The Seahawk

OPINION: UNCW’s campus should be convenient for neurodivergent students

Michael Friant, Contributing Writer • October 6, 2022

Whether or not we are neurotypical, we each have an inherent desire for convenience. However, UNCW’s campus is fundamentally designed for the convenience of specifically neurotypical students. As a result, neurodivergent students deal with a number of challenges on campus. As a person with cerebral palsy, there are many inconveniences that I have struggled with, and continue to struggle with, while navigating around UNCW’s campus.

OPINION: Olivia Wilde stirs controversy throughout ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ premiere

Annamarie Geosits, Photography Editor • September 24, 2022

As Olivia Wilde prepares for her sophomore feature film directorial debut with “Don’t Worry Darling,” she aspires to match, or even surpass, the extremely positive audience reaction from her first feature, “Booksmart.” However, despite Wilde’s artistic credibility, the discourse following the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, both public and critical, primarily concerns the drama between the main cast and director rather than the content of the film. Although there is no specific person to blame for the complete mess that was this film’s premiere, the different scandals all lead back to one common factor: Olivia Wilde herself. Although she could be to blame for the spectacle, one can't help but wonder if it would all be as big of a deal if the director was a man.

OPINION: That moment at the Oscars shows us why we should stop idolizing celebrities

Boyce Rucker, Staff Writer • April 18, 2022

Celebrities are successful people due to their talents, but that shouldn’t exempt them from legal penalties or a lack of healthy coping methods. Not many of us can account for what the entertainment industry is like on the inside, but we can see how much it factors into a person’s image. This year’s Oscars only remind us of why putting celebrities on a pedestal does no more good than bad. In acting this way, we are disregarding the fact that celebrities are normal people, just like us. We can still admire and appreciate their talent, but we should never forget that they’re humans, with personal struggles, who have the capacity to act in both good and bad manners. Smith’s assault on Rock is as much a cautionary event as it is a controversial one.

OPINION: The ethicality of making students live in dorms

Emma Geiszler, Staff Writer • April 3, 2022

UNCW has the ability to consistently improve, and the main place to start should be creating the best possible environment for students by getting to the root of their everyday lives. At it’s heart, this environment relies on finances, a good home environment and healthy living. This should be the area of focus for improving students' well-being.

OPINION: The harmful and hypocritical aspects of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill

Michael Friant, Contributing Writer • March 31, 2022

At one point or another in our lives, we have all felt discarded or misunderstood. This might be due to the part of the country that we were raised in, our parents’ backgrounds, the viewpoints that we were raised by or the public school system. Such is the case with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida. This article will discuss why the bill is both harmful to the closeted gay kids in Florida and why it hypocritical to even have such a bill in the first place.

OPINION: CP Awareness Day and the need for social consistency

Michael Friant, Contributing Writer • March 25, 2022

Imagine not seeing your friends who live in the same city for weeks, months, or sometimes even longer. You would feel like they didn’t care about you, as if you had done something that offended them or outgrown the friendship with the person. Now imagine these friends were the only ones who connect with you on a deeper than surface level. If this was your reality, you would feel really apprehensive and uncertain about your friendships. In honor of today being National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day, I am going to try to show how this is my reality in a constructive manner, so as not to offend any of my friends who might be reading this, but to also make the case as to why I need consistency in my social life.

OP-ED: I was an Evangelical Christian. Here’s why I’m no longer religious.

Katharine Chapin, Student Body Member • February 11, 2022

I was a shy freshman eager to build a sense of community. During high school, I attended church on both Wednesdays and Sundays, occasionally leading lessons for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes club in my high school gymnasium. I talked about how I coped with anxiety and learned to become more comfortable in my own body—practical sentiments that helped me trudge through the living hell that is high school itself. But the type of Christianity that I would soon encounter in Wilmington was a bit more intense. In the fall of 2019, I joined an organization that would change the course of my life entirely—one that furthered the doubts about my Christian faith that I had been suppressing for quite some time, far longer than I ever wanted to admit.

OPINION: Reboots are fine, but they need to advance the story in a new way and have a bit of originality

Boyce Rucker, Staff Writer • January 27, 2022

Reboots can be tiresome, especially as we approach the second Batman recasting over the past decade, but they can also lead to the most invigorating visions. It is true that movie studios and screenwriters should focus on more original ideas, but movie reboots are not something that should be dismissed immediately. Reboots such as “Batman Begins,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” show us that reboots can be the best thing for a franchise when done correctly. Instead of viewing each reboot with dismay once they come to our attention, we can view it with curiosity. If we ever find ourselves disappointed or unimpressed by a reboot, then we can always go back to the original.

OP-ED: “Be Gay, Do Crime,” and other shit you can say without the university censoring you

Robby Fensom, SGA President • January 27, 2022

Over the past several weeks, Davis, the vice chancellor for student affairs and censor in the making, has called for the repainting of the rocks whenever students voice beliefs that run afoul to his definition of the First Amendment. In a meeting with me and three other students, Davis shared that he has overseen the removal of such statements as “Be Gay, Do Crime” and “No More Masks” from the university spirit rocks because he does not think they deserve the protection of the First Amendment.

OPINION: The residential parking situation is inconvenient and unfair to on-campus students

Abigail Celoria, Contributing Writer • October 14, 2021

With the start of a new semester, both new and returning on-campus students moved into their new housing assignments excited for an in-person experience, the first for some since the pandemic’s initial outbreak. The delta variant continues to threaten that hope, but campus life has persisted in spite of it, allowing a sense of normalcy to return to the college environment. However, an unexpected beast arose in this perfect storm of returners—namely, the wildly oversaturated parking situation on campus.

OPINION: Society should implement social programs that encourage interactions between individuals with and without disabilities

Michael Friant, Contributing Writer • October 6, 2021

If we were to normalize social interactions between neurotypical children and children with disabilities, these types of interactions would be few and far between rather than the norm. This is because the neurotypical kids will have had experience in interacting with someone with disabilities. This prior experience will undoubtedly play a positive role in the individual’s interactions with the person with the disability.

Letter from the Editor: The mistakes we make as student journalists

Brenna Flanagan, Editor-in-Chief • September 25, 2021

The Seahawk is committed to doing better. We are reviewing the editing process above and will reduce the instances of single-person publishing. Sensitive stories will be reviewed by a committee made up of editorial staff and general body members to review language, construction and content that could injure underrepresented groups on campus. We will also strengthen our efforts to connect with diverse campus voices and organizations, including through a specific contact on our editorial board.