to change that.”

He also said the students’ role was to reach out to the families who were granted the money to survey them about their thoughts and opinions on the program.

However, there are more people who are in need of this kind of support.

Asplund said, while the energy assistance programs help those in need, there are still thousands of people who are left unaware that they too are eligible for the program’s assistance.

“They’re doing a great job, but they are trying to expand,” Asplund said. “But they don’t actually get it because either they don’t hear about it or they don’t sign up or they don’t have the proper language support.”

Physics graduate student Matthew Hahn was one of Asplund’s students. He said he enjoyed the class and feels as though he made a difference in the community.

“A lot of people I called were really grateful that they got the service and had someone to talk to about it,” Hahn said.

Sacred Heart director of energy Lorena Sánchez-Castañeda, said they work with many different universities

and high schools within the area.

“We’re always really excited to work with the educational institutions because we know the nature of Sacred Heart and our work,” Sánchez-Castañeda said. “This is our opportunity to engage young people in an organization that is close by.”

She said the program helps up to 10,000 families in Santa Clara County but still could be helping more families who are qualified for the program.

“Technically we only serve about 13% of the folks who are actually eligible for this program since we have eligibility income mandates that the families have to meet,” Sánchez-Castañeda said. “We’re constantly trying to push that out so that we can inform the community and create that pathway and that access

to the service.”

Daniel Maldonado, energy outreach specialist at Sacred Heart, said he helps volunteers with the training and spreading the word about the program and that training the students to make the calls took about an hour.

“We gave them a list of phone numbers and they sat there and they made the calls, the calls were to my team upstairs,” Maldonado said.

Maldonado said the students were nervous at first but encouraged them to have an open mindset when talking on the phone.

“The group of students we had were nervous, and I get it, you are going to be talking to strangers,” Maldonado said. “You’re going to hear some stories that are happy and some that are sad.”

Maldonado said with the year starting and new applicants applying, he hopes to see more student volunteers to help Sacred Heart’s goal of reaching those in need.

BRANDON NICOLAS | SPARTAN DAILY

Sacred Heart director of energy Lorena Sánchez-Castañeda discusses student-volunteer work at the Sacred Heart office on Tuesday.

FOOTBALL

Continued from page 1

Butterfield, who was a four-star recruit out of Liberty High School in Brentwood, California, committed to football powerhouse Oregon University coming out of high school. After two seasons of sitting on the bench, he decided to transfer after the 2022 season, choosing SJSU as his new home.

“He came down here and watched practice and I think for Jay it was getting an idea of what the quarterback room was like and what the scheme and how the whole program felt and he really enjoyed it,” said Brennan.

Though Brennan has said senior quarterback Chevan Cordeiro will remain the starter, he hopes that Butterfield and the other quarterbacks push each other

to elevate themselves. Cordeiro led the Spartans to a 7-5 record as a starter this past season and was an All-Mountain West second team player.

Foothill High School in Pleasanton, California, and turned down offers from California University, Berkeley and Washington State to come to SJSU.

Brent Brennan SJSU Football Head Coach

“Chevan is our quarterback and everybody knows that,” Brennan said. “But there’s real value in healthy competition and I’m hoping they push the heck out of each other.”

Another big signing for the Spartans was local linebacker Kade Millard.

Millard, who is currently a freshman, was a three-star recruit coming out of

“A real pass rusher … it’s always valuable when we can get a really good player from the Bay Area to stay home and choose us and we’re really excited about it,” said Brennan.

Millard was All-League player twice, was team MVP and team captain in his final two seasons of high school. He also led the

league in sacks for two seasons.

Senior running back Isaiah Ifanse is transferring out of Montana State to join the Spartans.

Ifanse holds Montana State’s all time record for the most rushing yards with 3,742. He also tied the record for MSU with 17 career 100-yard games.

“When he was looking to come home, this was just a really good fit for him and a good visit,” said Brennan.

With the departures of players like Elijah Cooks, Junior Fehoko and Cade Hall, Brennan said there was an emphasis to fill holes on both sides of the ball.

The Spartans will start spring training soon and fans will get a firsthand look at some of the new players.

Spartans look to snap losing streak

By Jillian Darnell

After coming off a 21-point loss to San Diego State on Saturday, the SJSU men’s basketball team will look to bounce back against the Wyoming Cowboys at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Provident Credit Union Event Center.

Wyoming, which is currently last in the Mountain West basketball standings with a current record of 7-14, previously had a losing streak of eight games earlier this season.

SJSU head coach Tim Miles emphasized the need for the Spartans to play solid defense on the Cowboys on Saturday.

“We have to play sound defense on them, they have a lot of offensive weapons,” Miles said. “We need a lot of threepointers, rebounding the ball well, giving them one contested shot and getting out. ”

Wyoming has won 16 games against SJSU. The Spartans have only won once back in 2016.

SJSU currently has a 12-game losing streak against Wyoming.

Wyoming sophomore guard Noah Reynolds is ranked eighth in scoring in the Mountain West Conference, averaging 15.2 points per game.

“They have some really good players like Maldanado and they’re surrounded by some really good shooters,” said sophomore point guard Alvaro Cardenas. “So we got to stay disciplined and just stick to

the game plan and keep up the energy.”

On the boards, the Spartans have been dominant, averaging 37.5 rebounds per game while the Cowboys averaged 32.9 per game.

“Just by grabbing some offensive rebounds specifically will out the team and just bringing some more energy to the game,” said senior forward Sage Tolbert III.

Coach Miles said one of the keys of the game is winning the turnover battle.

Though SJSU does not force a lot of turnovers, Wyoming turns the ball over at a high rate.

The Cowboys average 11.7 turnovers per game which is seventh in the conference.

“For us, the turnover battle is huge, because when we turn it over, we don’t play very well, for us that’s a really important thing,” Miles said. “The flip side of that is that we do not turn teams over and when we do you can see it really lifts our offense. We get way easier baskets, we get a steal into a fast break, something like that.”

Consistency has been a problem for the Spartans this season. They’ve had impressive wins over teams like Santa Clara, UNLV and Colorado State, but also have not been able to beat the best teams in the conference such as NevadaReno, San Diego State and Boise State.

“I feel like we just need to

click as a team,” Tolbert said. “As a team we really haven’t been playing through each other and well together. We’ve been doing that a lot at home with the atmosphere with the crowd, that’s something that we will do, and that’s something we’ll bring with us on the road.” For the Spartans, this will be a

big game to get their confidence back after taking a big loss in San Diego.

“Yeah, they’re a very good basketball team,” Miles said. “Even though their record isn’t where they want it to be . . . and they got some real talent. The idea is that, you know, when you have a game, somebody’s

below you in the standings, you have to take care of business at home against somebody like that.”

Above: Senior forward Sage Tolbert III paces during a practice at Provident Credit Union Event Center in September 2022.

Left: Sophmore point guard Alvaro Cardenas guards junior shooting guard Omari Moore during a practice at Provident Credit Union Event Center in September 2022.

Below: Head coach Tim Miles instructs his team during a September 2022 practice.

I think people are paying attention to our process of improvement here.

Follow Oscar Frias-Rivera on Twitter @oscar_frias408

STAFF WRITER

NICK ZAMORA | SPARTAN DAILY ARCHIVE Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @SpartanDaily

MEN’S BASKETBALL

ILLUSTRATION BY MYENN RAHNOMA

King Khan smashes in ‘Pathaan’

By Myenn Rahnoma SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Shah Rukh Khan is Pathaan.

Literally. Not just the character or ethnicity, but the film itself tells the story of his cultural lineage.

Released on Jan. 25, “Pathaan” is an Indian action-packed thriller directed by Siddharth Anand. The movie is about an Indian agent, played by John Abraham, going rogue and helping Pakistan to take revenge against India.

The film also stars Shah Rukh Khan, also known as SRK, as the title character, Pathaan. Deepika Padukone, a prominent Bollywood actress, also stars opposite SRK as Rubai, who is a Pakistani agent working against Abraham.

Padukone, who debuted in Farah Khan’s classic 2007 hit “Om Shanti Om,” also starred in other films such as “Bajirao Mastani,” “Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani” and “xXx: Return of Xander Cage.”

It’s another typical undercover spy/ forbidden love between an Indian and Pakistani agent, fighting against evil.

If you’re still not familiar with SRK, he is the King of Bollywood (and the King of Romance). He starred in countless classics, including 1995 “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” 1998 “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” and 2002 “Devdas.”

“Pathaan” marks a turn towards more action-oriented films for SRK, who in the past has largely done romantic roles.

In an Instagram live in 2022, Khan said that he will no longer be taking on any more of his signature romantic roles, due to his age and “awkward [age] gaps between [him and his] leading ladies.”

This is quite different from his peers who often will continue to star in films with actresses at least 10 years their younger. Despite this, the leads in “Pathaan” share an “awkward” age gap as well.

“Pathaan” was great, but I wouldn’t complain if he goes back to his classic romantic scripts, as long as he’s pursuing an age-appropriate heroine.

In this case, we see another “Mission Impossible” six-pack abs side of him, which is insane for a 57-year-old actor.

The cherry on top was the post-credit scene between him and Salman Khan, addressing the fact that they’re “too old for this” and subtly shading every nepotism baby and industry newcomer.

It’s interesting to see how the styles and trends in Bollywood movies have shifted drastically. In a world of TikTok acting, privileged nepotism babies are starting to take over the industry, downgrading their “art.”

Before, Bollywood was known for its culturally rich themes and emotional

content, but due to the power of social media marketing, these standards have changed for two main reasons.

The first one is that these “nepo-babies” can’t act or convey emotion properly, so they disguise their lack of talent under a smoke of fancy stunts and tricks. Money can’t buy talent, but it sure as hell can buy trainers and instructors.

The industry has also changed its standards to accommodate Western audiences. Whether it’s through painfully generic (but catchy) item songs or Instagram-friendly aesthetics, the art has conformed to dull Hollywood standards.

Pathaan is also defined as “A Pashtospeaking people inhabiting north-west

franchise. The result is a big bang crossover that will be forever known as the Bollywood version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Although the film had two very catchy songs, a drop-dead gorgeous leading lady, and iconic one-liners and references, none of these can be credited as the primary reason for the film’s popularity.

The main reason behind the film’s success surrounds SRK’s legacy and identity not as a mega-blockbuster hit-making machine, but as a man with roots scattered all over South Asia.

India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan are the primary countries that are generally considered South Asia, although Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar’s inclusion

The nationalist identities portrayed are definitely treading on dangerous waters, but also show the beautiful blend of cultures and unity amongst the greater South Asian region in general.

Exploring these extremities can also expose the harm of putting pride and borders over people and humanity.

For instance, Abraham’s character is Indian but becomes a traitor after the Indian military decides to not pay ransom for him and his wife when they get kidnapped. He then takes extreme measures in order to seek revenge on his homeland.

Similarly, in the film, Pakistani General Qadir goes to extreme lengths to get payback on India after the repeal of Article 350.

Article 350 allowed a “certain amount of autonomy” for Kashmir and Jammu, according to a Aug. 6, 2019 BBC article.

For context, Kashmir and Jammu have historically been caught in the crossfire between Pakistan and India since the partition of India after gaining independence from Great Britain in 1947, according to a June 15, 205 New Yorker article.

While both nations are looking to control the territory, Kashmiris have their own cultural identity and have been fighting for independence.

Pakistan and south-east Afghanistan,” according to the Oxford dictionary.

SRK identifies as half Hyderabadi, half Pathaan and part Kashmiri, but was born in Delhi, according to an Aug. 19, 2010 Twitter post.

To be quite honest, the plot itself had nothing unique or special to contribute to the industry.

The most remarkable point throughout the entire plot was Salman Khan’s “Tiger” character cameo from the director’s larger spy

movie review

“Pathaan”

Rating:

Directed by: Siddharth Anand

Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone

Genre: Action/Thriller

are sometimes debated.

Throughout the film, he subtly pays an homage to his extended lineage; both to Kashmir and Afghanistan.

The nod to Kashmir was a bit more subtle but the parallel between Pathaan’s and SRK’s ancestry was executed well.

Although Pathaan identifies as an Indian, his name comes from his Afghan “roots,” similar to SRK’s last name, Khan, coming from his father’s Afghan/Pathaan ancestry.

Pathaan’s upbringing was in India, but in the film, he sought refuge in Afghanistan and was essentially adopted by a community in the country as an adult.

At one point in the film, Rubai, who is Pakistani, says “These are not my people,” and states that her true people would “hang” someone like Qadir once they find out what he’s doing.

It’s a bold move, considering the histories between Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Kashmir.

Regardless, fans are glad that King Khan is finally back and that he’s here to stay.

The main reason behind the film’s success surrounds SRK’s legacy and identity not as a mega-blockbuster hit-making machine, but as a man with roots scattered all over South Asia.

Beyoncé prioritizes money over morals

her GLAAD Media Award to her uncle Johnny and said in her acceptance speech that “LGBTQI rights are human rights,” according to a March 29, 2019 BBC News article.

Dylan Newman STAFF WRITER

Beyoncé is one of the most humanitarian and socially aware people on this planet, which is why it was surprising to find her first performance in four years to have been in Dubai; a place where being gay is a crime punishable by death.

It was especially confusing coming directly after the release of her latest album “RENAISSANCE,” which is an outward celebration of Black queer artists.

Beyoncé dedicated “RENAISSANCE” to her late uncle Johnny, a gay man who battled and lost his life to HIV, according to a July 29, 2022 article by People Magazine.

In a statement regarding the release of the album, she thanked “...all of the fallen angels

whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long,”

“The fallen angels” can be interpreted as other victims of the HIV epidemic, as lesser known artists who died from this disease, alongside those with AIDS, historically had their work lost or destroyed over the course of time.

In 2019, Beyoncé dedicated

Who could put a price on ignoring a checkered and successful past of advocating for the oppressed, and how much would that theoretically cost?

The answer to these questions is simple, Beyoncé can and just did; and the price tag for a blind eye from a woman of her status is $24 million.

Support for LGBTQ

communities is not something you can take on and off like a piece of clothing, it’s a truth you either hold or you don’t.

We should expect someone of Beyoncé’s status to stay consistent when advocating for marginalized

communities. Staying consistent means turning down the money for bourgeois displays

of wealth in a city where women and migrant workers are actively oppressed by the government, according to a 2021 Human Rights Watch report on the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai is located. This also means not using photos from it as promotion for your brand that seemingly stands for the freedom of expression, which she did by adding pictures of the performance to her website.

Icon figures like Beyoncé are worthy of criticism when they participate in the expensive glitz and glamour of Dubai, a city built

rights violations on women, is a progressive act because of how powerful she is.

To that I ask why all of “RENAISSANCE” was left off of this concert’s setlist.

Given the subject matter of this album’s entirety, not only does it make sense for her not to perform this in Dubai, you can also see the irony and backwardness in creating an album about LGBTQ allyship, only to drop the mantra in order to collect a check.

“Don’t Say Gay Bill,” the type of experience an American Beyoncé fan would have in more hostile areas of the country is questionable.

The act prohibits Floridian public schoolchildren from learning about gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom, which silences children over being allowed to discover their own identities, according to a Feb. 9, 2022 Time article.

on the backs of exploited migrant workers that are promised lives of economic prosperity, only to be indoctrinated into a form of modern day slavery, according to an Aug. 8, 2012 Vice news documentary.

like Beyoncé performing in

It’s easy to argue that a woman Dubai, a place known for its overt human

In the same breath, we shouldn’t expect celebrities to be martyrs, flying to lands under any amounts of persecution in order to employ our western norms and ideals.

With the recent surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation in the American political landscape such as the “Florida Parental

Rights in Education Act,” or more commonly known as the

It’s simply a matter of having a belief and sticking to it, especially when that belief is equal human rights for the silent communities you specifically set out to uplift.

Putting all of the horrifying human rights violations aside (since apparently that’s something we can do now), it’s confusing to see an artist of her stature take a private concert at a hotel opening as the gig for her return after a four-year hiatus.

Beyoncé has since announced the “RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR” on her Instagram account, which is said to take place over the course of this year.

Simply put, the expressive message of “RENAISSANCE” doesn’t fly in Dubai.

I encourage any diehard Beyoncé fan to consider being upset over the disregard for the exploited and silenced, rather than the late tour announcement.

Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @SpartanDaily

We should expect someone of Beyoncé’s status to stay consistent when advocating for marginalized communities.

ILLU STRATI ONBY MYENNRAHNOMA