Love don’t cost a thing and it shouldn’t cost the environment either. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and before you go and kill some flowers and purchase non-fairtrade chocolates, I think you should rethink your love situation. I’m a girl. So I know, I am kind of lucky when it comes to the holiday because there isn’t that much pressure to woo someone with compliments, surprises, chocolates and flowers. I’m fortunate to be the one that gets to… Read more

For the second week in a row, dissenting voices made themselves heard before the AS Senate regarding a potential new club on campus. The introduction of Salvadorian American Leadership and Education Fund (SALEF) to CSUN’s campus has been met with strong opposition from faculty and students in the Central American studies department. Complaints against the off-campus entity establishing a chapter at CSUN include an unhealthy perpetuation of nationalism, deceiving scholarship requirements and SALEF’s lack of care for students’ educational well-being…. Read more

Every now and then my roommates and our friends decide to call it a night in and have a game night at our apartment. It’s usually fun, but lately it has gotten boring. Boring because either we’ve played all the games before or this game is exactly like that other game, but with just a different name. But I wasn’t about to let game nights die due to dullness. And apparently, neither would Greenpeace. I recently discovered Greenpeace’s new board… Read more

Some of us at one point have comprehended the notion of artificial intelligence being in absolute control over the military, stock market or basically everything. The time has come to start filtering those imaginative ideals into reality since the near future looks to translate Hollywood movies into absolute truth. This month’s issue of Popular Science discusses the notion of computers or robots being given control by use of AI and humans as the “supervisors.” From the article, current war zones… Read more

I was, like the millions of you out there, glued to my television set during the State of the Union address earlier this week. But there was something missing from President Obama’s speech. There was a word that he refrained from using and that word was climate. It was as if not mentioning it made it not a problem we are facing as a nation or brushes it under the rug with all the other problems we have turned our… Read more

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is conducting a count of all the homeless people in the county this week. An estimated 29,000 people were recorded as homeless in the area, according to a 2009 factsheet provided by LAHSA.  It said the Metropolitan Los Angeles area has the highest density of homeless, with nearly one in 100 people without a home.  Alternatively, the San Fernando/Santa Clarita Valley recorded the lowest number of homeless people in the area. According to LAHSA,… Read more

The Associated Students reflected on prominent news that occurred over winter break and related it to CSUN’s future during their first meeting of the semester Tuesday in the Grand Salon. The shooting in Arizona and the arrest of a former CSUN student in possession of explosives on campus were connected as relevant lessons to be learned by the senate. “CSUN is a very lucky campus, indeed,” said Tom Piernik, AS university advisor.  “This brings the discomfort of Arizona right to… Read more

So we are back to school. It’s a new year and a new semester. Personally, my new year’s resolution was to help the world be more green and less wasteful. And to be honest, I feel like I have failed because we’ve been without a green post in over a month. I have so many eco-friendly ideas and blogs to post that they are piling up like a landfill in the back of my mind. Speaking of landfills though, trash… Read more

Student-parents at CSUN, This will be my last post on the student-parent college blog.  As I graduate and move on to my life’s next endeavors, I look back on the past five years I’ve spent in college and have to say, it’s bittersweet.  Although I will carry the burden of finding a job in this tough economy, I won’t miss the hectic schedules and deadlines required of the college student-parent life.  My kids are just as excited, if not more,… Read more