Students and staff interviewed this week in Washington, D.C., shared their thoughts on gender neutral bathrooms, which have become common at American University.
Tiffany Speaks, senior director for the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, said bathrooms are mainly being installed for everyone to feel welcomed.
Speaks quoted from American University’s website saying: “The university is committed to having safe and accessible campus restroom facilities.”
Violence against the transgender community mostly happens in public restrooms, according to a 2013 Williams Institute report. Derrick Clifton wrote that “roughly 70% of trans people have reported being denied entrance, assaulted or harassed while trying to use a restroom,” according to a 2013 Williams Institute report.
A gender neutral bathroom at American University. (Photo by Joel Lev-Tov)
Mumina Ali, an incoming first year student at American University, believes the school is doing a great job by installing gender neutral bathrooms.
“This campus is about being inclusive and embracing diversity,” Ali said. “Not everyone has the same identity. So I think that’s the main reason is to create a safe space where people feel as if they’re wanted, rather than anywhere in the rest of the world, they can feel like that.”
Donna Femenella, 40, Course Reserves coordinator at American University’s Bender Library, believes that the gender neutral bathrooms create a safe space for members of the LGBTQ community.
“It’s not creating a barrier where a decision has to be made in terms of kind of what a person identifies as,” Femenella said. “So I think just being able to know that a bodily function you can just do without any barriers.”
Personal attacks, perceived unreliable media coverage and politicians’ extreme partisan division all are driving both experienced and new voters to steer clear of politics all together or get more engaged as the 2020 election nears.
That is according to several interviews conducted this month in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.
A common belief among older voters is that news has become a place of bullying and bashing rather than a place to get information.
Shawn Bates, 46, described political conversation as, “far more toxic, deeply partisan, and personal.”
Jackie Martinez, 19, an American University student from Chicago, considers voting in the United States a privilege because she knows so many people from other countries who didn’t have that right. But, she also thinks political polarization is causing a more radicalized electorate, and said even infighting within political parties is shifting people’s viewpoints and making it harder to find common ground.
“It has changed a lot,” Martinez said of the political landscape. “It’s more about good and bad and no compromise.”
Several voters interviewed on American University’s campus and in the Tenleytown neighborhood of the district, agree that politics is a kind of war zone between political parties.
Two newspaper stands in Washington, D.C.’s Tenleytown neighborhood. (Photo by Drew Scheimer)
Behzad Jalali, 65, was born in Iran and believes political participation is “very important.” He has been in the United States for more than 40 years, and he has witnessed a huge shift in political polarization.
The deep polarization between parties is causing some young voters to disengage.
“I knew voting was important but I wasn’t in to it,” said Sarah Sleiman, 22.
Sleiman said she gets her news from Twitter, which seems to be a common source among young voters.
Rashard Flowers, 34, who was waiting for a car to pick him up in Tenleytown, said polarization is affecting all Americans.
“Everyone is okay with people disagreeing,” Flowers said. “People want someone who can satisfy both sides.”
People in Washington, D.C. interviewed this month agreed that acceptance of same sex marriage has been on the rise in the United States in the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on the subject.
Marriage equality activists outside the U.S. Supreme Court. (Photo by Stephen Luke courtesy of Creative Commons)
Brittany Proudfoot-Ginder, 30, an employee at American University, thinks the culture has become more aware and will continue to change toward acceptance in the years to come. Ginder explained opposition is dependent on geographic location and socioeconomic status.
Despite groups who disagree with same sex marriage, Ginder says people feel more comfortable speaking about it and there has been more visibility for the LGBTQ community.
The opposition is “fairly similar to how it’s always been, but now there is more of a community fighting back,” said Ginder, whose sister identifies as lesbian and is getting married later this year.
Ginder spoke passionately about the benefits of marriage, such as filing taxes together, sharing a health insurance plan, and being able to visit them in the hospital.
A May 2019 report from Pew Research Center found the opinions of same sex marriage have remained largely unchanged since 2017. While opposition is slowly declining, it remains a part of the culture in the United States.
Jack Sullivan, 66, sat on a bench on the American University campus on a recent day in June. He believes marriage being held as a constitutional right has only helped create acceptance and education.
“Acceptance provoked the legalization of marriage,” Sullivan said.
Aubrey Amos,16, has seen a lot more about LGBTQ groups on social media, but has also seen opposition more frequently, too.
“They are speaking their minds,” Amos said of those still opposed to same-sex marriage.
Jabriela Calderon, 30, thinks opposition groups have become more verbal and occasionally violent. She attributed this to same sex marriage and the LGBTQ community being normalized after years of marginalization.
“There seems to be more of an understanding towards same sex couples,” Calderon said.
According to a Pew Research report from May 2013, people are more open to same sex marriage after being exposed to someone from the LGBTQ community.
For Tyler Massias, 19, same-sex marriage has meant larger acceptance for others, too, including people of color who identify as transgender. He says that in the four years since that Supreme Court ruling, it has “generated a permissive culture.”
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Obergefell v. Hodges, “requiring all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Hannah Ruth Wellons, who worked at the American University library, said she believes that the issue now goes beyond marriage. It means that ignorance also is being taken away.
The virtual map utilized for gathering collectibles in the mobile app Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Mobile apps utilizing location trackers have privacy issues, experts say. (Screen shot by Gillian Blum)
With the release Friday of the mobile game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, people are debating the safety and effectiveness of the app’s location-tracking feature and its necessity when playing the game.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite released in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand on Friday is a mobile game based on the popular franchise of the Wizarding World. Following the same formula as Pokémon Go, also developed by Harry Potter: Wizards Unite developer, Niantic, the app uses tracking technology to follow players’ geographic locations and guides them to various virtual collectibles and challenges within their area.
The game is compelling to many, especially fans of the original franchise, however critics are concerned about privacy.
Bill Frick, a shopper in a Tenleytown CVS, commented on the game’s potential for major technological achievement, but how he sees the danger of an app tracking players’ constant location.
“You want to know if someone’s tracking your whereabouts, and where that information goes,” Frick said.
Critics of apps that require geographic location agree that it is concerning to have someone constantly following players’ locations for the sake of finding virtual wizarding artifacts. They question their own safety as players, knowing that downloading the app gives developers this private information legally and for free.
“I don’t like the fact that someone could know where I was at any given moment,” said Rachel Margolis. “I think that’s kinda creepy.”
Margolis continued to share her fear and concern for where her personal information would be going if she used the app, further emphasizing the privacy risk embedded into the standard game-play of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.
“Most players leave the app open at all times, waiting for that sweet, sweet buzz of a new wild Pokémon appearing. This means that, effectively, you give permission for Niantic to track your movements all day, every day, wherever you go,” Li continued.
Li emphasized that not only can Niantic track players’ location, but also has little-to-no communication about where this information goes, only furthering privacy concerns among players.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite treats these features almost identically to the preceding app.
However, many argue that using players’ geographic location enhances these games, and allows for them to conquer a major challenge facing humanity in the 21st century: getting people to go outside and play, rather than sitting at home on their phones.
In order to gather the collectibles, among other rarer game features, players need to walk around outside, and stop for a few moments at various checkpoints.
Terumi Rafferty-Osaki, who was wearing a Pokémon Go T-shirt in Tenleytown, agreed the app gets people outside, and he sees even more benefits than just getting people out and into the world.
“If people are doing it for more than the game, and looking at, kinda, like, the points of interest within the game, they’re going to actually learn a lot about (the) city and I think that that’s really awesome,” Rafferty-Osaki said.
Without the geographic location tracker, players would not have the incentive to walk around and explore their towns and cities, instead of sitting on their couch in their pajamas.
In fact, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite not only encourages walking, exploring and traveling, but actually requires players to walk around to make progress in the game through it’s use of a speed tracking software.
If a player is going faster than a typical pedestrian could physically walk or run, the game’s features stop working as well as they typically do, encouraging players to walk and run instead of taking on the passenger seat in an Uber, circling areas filled with checkpoints.
She emphasized that the game has decreased national obesity, heart attacks suffered and vitamin D deficiency, due to the 2016 app’s need of physical activity.
Overall, despite privacy concerns, people are enjoying the app.
With a current 4.6/5 star rating on the app store, both due to its implementing of popular app developments from Pokémon Go, and its connection to a vast and well-known franchise, it has received positive reviews.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite “feeds my ever needy hunger for wizard lore and fantasy,” as stated in an app review by a reviewer with the screen name Htdman. However, the game is still brand new. After the initial rush of excitement passes, more and more players may begin to recognize the danger of a geographic tracker, and could hang up their robes and wands for good.
With the recent announcement that “The Office” will be leaving Netflix in 2021, mutual agreement about the extent of power streaming services have has sparked among users.
“The Office” is a popular sitcom, lasting nine seasons on NBC from 2005-2013, and, in addition to its successful run, is one of Netflix’s most-watched shows. On Tuesday, Netflix announced it will be removing the show from their media-base, since NBC will be taking over all streaming of the sitcom.
“We’re sad that NBC has decided to take The Office back for its own streaming platform — but members can binge watch the show to their hearts’ content ad-free on Netflix until January 2021,” Netflix tweeted on Tuesday afternoon.
Given the show’s popularity, this announcement has caused people to notice the extent of power that streaming services, like Netflix, truly have.
Ali Feder, 17, of Westport, Connnecticut, is a fan of “The Office,” and is dissapointed to see it leave. She herself was too young to watch the show during its original run, and became a fan by binge-watching it on Netflix.
The show is “able to reach out to a different variety of people who maybe weren’t as ‘of age’ to watch it when it was airing on TV, which kind of broadens the spectrum of the fan base” said Feder. With the show likely to become less-accessible, and more costly to watch when it transfers to NBC’s official website, Feder is concerned that future generations will not be able to connect to a show that is so popular today.
“There’s also such a sense of community that you make new friends because of a show that you binged,” says Anabella DebJesus of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Both Feder and DebJesus agree that without easy access to popular TV shows, the fan-communities build around them will dissolve.
These fan-communities make up a huge part of 21st century culture, with friends being made across the globe through bonding over a funny post appearing on both users’ feeds.
In his essay, “The Future of Fandom,” Henry Jenkins wrote about how “Newsweek reduces the phenomenon of “social media” or “web 2.0” to the phrase, ‘it’s not an audience, it’s a community.'”
In the opinion of many fans, like Feder and DebJesus, Netflix’s removal of “The Office” from their media library deprives past, present, and future fans from reaping the benefits of a close community surrounding the mutual love of a little office in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The weather has been erratic this past month, inconveniencing Washington, D.C. residents.
The weather has been ranging from the low nighties to the low seventies over the past few weeks.
Nadia Trowers, 34, a resident from the area has also noticed the weather pattern.
“It changes from sunny, which is what I like, to cloudy which I don’t like,” Trowers said.
Fanta Aw, vice president of Campus Life and Inclusive Excellence at American University, said she is concerned about how the weather is affecting American people.
“When we watch television, we see flooding in some parts of the country,” Aw said. “We see drought. It’s definitely going to have an impact.”
She believes that this erratic weather is caused by climate change, which is further exasperated by the U.S.’s unsustainable habits.
According to a recent National Climate Assessment, “U.S. average temperature has increased by 1.3 degrees to 1.9 degrees since 1895, and most of this increase has occurred since 1970.”
A storm on its way captured from the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. overlooking the Washington Monument. (Photo by Ethan Lindsey courtesy of Creative Commons)
As a result, seasons are warmer than average and cold weather is becoming more sporadic. Warmer air temperatures are also a catalyst for other issues caused by climate change such as: increased water temperatures, higher flood risks, rising sea levels, alerted precipitation and stronger storms.
Aw, who has a doctorate in sociology, is also concerned about how climate change will affect farmers because it could negatively impact their jobs and puts agriculture at risk.
